The Long Roll · OmniClassics

the same old bars and chevrons. The sun went down on a veritable love feast--special rations, special music, special fires, and, between supper and tattoo, an entertainment in each regiment. The 65th had a beautiful programme, its debating and literary societies, its glee clubs, chess and checker circles, old sledge associations, Thespians and Greek Letter men all joining forces. The stage was a piece of earth, purple brown with pine needles. Two huge fires, one at either side, made a strong, copper-red illumination. The soldier audience sat in a deep semicircle, and sat at ease, being accustomed by now to the posture of tailor or Turk. Only recruits sought logs or stones upon which to sit. Tobacco smoke rose like incense. The chief musician "sounded on the bugle horn." The Glee Club of Company C filed on the stage with three banjos and two guitars, bowed elegantly, and sang the "Bonny Blue Flag." The applause was thunderous. A large bearded man in the front row lifted a voice that boomed like one of Ashby's cannon. "Encore! Encore!" Company C sang "Listen to the Mocking Bird." The audience gently sighed, took the pipe from its lips, and joined in-- "Listen to the mocking bird--Listen to the mocking bird.... The mocking bird still singing o'er her grave. Listen to the mocking bird--Listen to the mocking bird.... Still singing where the weeping willows wave." The pine trees took it up, and the hazel copses and the hurrying Shenandoah. "Twas in the mild September--September--September, And the mocking bird was singing far and wide." "_Far and wide_.... That's grand, but it sure is gloomy. Next!" The chief musician, having a carrying voice, made announcements. "No. 2. Debate. Which will first recognize the Confederacy, England or France? With the historic reasons for both doing so. England, Sergeant Smith. France, Sergeant Duval.--The audience is not expected to participate in the debate otherwise than judicially, at the close." The close saw it decided by a rising vote that England would come first--Sergeant Smith, indeed, who chanced to be a professor of belles-lettres at a great school, having declared, with the gesture of Saint John on Patmos, that he saw approaching our shores a white winged ship bearing her declaration of amity. "No. 3," intoned the first musician. "Recitation by Private Edwin Horsemanden." Private Edwin Horsemanden gave the title of his selection, a poetic selection. Some of his fellow privates looked puzzled. "'Oz Etaliahn?'--What does 'Oz Etaliahn' mean? Cherokee or Choctaw, which? Explain it to us, Eddy. Is it something to eat--or to drink? ''T is true, 'tis pity, 'tis pity 'tis 'tis true'--but most of us never went to college!... Oh, an opera house!--In Paris, do you say? Go on, Eddy, go on!" "At Paris it was, at the opera there,-- And she looked like a queen in a book that night--" "Never saw one out of a book, did you?... Yes, I saw a gypsy queen once.... And the queen of the circus.... There's a man in Company D once saw the queen of England, saw her just as plain! She was wearing a scoop bonnet with pink roses around her face.... Sh! Shh!" "Of all the operas that Verdi wrote." "Who's Verdi?" "The best, to my taste, is the 'Trovatore.'" "'Trovatore?' Eddy, isn't that the serenading fellow who goes on singing till they hang him? Oh, Lord, yes! And the anvil chorus! The anvil chorus comes in there. Go on, Eddy. We feel perfectly at home." "And Mario" "Hm! stumped again." "can sooth with a tenor note The souls in Purgatory." The large bearded man was up once more. "I rise to object. There isn't any such place. The com--commanding general'll put him in irons for misrepresenting the sidereal system. There's only heaven, hell, and the enemy.--_Yaaaaih, Yaai.... Yaaai, yaaaah, yaaaaih!_ Certainly, sergeant. The pleasure is mine, sir. Don't mention it, I beg. Mum's the word!" "The moon on the tower slept soft as snow"-- "Gee-whiz! what a snowball! Didn't the tower break down? No! You amaze me. Go on, Eddy, go on. We know the natural feelings of a sophomore." "And who was not thrilled in the strangest way As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low, '_Non ti scordar di me?_'" "What's that? Wait a minute, Eddy! Let's get the words. I always did want a chance at German.--Now you say them slowly and we'll repeat.... Why, man alive, you ought to be proud of your linguistic accomplishments!... Well, I'll begin, and we'll fire by platoons. "Non ti scordar di me?--" "Attention! Company A!" "Non ti scordar di me?-- Non ti scordar di me?" "Very good! We'll get the meaning after we learn the words. Company B!" "Non ti scordar di me?" "Well roared, Bottom! Company C!" "Non ti scordar di me?" "Look out, or General Banks'll be sending over Tom's Brook to know what's the matter! Company D!" "Non ti scordar di me?" "Company D goes to the head of the class! Company E!" "Non ti scordar di me?" "'Ware pine cones! Company E's shaking them down.... This class's getting too big. Let's all learn the words together, so's Private Horsemanden can go on with his piece! Attention, 65th! Make ready! Take aim! Fire!" "NON TI SCORDAR DI ME?" "Now Eddy.... Oh, yes, you go on! You aren't going to cheat us that way. We want to know what happened when they stopped talking German! Hasn't anything happened yet." "Non ti--" "Sh! Go on, Eddy boy, and tell us exactly what occurred." Private Edwin Horsemanden had pluck as well as sentiment, and he went on. Moreover he had his revenge, for at bottom the 65th was itself tender-hearted, not to say sentimental. It believed in lost loves and lost blossoms, muslin dresses, and golden chains, cypress shades and jasmine flowers, "And the one bird singing alone to his nest, And the one star over the tower." The 65th sighed and propped its chin on its hand. Presently the 65th grew misty-eyed. "Then I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower She used to wear in her breast It smelt so faint and it smelt so sweet.--" The pipe dropped from the 65th's hand. It sat sorry and pleased. Private Edwin Horsemanden went on without interruption and finished with eclat. The chief musician cleared his throat. "The Glee Club of Company H will now--" The Glee Club of Company H was a large and popular organization. It took the stage amid applause. The leader bowed. "Gentlemen, we thank you. Gentlemen, you have just listened to a beautiful novelty--a pretty little foreign song bird brought by the trade-wind, an English nightingale singing in Virginian forests.--Gentlemen, the Glee Club of Company H will give you what by now is devil a bit of a novelty--what promises to be as old as the hills before we have done with it--what our grandchildren's grandchildren may sing with pride--what to the end of time will carry with it a breath of our armies. Gentlemen, the Glee Club of Company H gives you the Marseillaise of the South. _Attention!_" "Way down South in the land of cotton, 'Simmon seed and sandy bottom--" The 65th rose to its feet. Its neighbour to the right was the 2d Virginia, encamped in a great open field; to the left the 5th, occupying a grove of oaks. These regiments were busied with their own genial hour, but when the loudly sung air streamed across from the 65th they suspended their work in hand. They also sung "Dixie." Thence it was taken up by the 4th and the 33d, and then it spread to Burk and Fulkerson. The batteries held the top of Rude's Hill, up among the night wind and the stars. The artillerymen took the air from the infantry. Headquarters was situated on the green bank of the Shenandoah. Staff and couriers and orderlies hummed or sang. Stonewall Jackson came to the door of his tent and stood, looking out. All Rude's Hill throbbed to "Dixie." On went the programme. "Marco Bozzaris" was well spoken. A blacksmith and a mule driver wrestled for a prize. "Marmion Quitting the Douglas's Hall" was followed by "Lula, Lula, Lula is Gone," and "Lula" by "Lorena," and "Lorena" by a fencing match. The Thespians played capitally an act from "The Rivals," and a man who had seen Macready gave Hamlet's Soliloquy. Then they sang a song lately written by James Randall and already very popular,-- "I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife and drum--" An orderly from headquarters found Richard Cleave. "General Jackson wishes to see you, sir." The general's tent was not large. There were a table and two stools, on one of which sat Jackson in his characteristic position, large feet accurately paralleled. On the table, beside the candle, lay three books--the Bible, a dictionary, and "Napoleon's Maxims." Jackson was writing, his hand travelling slowly across a sheet of dim blue, lined, official paper. The door flap of the tent was fastened back. Cleave, standing in the opening, saluted. "Take a seat, sir," said the general, and went on to the end of his page. Having here signed his name, he dropped the quill and slightly turned so as to face the waiting officer. From under his high bronzed forehead his blue eyes looked quietly upon Cleave. The younger man returned the gaze as quietly. This was the first time he had been thus summoned since that unlucky winter evening at Bloomery Gap. He remembered that evening, and he did not suppose that his general had forgotten it. He did not suppose that Jackson forgot anything. But apparently it was no longer to be counted against him. Jackson's face wore the quiet, friendly, somewhat sweet expression usual to it when all was calm within. As for Cleave himself, his nature owned a certain primal flow and bigness. There were few fixed and rigid barriers. Injured pride and resentment did not lift themselves into reefs against which the mind must break in torment. Rather, his being swept fluid, making no great account of obstacles, accepting all turns of affairs, drawing them into its main current, and moving onward toward some goal, hardly self-conjectured, but simple, humane, and universal. The anger he might have felt at Bloomery Gap had long passed away. He sat now attentive, collected, broad-browed, and quiet. "Major Cleave," said Jackson, "you will take an orderly with you and ride across the mountains. General Ewell is at Gordonsville with a somewhat larger force than my own. You will take this letter to him," he folded it as he spoke, "and you will talk to him as one intelligent man to another." "Do you mean, sir, that I am to answer his questions?" "Yes, sir. To the best of your ability. There is impending a junction between General Ewell and myself. He wishes to know many things, and seems to think it natural that I should tell him them. I am not a great letter writer. You will give him all the information that is common to the army." Cleave smiled. "That, sir, is not a great deal." "Perhaps it is not, sir. You are at liberty to give to General Ewell your own observations and expectations. You will, however, represent them as your own." "May I ask, sir, when this junction is to occur?" "I have not decided, sir." "Does General Ewell know when it will occur?" "Not precisely. He will be told in good time."