t 468 .9 .W33 CopV ^ r" 9 '-' The Army Bummer AND Good Night, By Captain JOSEPH G. WATERS. KANSAS COMMANDERY OF THE Military Order of the Loyal LepiixHEOiiited States. MAY, 1897. The Army Bummer AND Good Night, By Captain JOSEPH G. — i):- KANSAS COMMANDERY OF THE Military Order of the Loyal LegionrJnited States. MAY, 1897. ^"': M ^■^ APR 1 ^916 The Army Bummer. :o:- The Bummer bore upon his persou the proprietary trade mark of the Great United States. He was a creation of the American Eagle, and he V)ecame a necessitous necessity as soon as his creator was advised of his l)oundIess per capita of utility and gall. He never felt the gyves of discipline. If rank compelled a salute, a viscious mental exclamation, was Ivmph for such lupus. No crowned head would have tolerated him for a moment. There was about him the potency ari'crYl^'fcTfnjtlwn to knock the un- derpining from a throne, or jump:^he claim and sequester the crovvn jewels of any satrap who occu])ied that kind of an uphol- stered seat. The interest on his capitalized assurance would have been ample to have paid the entire principal of the national delit. He was a larger book of strategy than De Jomini ever wrote, and beyond doubt, he was the only personage, of whom William Te- cumseh ever had cause to be envious or afraid. The objective point became his while the army was busy in preparation for its capture; and it laggardly responded to his request to hurry up and help him hold it. Had he been a Crusader, the Holy City would have been his meat; and his descendents today would have borne the hen lyant or the razor back rampant on their ennobled escutcheons. If the genus homo of whom I am permitted to speak, could have been projected into the Russian campaign, as Mark Twain did the Yank into the Court and times of King Arthur, instead of Death on horseback pursuing the French army a foot back to France, the return from that God forsaken country would have been a summer picnic; and, far into the next autumn, the road from the Kremlin to Champs Elysee, would have been littered with chicken feathers and ham rinds. When the government, and the sreat liberty lovinof people behind it, were in agony over the outcome, and while the national gloom was as though the empty bottles of the night had been up- turned and emptied into Chaus, he heard the roosters crow for morning and gave the North backbone and faith; when they wait- ed in dumb des[)ondency for the dread 8[)hinx to answer, whether the government of the people, by the people and for the people, should be wiped from the face of the earth, as some day a Kansas cyclone will serve the sixteen story buildings of Chicago, he punctured the Confederacy and knew it to be an apple of the Dead Sea. He wired Sherman to come and not b(> afraid as there was nothing but a handful of Georgia Malish of odd sizes and last year's vintage and thrf^e proclamations of Bragg intervening be- tween him and the sea. He was a wise man in his day and Army Corps. He always hunted up a Baptist settlement for a convenient place to ford a river. He was then sure of a ripple and rock bottom. He was all things to all women. Notvvithstanding he had a family at home, he wooed the southern maiden while a number of loving let- ters from his wife remained secure in his pocket. He told her the story old as time and sweet as mortalit\-; one, which pulses with the same rythm and warmth beneath the midnight sun and Labrador sky as it does ami 1 all the opulence of noon's eternal flowers. He asseverated to her, that it was under a dire compulsion he dared not name, that he took service in the Union army; that scorning proffers of hisfh command in both the army and navy, he took the humblest position he could find; that althouo^h Grant was his un- cle he had not the heart to sanction the General's course; he prophesied a victory to the southern cause and hinted at reclama- tion from the northern purse for all the south had suffered or borne or lost; he declared that upon the conclusion of the vulgar and unconstitutional rapine and pillage of the noil-thern horde, he intended to return and invest his entire private fortune in that very vicinity. And then, with his arms enianglino- her, "he poured into the porches" of her ears the "leprous distillment" beside which, Claude Melnotte's harangue to the tr Ustinov Pauline, was as con- tractor's sow belly to Hesperian fruit. And all the while, his eyes wandered the landscape ©""er, alert to discover the lair of the heirlooms and the abode of the l)uttermilk and sausage. He was a statistician who used up the resources of the Coun- try in compiling the returns. As a financier, he inflated the volume of C'onfederate currency by an issue, which, for letter press, was complimentary to the Philadelphia concern that got it up, and much of which, our British brethren hold and hope some day for the United States to assume and pay. As the deeps of atmosphere envelope the earth and protect it from stellar shot and hot, whizzing, rotten, planetary camp ket- tles, so harm comes not to any mortal, as the tenuous nebula around the comet's head and hundred miles of tail, so, he sur- rounded the army and pervaded the country; a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of tire by night, while the great sinuous, crawl- ing Army bisected the Confederacy with a frolic and tore it in two with a joke. It was the first great march the Salvation Army ever made. The bummer's conscience was but an annex to his appetite. He was the very inspiration and genius of hunger. Reason, rep- utation and risk were hand maidens that waited on stomach. Anotomicalh', he was an Octopus of Abdomen, whose tentacles reached every hen roost and pig sty. His teeth were sand paper- ed and edged for nubbins, pain killer, goose liver, red hair oil and corn pone. Par excellence, the American Knight; whose lance was al- ways in poise for the unwary hog, and who victoriously wrestled the ti'ophies, in his jousl and tourney with unsophisticated mut- ton. He may have been unshaven, hungry and dirty, but when it comes to loyalty to the cause he was a vestal virgin, that had no use for a seive; and when it come to disguising his purpose, by the use of chin music, he was a Socrates. Alas, and ah me ! We gaze backward to at last linger on a dream. We invoke the past, and only a specter stalks across the memory tonight ! The unreal flesh has taken on the invisible liv- ery that mantles a soul in Paradise ! He rides his flea-bitten mule no more! His canteen lies corroded and empty! His gastric juice iaas taken vacation and he assimilates his victuals no longer! The ofreat nerve that touched the brain of an army's intellio^ence and activity has departed! Where he may he, I cannot tell! Full well 1 know, his valor threads the shinino^ meshes of the flag. There is an echo of him in the mighty woods as the birds sing songs of peace in the depths! Wherever the glow touches the hill tops it tinges his name! There is a laughter of streams that ripple to his memory and a psalm of oceans that anthems his praise! There was Victo- ry and Home again, instead of petty provinces, incongruous, di- vergent and soon to be alien! From ocean to its sister sea, is one land and one flag, while, under the Divine benignities, he fought foi" and so well heli)ed to accomplish! Where he may be, 1 cannot tell. If, still, he dance the crazy maze called life, I say, God bless him! And, if he is a foot pe- destrian on the streets of the New Jerusalem, he has, long ere this, ascertained how well the golden cobble stones are anchored down and how Arm the matchless gems are set and grounded in its alabaster walls! W^ith him has vanished the marching men, the horse, the rider, the Dahlgreen, "the thunder oi the Captains and the shout- ing", the lustrous and shinini>- banners of victory, "the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war" — all, are gone forever! -:o:- GOOD NIGHT. -:o:- The feast has ended and its broken fragments strew the board. Sweet as these gathered flowers may be which some kind hand has culled, they at last begin to wither and tnrn away in languor from their own perfume. For, gray beards all, the hour grows late! During the flight of these swift moments, we have heard an in- distinct echo of bugles; and where it melts into silence, our ears are too dull and heavy to discern. There has come to us the patter of far away drums across the distance of years and many leagues of time. Through a sunburst of the past, ones eyes have cau2:ht the glitter of banners, upheld in defeat and advanced high against the sky in the supreme agony of victory. There have marched by us regiments whose faint footfalls we could not hear; gallop- ing artillery, that gave no sound of hoof or wheel; horses, sabres and men who sat their saddles well, who answered no salute. We have looked and listened as dreamers possessed by dream in the dead watch and silence of a mid-summer's night. From the other shore of an unknown and mysterious river, and across its tide, there has come a murmur of men that the witchery of this occasion has mellowed into the low chant of an anthem and the swetness of a benediction. We have given them faint replies of undying rcganl and one answering hail has^ been to comrades. May all gracious and all hallowed night, l>ear to them the tender and loving words spoken in this cheery place by all this goodly company of souls. We have rightfully spoken of the cause for which we fought, regardfnlly of each other, and devout- ly of the great increasing host, whose lances rust, whose hearts arc dust, whose souls are with the lord, we trust! We have given the flao' the obeisance the smitten heart yields his lady love. We have hid the passing hour with the sweetness of repeated song. And now, aweary with the pleasure of this banquet room, the desire comes for rest and sleep that only good night brings. We have felt the conjury by which dead memories comeback to life, we have divined the sorcery of comradeship, and the spell of benignant hours is upon us. The longest rivers reach the sea, and toast and speech and song end with farewell. It has been cast upon me to bo the grim wizard, whose wand shall ruth- lessly break this enchantment and by a low and tremouslv spoken good night, turn this gay scene into a memory that begins to fade, eveu while the painter sits at his easel and brushes its splen- dor in. There are a few words in our speech that singly till the page and touch the tongue with continued silence. Friends, home, family and ofovernment, are more compre- hensive than a lexicon and are bounded by no definition. Among old comrades, on the eve of seperation, each with the blessing of all, some to wander beyond the touch of hand or meet of eye, there drifts to human lip, no sadder, sweeter word, which I am forced to say, — Good Night! -:o:- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 700 695 9