The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

V >> Various >> The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY.

X.

I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had
assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she
reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall
of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the
dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels
their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly
time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A
step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has
cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's
maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are
times when we _must_ put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;'
there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction.
You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the
centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to
retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream
on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped,
turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side.
Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every
tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you
lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once
resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle
to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or
losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung
into the fierce fight, then with _'Dieu et mon droit!'_ for your
battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be _any_ 'part of' your 'valor.'

Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need
of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as
you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was
unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a
day, than thus grope my way along.

There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in
my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to
school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with
mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled
up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed
herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she
never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down
with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the
rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an
umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she
would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log,
unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been
ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till
the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her
caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her
undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she
never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed,
antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She
never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is
still _Miss_ Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,)
though it is said that she might have been Mrs.----. Mr.----, a widower
of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his
probation--the engagement preparatory to being received into the full
matrimonial connection--made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being
the nearest one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers
always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of
view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution,
half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions--he
got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married
some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man
before marriage--engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and
it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How
peacefully her life flows along--or rather, it hardly flows at all,
about as much as a mill-pond--with such a small bit of heaven and earth
reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!--better have some great, heavy,
splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for
me--it was a good thing that I was a girl--rash, never counting the
cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths
of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous
world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or
physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would
have been spared many an agony, and--many an exquisite joy.

You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they
have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims.
Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all
of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is
not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You,
as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines,
one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the
other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on
different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never
accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that
would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One
man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's
falsehood.

But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims--fossilized, I
may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of
falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth--truth
that never dies. What a vitality it has--a vitality that can not be
dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old
mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang
up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks
of the Nile. You know how God's truth--all truth is God's truth--was
shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by
one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an
island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear
abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life;
ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.'

And still lives, yours,

MOLLY O'MOLLY.

'THAT LAST DITCH.'

Many reasons have been assigned for the _Chivalry's_ determining to die
in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of
Enobarbus, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, the best reason we have yet seen.
'Tis thus:

'I will go seek
Some ditch wherein to die: THE FOUL BEST FITS
MY LATTER PART OF LIFE.'

HOPEFUL TACKETT--HIS MARK.

BY RICHARD WOLCOTT, 'TENTH ILLINOIS.'

'An' the Star-Spangle' Banger in triump' shall wave
O! the lan dov the free-e-e, an' the ho mov the brave.'

Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little
shop of Herr Kordwaener, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not
artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his
hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the
prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an
odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the
ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills.

'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon
Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a
face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust.

'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em--an' a
head, too.'

'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill.

Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill;
and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not
a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him
'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance
runs too much to nose--rude, amorphous nose at that--to be classic, and
is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is
decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of
courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its
resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a
great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a
noble destiny. Let us see.

By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that
Lieutenant ---- was in town and wished to enlist recruits for
Company ----, ---- Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his
apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass
that stuck in the window--a defiant look, that said that he was not
afraid of all that nose--took his hat down from its peg behind the door,
and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down
over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused
aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person,
'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess
them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them
ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his
emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to
go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there
blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay
'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't
pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with
a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's
[Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his
land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last
year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to
glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.'

And Hopeful did think about it--thought till late at night of the
insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead
and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages
of rebel fiends--thought of all this, with his great warm heart
overflowing with love for the dear old 'Banger,' and resolved to go.
The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his
service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very
wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the
departed Frau Kordwaener,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every
cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon
Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to
fall into--he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwaener's
daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an
extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity
of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was
her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm
white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his
great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in
love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed
departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips,
something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't
speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday
evening, he held out his hand and blurted out:

'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.'

'Off! Where?'

'I've enlisted.'

Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily
perfumed _mouchoir_, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked
at him for a moment, while two great _real_ tears rolled down her
cheeks, and then--precipitated all her charms right into his arms.
Hopeful stood it manfully--rather liked it, in fact. But this is a
tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they
parted--with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of
undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no
need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under
such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters,
and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do.

The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the
lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first
experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us,
at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the
rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood
at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay
quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his
far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the
fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but
ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty,
silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of
a pure patriotism.

'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life,
an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you
know how.'

It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we
could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets,
through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening
bayonets. But strict truth--a matter of which newspaper correspondents,
and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty
conception--forbids it.

It was only a skirmish--a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a
swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the
rebels.

'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare
'em!'

'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles.

'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets.

On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks
of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of
'butternuts.'

Hopeful was in the advance; his hat was lost, and his hair more
defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on,
carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to
run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle
was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the
rebel sprang into the air and fell back--dead. Almost at the same
instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he
felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled,
and sank to the ground.

'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside
him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg.

'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever
now. That feller won't need a pension.'

They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the
wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis.

'Bone shattered--vessels injured--bad leg--have to come off. Good
constitution, though; he'll stand it.'

And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only,
regretting that he must be discharged--that he was no longer able to
serve his country.

And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer
Kordwaener's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the
same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but
two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and
restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough,
independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw
Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him
pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room,
leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking
rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began:

'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the
world. But I'm a cripple now--no account to nobody--just a dead
weight--an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away,
to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That
contract--ah--promises--an't--is--is hereby repealed! There!' And he
leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great
agony from his loving heart.

Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and
calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?'

It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case,
and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so
suddenly.

'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and--but that is another
of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised
next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of
Tackett. Herr Kordwaener, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a
partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a
new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the
mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing
the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will
tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and
talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it
out admiringly, and ask:

'Do you know what I call that? I call that _'Hopeful Tackett--his
mark.'_'

And it is a mark--a mark of distinction--a badge of honor, worn by many
a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the
dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in
the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild
whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle;
worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If
these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and
suffered--though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished
skirmish, though official bulletins spoke not of him, 'though fame
shall never know his story'--let them come as a tribute to him; as a
token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him
through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the
heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while
life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause,
cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to
take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the
proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring
renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet,
throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official
notice, battles manfully for the right.

Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute
you.

JOHN BULL TO JONATHAN.

You grow too fast, my child! Your stalwart limbs,
Herculean in might, now rival mine;
The starry light upon your forehead dims
The lustre of my crown--distasteful sign.
Contract thy wishes, boy! Do not insist
Too much on what's thine own--thou art too new!
Bend and curtail thy stature! As I list,
It is _my_ glorious privilege to do.
Take my advice--I freely give it thee--
Nay, would enforce it. I am ripe in years--
Let thy young vigor minister to me!
Restrain thy freedom when it interferes!
No rival must among the nations be
To jeopardize my own supremacy!

JONATHAN TO JOHN BULL.

Thanks for your kind advice, my worthy sire!
Though thrust upon me, and but little prized.
The offices you modestly require,
I reckon, will be scarcely realized.
My service to you! but not quite so far
That I will lop a limb, or force my lips
To gratify your longing. Not a star
Of my escutcheon shall your fogs eclipse!
Let noble deeds evince my parentage.
No rival I; my aim is not so low:
In nature's course, youth soon outstrippeth age,
And is survivor at its overthrow.
Freedom is Heaven's best gift. Thanks! I am free,
Nor will acknowledge your supremacy!

AMERICAN STUDENT LIFE.

SOME MEMORIES OF YALE.

'Through many an hour of summer suns,
By many pleasant ways,
Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days.
I kiss the lips I once have kissed;
The gas-light wavers dimmer;
And softly through a vinous mist,
My college friendships glimmer.'

--_Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue._

It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I,
emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase,
and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from
the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling
excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its
gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our
student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days
were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening
to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at
the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft
resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night--and tutors. I
thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must
be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as
silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and
generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful;
liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready
sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they
never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood
at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to
the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in
old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he
turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the
fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]--fair prototype of modern
Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair
Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering
beside the turbid Arno, in

'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,'

we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the
Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of
gifted imagining, of _The Student of Salamanca_. But Howitt's _Student
Life in Germany_, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking
conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben,

'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;'

Bristed's _Five Years in an English University_, congenial in its
setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual
jockeyism; _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman_,
wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of
numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the
'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant
scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with
which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner _Student
Life in Scotland_ has engaged the late attention of venerable
_Blackwood_, while the pages of _Putnam_, in _Life in a Canadian
College_,[2] and _Fireside Travels_,[3] have given some idea of things
nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and
essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education, the
general development and present doings of Young America in the
universities remain untouched.

The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be
premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our
colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity,
their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings--beginnings
not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater:

'Pray, who was on the Catalogue
When college was begun?
Two nephews of the President,
And _the_ Professor's son,
(They turned a little Indian by,
As brown as any bun;)
Lord! how the Seniors knocked about
That Freshman class of one!'

From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither
that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor
of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered
walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European
universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the
dead forms of mediaeval preciseness. No established church makes with
them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them
the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus
far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness
by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their
course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of
trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has
been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and
people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the
servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had
lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have
required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet
pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring
each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country,
have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing
facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within
our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general--the
increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our
regard--and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek
heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences
bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have
arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple
energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their
monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up
the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their
walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in
poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth
and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have
conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress
demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven
systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial
reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life,
yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at
by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than
defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that
there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often
we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The
progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the
house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who
in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged
thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted
appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be
multiplied Ephraims given to their idols, who had best be let alone.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19