LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 ©1^. inpiriig]^ Ifn, 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
FRO Mi 
 
 TAPS TIIiIi REVEME. 
 
 BY GEORGE A. WALLACE. 
 
 7 votidcr lf\ irjifii ii'cniiKj rail a 
 
 Tlir 1iiUci'i< fruiii l/ir Mrccl. 
 And ill tlw lirrli(/]ifs nidilij ylnn'. 
 
 TliP piiri' ill Jiearf i<}iall meet. 
 If tliei/, lehu .s/V /■(/ stileiicr tlieir. 
 
 Or heuijli or Je><t (d rejjdiiee. 
 Win iiilx>> (III dill fiiiiiiJiar face, 
 
 And hreidlie a prni/er far me: 
 
 -^'^^ — X — •-Jtf — e=<r'» 
 
 BOWLING GREEN, KY.: 
 Fkoai thic Prf.ss of thk Pakk Citv Daily Ti.\ii-:s. 
 
 K 
 

 Ainoni^' tlie women of the world is one wlio 
 hears my name. I have, under the laws of my 
 state and country, stolen the title that tlistin- 
 guished her before the theft was committed. 
 
 To Lucy, who lo\ed me in prosperity and 
 stood by me in adversity, in whose arms Leona, 
 an artist's dream in flesh and blood, that God 
 loaned us for a little while, fought with death, 
 in whose love I live, and on whose faith I rest, 
 this book is dedicated. 
 L()^ls^■II.LI■:, Ivv., March, 1895. 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 GEO. A. WALLACE, 
 
 APRIL, 1895. 
 
9" 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Dedication 
 
 Preface 
 
 From Taps Till Reveille 8 
 
 Lenihan's Ride •. . . 14 
 
 I Stood Alone 18 
 
 Grandpa Barnes 22 
 
 Some Facts About Women 27 
 
 Bill ......./......• 35 
 
 The Massacre 38 
 
 The Grand Army of the Republic 40 
 
 Jess 42 
 
 Scold Her Every Day 45 
 
 Iron Bull, The Crow Chief 48 
 
 Smoothing The Wrinkles. Out 52 
 
 When The Daylight Conquers Night 54 
 
 Why One Drummer Fell 56 
 
 The Reunion 64 
 
 Salute Your Chief 67 
 
 The Poodle and the Noodle . . . 6g 
 
 Declaration of Principles ■ 71 
 
 The Modern Rule jy 
 
 The Mother's Answer 78 
 
 Martyrdom and Monuments • 7q 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Mamie 82 
 
 JosiE 84 
 
 Charley and Luella Make Up 87 
 
 Ethel and the Alligator 92 
 
 Before and After 94 
 
 Some Famous Woman Suffragists 97 
 
 Charley's Appeal 105 
 
 Some Christmas Thoughts About Giving 107 
 
 Robert and the Star 113 
 
 Gene 114 
 
 Some Famous Fat Women 116 
 
 How to Behave at a Hotel 118 
 
 I'm Coming, Never Fear 123 
 
 Growing Old .125 
 
 The Little Maiden's Prayer 128 
 
 Business Rules . 127 
 
 The Call 131 
 
 The Priest and The Mad Cap 133 
 
pef 
 
 
 uee. 
 
 When my first booklet, "Songs Of A Weary Pilgrim," was 
 given to the public, to which I now submit " From Taps Till 
 Reveille," I did not expect it would receive so cordial a recep- 
 tion. As a wise father knows the imperfections of his children, 
 and knows that others know them, I recognize the defects 
 of my mental offspring, and know that others see them. I 
 fully appreciate the generous criticisms of those who find 
 some merit in what I have written. Competent critics ha\'c 
 passed judgment; and their endorsements are very dear to 
 me. Many intelligent people, with neither time nor inclina- 
 tion for continuous and varied reading, have derix'ed pleas- 
 ure from my writings. We belong to different intellect- 
 ual worlds but I can say, without egotism, that I am like 
 Richter in one respect, I love God and little children. I 
 cherish, most of all, the ap[)roval of the embryonic men and 
 women who read and enjoyed and told me so. The unbought 
 love of a little child outweighs the friendship of a king; and 
 praise from its lips is sweeter than the gratulations of a prince. 
 I move in the ranks of those who bear the burdens and fight 
 the battles of the world — the common people, and do not pos- 
 
FR(.L^[ TAPS TILL liF^VKlLLE. 
 
 sess the culture of a finished scholar. The critics will 
 doubtless remember that I voice the sentiments of a common 
 man, and that I am not an aspirant for literar}- fame. It may 
 be that some, who will pass by the immortal lines of master- 
 thinkers and sentence-builders, will read m}' fleeting \'erses 
 and sketches and be happier and better for doing so. If what 
 I write helps and pleases those who read I shall be satisfied. 
 
 \\ hile artificial distinctions in societ}' are sometimes neces- 
 sary, they are, almost without exception, the results of pride 
 and selfishness. There are wrongs to right; there are barriers 
 to break down; there are inequalities to remo\'c; there are 
 factions to unite; there are prejudices to overcome. 
 
 Men and women are made for loxe and service, and are 
 mutualh' dependent. They belong, not only to home circles, 
 but to the masses, not onh' to the State, but to the world, and 
 an}' m^n who can add to the sum of human happiness is bound 
 to contribute. In m}' limited sphere I have labored with tongue 
 and pen to unify people alienated b}' prejudice or on account 
 of sex. I ha\'e fought, in public and in pri\-ate, against 
 those whose assumptions of superiority are offensive, whose 
 arbitrary exercise of power and exclusixcness embitter the 
 lives of others and arouse popular discontent. 
 
 Kindred spirits may find something in " From Taps Till 
 Reveille" to cheer them in their efforts to bring light to those 
 who sit in darkness and jo}- to those whose cups of sorrow are 
 overflowing. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVKLLLE. 
 
 The war is over and we have an indissoluble union which 
 thoughtful men pronounce the crowning miracle of modern 
 times. Men who are loyal, and women who are patriotic,''should 
 forget as rapidly as possible the sectional differences that pre- 
 cipitated the war between the States, and unite their prayers, 
 their influence, and their efforts, against the forces that 
 threaten our national life. 
 
 The title of this book is militar^^ I wore the blue and 
 have no apologies to olTer for so doing, but recognize the 
 sterling qualities of my kinsman who wore the gray. I would 
 not, if I could, say an\'thing to array the men who marched to 
 the music of the Union against those who threw contesting 
 battle lines before their ad\'ancing columns. Vital questions 
 were submitted to the people and ciecided by the arbitrament 
 of war. The decision is generally accepted as final and satis- 
 factory. The rightness or wrongness of the men who fought 
 for or against the Union is not discussed in these pages. We, 
 in whose favor the decision was made, have no doubt about 
 the justness of our cause, but we are not unmindful that those 
 who opposed us, whether they were right or wrong, were brave 
 and generous, conscientious and self-sacrificing. We, while 
 holding inviolate the principles for which we fought, are dis- 
 posed to forget the past with its chambers of horrors, full of 
 tears, and sighs, and dead men's bones,''and to unite with them 
 in perpetuating the republic and defending it against internal 
 anci external foes; to stand on the xantage ground of the 
 
FiiOM TAJ'S TILL UKV l-'.l LI.K. 
 
 present and look forward, \\here lo\'e sii^nals, and not back- 
 ward, where hate beckons. 
 
 Durini;' the winter of 1867, in the depths of the mountains, 
 beyond the boundaries of civilization, a detail from my regi- 
 ment and some teamsters and prospectors gathered around 
 the same camp fires. Some of the soldiers had served in 
 the regular army from the beginning of the cix'il war until its 
 close, and still wore its uniform. Some of the citizens had 
 fought with the Confederate army from the bombardment of 
 Fort Sumpter until its standards were lowered at Appomattox. 
 We had no quarrels, no recriminations, no misunderstandings; 
 we were welded together b\' common dangers and common 
 sufferings ; were surrounded b\' h-nx-e}^ed enemies and 
 exposed to the pitiless fury of chilling winds and blinding 
 storms, and our safety and comfort depended upon unity of 
 thought, purpose, and action. Like causes demand that a 
 similar sentiment pre\'ail, and from the iVtlantic to the Pacific, 
 and from the Lakes to the Gulf. As fellow citizens we haxe 
 mutual interests and mutual dangers, and should be unitetl 
 against our mutual foes. 
 
 It is impossible for all nTcn to think antl belie\'e alike, and, 
 recognizing this fact, we should grant to others the rights that 
 we so strcnuoush' insist upon h:)r ourselves. The success of 
 one is the success of alL The failure of one is the failure of 
 all. We are to determine whether a "government of the peo- 
 ple, by the people, and for the people," is possible. The 
 
FROM TAPS TTLL REVEILLE. 
 
 rcsi)on.sibility is on us and \ve cannot shift it. The present, 
 and not the past, requires our best thoui^hts, and our actions 
 now will determine the future of the Nation and of the indi- 
 viduals composing it. 
 
 Those who reap in peace where others sowed in war should 
 not forget the men whose fame has girdled the globe — the 
 grizzled veterans, who are patiently waiting for taps to sound. 
 Their ranks are thinning fast and in a little while the earth, 
 like a gentle mother, will carry in her bosom the last of the 
 \'olunteers. In the soil their blood enriclies will lie side by 
 side the sons of Puritans and cavaliers until reveille is sounded 
 from heavenly hills and they pass out of sleep into life eternal, 
 
 "Where the war drum tlirobs no longer, 
 And the battle flaes are turled." 
 
 t 
 
FT? 0.1/- TAPS TTLL REVEILLE. 
 
 prom fpaps fpill I^G\)eill( 
 
 We are resting now; the fight is over and soldiers gather 
 around the camp fires and discuss the da}' that has been o\'er- 
 full of dangers and hartlships. Not all who answered the call 
 to arms in the earl}- morning are in the groups that wait for 
 taps to sound. Some, who rode with us into the ranks of the 
 enemy, lie scalped and mangled in the rax'ines and on the 
 mountain side, where the}' went down before the merciless 
 Sioux. The ca}'otes' sharp bark and the wolves' hoarse howl 
 beget horror and chill the blood of men who fronted death 
 with smiling faces a few hours before. We know, that before 
 we can give them decent burial, the mutilated bodies of our 
 dead comrades will be torn into fragments b}' ravenous beasts 
 that are, even now, fighting o\'er them. To-morrow will dawn 
 but not for them. They ha\'e seen their last sunrise and 
 heard their last roll-call on earth. We will watch a new day 
 come from the East and think of their scattered bones that its 
 sun will warm and its night will chill. Men who face danger 
 without displa}dng an}' signs of fear stand aghast when the 
 skeletons of their loved and honored dead pass before them. 
 Though night has fallen, and the}' are far awa}', we can see 
 them as distinctl}' as if the sun were shining and we were 
 
FKOM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 standing where they fell: — Imagination is not fettered by night. 
 * * * -* * * -* 
 
 Taps, the drum-throbs, die away. Fires are extinguished, 
 lights are out, voices are hushed. Men who march must 
 rest, and men who fight must sleep. The awful stillness is 
 oppressive and almost unbroken. As we lie in silence we hear 
 nothing but the rhythmic footfalls of the wild beasts that prowl 
 around the camp and call to each other; the measured tread 
 of the sleepless guards as they pace to and fro, and the sent- 
 ries calling the hours. 
 
 The old campaigners, who have fought under many flags, 
 in many countries, are asleep on their arms; but sleep comes 
 not to a young soldier. In the early watches of the night he 
 lies like one in a trance. I-ong after the sentinels have called 
 the midnight hour lie is awake and thinking over the extents of 
 the day. He, a slender, brown-haired boy of sixteen, enlisted 
 more than a }'ear before, has passed through his first baptism 
 of fire. The excitement of the conflict no longer sustains, and 
 conscience troubles and fears haunt him. We had run into 
 an ambuscade and had fought with the valor of desperation 
 against fearful odds. In the running fight that followed his 
 horse stopped suddenly and he found himself face to face 
 with a mounted vvarrior who chanted his war song as he placed 
 an arrow against his bow string, and while he was bringing it to 
 a level with his breast, boy as he was, he saw the importance of 
 immediate action, and lowerino" his rifle fired before the arrow 
 
10 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 sped. The shot went home and the warrior fell from his pony. 
 He was glad that he had escaped with his life and the duel 
 was o\'er, but somehow the dead man drove sleep awa\' and 
 brought fears to torment him. Glittering, bead-like eyes 
 peered at him out of the darkness, and a cruel, malignant face 
 touched his own as he lay under his blankets and heard, over 
 and over again, the song tJiat leaped from the throat of the 
 falling warrior, that would never sing again. His thoughts 
 turned eastward, and memory reproduced an old farm house 
 in which he was born and where he lived in peace with those 
 who loved him. He thought, too, of the hours that he had 
 spent by his mother's knee reading in her big lettered Bible. 
 He recalled some passages that troubled him. " Thou shalt 
 not kill," the book said, and a man lay dead on the mountain 
 side slain by his own hand. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood 
 by man shall his blood be shed," it declared, it seemed to him, 
 in tones of thtmder. Was he a murderer? Would- savage men 
 avenge? He was dazed and could not answer. One thing he 
 knew the blood of a man was on him and he could not shake 
 it off. His hands were red with blood and he could hear it 
 drip, drip, drip, from his finger tips. How could he, if the 
 avenger should come and take life for life, stand in judgment 
 before one who died for his enemies? Would the avenger 
 come, and when? Would he come that night? He thought 
 of a gray-haired sire and a sweet-faced mother counting the 
 slowly passing days and waiting for a runaway's return. Would 
 
FROM TAPS TILL IlEVEILLE. 
 
 he ever return? Would he ever see them again, and place 
 his bloody hands on their snowy heads? He thought, too, of 
 the warrior lying on the mountain side, where he fell, battling 
 against the enemies of his race, with his face turned upward so 
 that God and the avenger of blood could see it, and of those 
 who would watch and wait in vain for his home coming. 
 
 If he could ha\'e returned life, as he had taken it, he would 
 have breathed it into the prostrate form of his dead foeman 
 and sent him unharmed to the squaw that loved him. in her 
 savage way, and the little pappooses that played about his 
 wigwam. He would have gladdened the heart of an old chief, 
 who rode no more with his tribe, and an old woman whose 
 race was almost run, by bringing to life the stalwart son in 
 whom their loves and hopes centered. He thought — but sleep 
 came at last, and after sleep came reveille. In the morning 
 he was free from fear and his conscience was at rest. While 
 he slept, God wrought. Although he felt that self-preserva- 
 tion was the first law of nature, and that he was guiltless, he 
 prayed that war might pass away and peace reign undisturbed 
 
 forever. 
 
 ******* 
 
 The few \'eterans of the civil war that remain have made 
 their last march and fought their last battle. Their swords 
 are sheathed, their flags are furled, their arms are stacked. 
 They are growing old and are waiting for taps to sound, know- 
 ing that after taps comes sleep, and after sleep re\'eille. They 
 
12 FliOM TAPS I'ILL JiEVEILLE. 
 
 believe in immortalit}', that after the night of death comes the 
 morning of resurrection. As they wait, they talk about their 
 marches and counter-marches, their victories and defeats, of 
 the men who marched, and bivouacked, and fought with them, 
 and their faded e}'es brighten as they recall the historic fields 
 their heroism made immortal. In softer tones they speak of 
 those who fell out of ranks — whose generous deeds are unfor- 
 gotten and whose bones hallow the soil that hides them from 
 human sisrht. 
 
 Taps, an invisible drum, is throbbing now. Old men who 
 answered "here," when they heard the call for volunteers in 
 sixty-one hear and understand. Lights are out, fires are 
 extinguished, voices are hushed. The heroes of the republic 
 are entering into their last sleep. The}' are not sinless, these 
 veterans of Manassas, and Shiloh, and Cold Harbor. They 
 are few and feeble, but faith abides and courage remains, and 
 they are not afraid. The voice of duty is the voice of God. 
 When it called they answered, and He will remember. They 
 felt the uplifting power of great principles and offered them- 
 selves as sacrifices on the altars of their country. They are 
 not without regret, for " war is barbarism and you can't refine 
 it," said one who led his conquering army from Atlanta to the 
 sea, and their lives on tented fields and battle plains were not 
 stainless, but they fought, and suffered, and left the conse- 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 13 
 
 quences with God — the only being to whom they bend the 
 "supple hinges of the knee." They are worn, and withered, 
 and bent, and some are battle scarred. Whether they fought 
 with Grant or Lee, with Sheridan or Forrest, with Farragut or 
 Semmes, they are proud of the past made glorious by their 
 courage and constancy. They settled questions that disturbed 
 a Nation's peace and threatened a Nation's life. Some were 
 wrong, no doubt, but they were brave. The laurel and the 
 bay are for the brows of men who place their lives in peril for 
 a principle, and suffer for conscience sake. Oncoming genera- 
 tions will make due allowance for biased judgments and sec- 
 tional prejudices, and crown all who dared and suffered, 
 whether they won or lost. 
 
 They are strangely uniformed, who lie in the darkness wait- 
 ing for sleep to come. Some are in citizens' clothes, some 
 wear blue blouses from Gettysburg, some wear grey coats 
 from Appomattox, and some (be it said to the everlasting 
 shame of an ungrateful people), are clothed in rags. 
 
 Sleep conquers the last of the volunteers. The drama is 
 finished and the curtain falls. It will rise again when God's 
 buglers sound reveille and the mighty host rises, rank on rank, 
 to salute the Prince of Peace, and there breaks over earth, and 
 sea, and sky, the eternal morning. 
 
14 FROM TAJ'S TILL RLVKILLE 
 
 benit^an's I^ide. 
 
 Lenihan, a comrade of mine in the Twenty-seventh United 
 States Infantry and the Indian war of '66 and '67, in the Big 
 Horn country, was a handsome young fellow with many graces 
 of mind and body, although he came from the slums of New 
 York. He was intelligent but illiterate. I have sometimes 
 thought that the ride he made from the hay fields to Fort C. F. 
 Smith, which was a race for life from the starting point until 
 he approached the fort, was one of the most daring ever made 
 voluntarily, and worthy of honorable mention. The soldiers 
 and teamsters in the hay field made a gallant fight against 
 overwhelming odds and would have been massacred if rein- 
 forcements, brought through Lenihan's ride, had not reached 
 them before night fully fell. 
 
 By the Big Horn's sullen flow. 
 Where the Indians hunt and row, 
 
 Soldiers guard the gathered hay; 
 Quickly, as the lightnings flash, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 15 
 
 At the guards red warriors dash, 
 Hurling death, one autumn day. 
 
 Ride, Lenihan, ridel The Sioux's war song. 
 From savage throats swells fierce and strong, 
 
 As they ride on unmoved by fear, 
 While flows the hated white man's blood, 
 And falls the sunset's golden flood. 
 
 They chant their death song loud and clear. 
 
 Ride, Lenihan, ride! Brave men at duty's posts, 
 Fight face to face with bead-eyed hosts, 
 
 That swiftly charge and quickly disappear, 
 Then come again with harsh, resounding cry. 
 That chills hot blood, while fallen watchers die, 
 
 And brings to swarthy cheeks the hues of fear. 
 
 Ride, Lenihan, ride I The ranks are thinning fast. 
 And some sleep on though calls the bugle blast. 
 
 And night and death are drawing nigh; 
 On snowy peaks the yellow sun hangs low. 
 While shadows gather on the plains below. 
 
 Where wandering night winds soon will sigh. 
 
 Ride, Lenihan, ridel If falls a starless night. 
 Red, sinewy forms, in its uncertain light. 
 Will glide like serpents o'er the 1)roken wall, 
 
16 FBOM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 That shelters men from love and home away, 
 For whom will never break an earthly day, 
 Above the brooding mountains bald and tall. 
 
 An Irish boy uncrowned by wealth or fame, 
 Sat like a god the steed with eyes aflame, 
 
 That bore him safely on a winding way. 
 With sure, untiring feet and lightning speed, 
 As if he knew the soldiers' pressing need. 
 
 Who held, unhelped, the swarming Sioux at bay. 
 
 From river's brink and yawning, dark ravine, 
 Moved chanting on, with hideous garb and mien, 
 
 The matchless riders of a fearless race, 
 To intersect where woodland yields to plain, 
 They urge their steeds with stinging spur and rein 
 
 While passion plows each cruel, crafty face. 
 
 To the same place, where woodland yields to plain. 
 He gallops on and looks not back again. 
 
 Beyond that point the old fort lifts its walls. 
 Above the clang of hoofs on earth and rock. 
 And cries of men, who join in battle shock. 
 
 He hears his comrades ringing calls. 
 
 Unharmed he rides, though arrows cleave the air 
 That fans his cheek and rifts his flowing hair. 
 And leaves behind the vengeful sons of hate; 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 17 
 
 Where dark walls frown he sees a flag afloat, 
 
 And hears through guarded gate a bugle note, 
 
 Yet faster rides lest he should be too late. 
 
 On snowy peaks the yellow sun hung low, 
 While shadows gathered on the plain below. 
 
 On river's breast and rock-strewn mountain side, 
 When troopers came, where men crouched low. 
 To drive away their fast triumijhing foe, 
 
 And backward turn the battle's movinsr tide. 
 
 In border legends of the brave, 
 Live the boy who rode to save. 
 
 On that fateful autumn day; 
 Live the messenger that brought 
 Help to hopeless men who fought, 
 
 While relief was far away. 
 
IS FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 1 Stood oAlon^. 
 
 We stood alone and watched the gleaming sun 
 
 Sink in its fleecy bed of blue and gold, 
 And felt a blended life had just begun, 
 
 Whose wealth of joy could not be told. 
 About my yielding neck were fast entwined 
 
 Her shapely arms, as white as mountain snow, 
 And to my breast, where purest love was shrined, 
 
 I pressed her golden head, long, long ago. 
 
 We stood alone till darkness veiled the land, 
 
 And lowering clouds obscured the leaden sky, 
 But in the gloom she pressed my brawny hand, 
 
 As if to say, "Why, sweetheart, you are nigh, 
 On you, so true and strong, I'll ever call, 
 
 When danger looms and skies are overcast; 
 We're partners now, and you, so brave and tall. 
 
 Will shelter me till dangers all are past." 
 
 We stood alone outside the door ajar. 
 One sultry, starlit night in leafy June, 
 
 And talked of surging hosts on fields afar. 
 Where men must struggle hard and soon. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 19 
 
 I, too, had heard the trumpet's angry cry, 
 Had caught the rhythmic sound of marching feet, 
 
 And must leave her, with courage bounding high. 
 To fight on fields where hostile armies meet. 
 
 We stood alone until the trumpet's peal, 
 
 Borne clear and strong upon the midnight air, 
 Called me to go, come woe or weal, 
 
 From all that made my young life fair. 
 She pressed her ripe, red lips to mine, 
 
 Held my bronzed cheeks in her white hands. 
 Then bade me go join the waiting line 
 
 And march to war with freedom's moving bands. 
 
 1 lay alone on many a crimsoned held. 
 
 Whose furrows, overfull of human blood. 
 Bespoke the stubborn foes that would not yield. 
 
 Until their blood run like a raging flood. 
 Full long I lay among the gallant dead. 
 
 And heard the wailing cries of stricken men. 
 Who made the pitying earth their dying bed. 
 
 Afar from homes they would not see again. 
 
 I lay alone on blood red fields afar 
 
 From her whose love enriched my lonely life, 
 Who stood without our cottage door ajar 
 
 And bade me go into the deadly strife. 
 
20 FROM 7M/'.S TILL liEVEILLK. 
 
 I liravely fought for liome aiul iiati\"e laml, 
 Till victory came and 1:)attle flags were furled. 
 
 Till God held back war's vengeful hand 
 And sent His peace into a battling world. 
 
 I stood alone outside the door ajar, 
 
 One sultry, starlit night in leafy June, 
 And called to her: Come, see my battle scar; 
 
 Come sing with me some old war tune. 
 You heard, with me, the trumpet's angry cry. 
 
 And caught the rhythmic sound of marching feet, 
 You sent me forth, with courage bounding high. 
 
 To fight on fields where hostile armies meet. 
 
 I stood alone while light that softly strayed 
 
 Above her door fought shadows in the hall, 
 I gently called, lest she should be afraid. 
 
 And smiling, waited for her answering call. 
 It never came- -enwrapped in robes of snow. 
 
 She, whom I called, lay in untroubled sleep, 
 How could she hear my pleading call so low. 
 
 Or see me bend my aching head and weep? 
 
 I stood alone within the little room, 
 Her dear, dead hands had fashioned into life, 
 
 With her who fought amidst the gathering gloom. 
 With none to Irelp in tlae unequal strife. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL LEVEILLE. 
 
 21 
 
 Whose pilgriin feet had touched a peaceful land, 
 And trod its sunny paths with faultless grace, 
 
 Somehow, I felt, she blessed the mangled hand 
 That lingered on her pallid, upturned face. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL liKVElLLK. 
 
 Qrandpa Ie)arr\es. 
 
 Grandpa Barnes sat under a spreading maple one summer 
 afternoon with half shut eyes and compressed lips, scarcely 
 conscious of his surroundings. He was living in the past, and 
 memory was reproducing the sights and scenes of its hallowed 
 years. He had been a man of commanding presence in his 
 prime, and in his decline looked like a hercules in ruins. His 
 massive brow was crowned with snow}^ hair that was once, 
 like his shaggy eyebrows, as black as a raven's wing. 
 His broad back, that had borne burdens for more than 
 an ordinary life time, was bent by age, and his thin, white 
 hands were folded on his bosom. He was alone. Within 
 calling distance merry children were playing and older people 
 were attending to their affairs or exchanging the courtesies 
 and gossip of the day, but they were not in his thoughts. 
 He was an alien, in the world but not of it, a stranger in a 
 strange land. The hurrying throngs on the public streets 
 and the little crowds that gathered under the shadow of his 
 ancestral home were as strangers to him and spoke in unknown 
 tongues. The little children who sat around his table and 
 about his fireside lived in the future and knew nothing of the 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 precious world in which he dwelt — the shadowless past. Their 
 elders lived in the present anci their language was meaningless 
 to him. There was between him and them an impassable gulf 
 over which neither could come nor go. Lallie.the only woman 
 he had ever loved — Lai, he called her, in the dear old da}'s 
 when she answered back every time he called — was dead. For 
 a score of winters the snow had blanketed her narrow bed 
 under the pines, and for as. many summers the birds had sung 
 in the rose tree that shed its fragance and lifted its crimson 
 head above her grave. He thought of her and recalled, 
 one after another, the events that rounded out their lives, but 
 thought most tenderly of the time when he sat, with aching 
 heart and throbbing temples and tear-dimmed eyes beside the 
 bed from which she was borne away forever; of the words of 
 faith and tenderness that came from dying lips, and how, when 
 she could not speak, she fixed her gaze on him and placed her 
 hand on his bowed head as if to proclaim by look and touch a 
 love that was stronger than death. 
 
 Grandpa had been a soldier, and no braver man ever led a 
 charge or resisted an advance. On a hotly contested field he 
 had snatched a flag from a falling standard bearer, planted it 
 within the enemies' lines and rallied his comrades about it. 
 The broken sword and tarnished epaulettes in the big cedar 
 trunk, in his upper room, were fairly earned and worthily 
 worn. The men who touched elbows with him, when martial 
 hosts were gathering, and marched under the same battle 
 
24 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 flags had passed out of ranks, They had heard an invisible 
 captain calling their names, and like soldiers who were never 
 absent when the roll was called, had answered " Here." 
 
 He thought of them and, as he thought, the cords wo\en 
 on bivouacs and battle-fields bound them closer together. 
 The pioneer parson, who went to his appointment with a rifle 
 in one hand and a Bible in the other, had gone to join the 
 silent majority. The parson had heard the vows when he and 
 Lallie were married, and had kissed, once only, the lips that 
 ever afterward belonged to him. He and the parson were 
 good friends for more than half a century. They slept many 
 times under the same roof and worked " In His Name" before 
 the parson had heard a voice saying: "Your work is done; 
 come up higher!" 
 
 Yes, he thought of the parson, as he sat under the shelter- 
 ing maple, and of his first born, who went into battle and 
 ne\'er came out again, who found a grave with the unknown, 
 on the field where they bowed to death and will sleep in peace 
 until re\-eille is sounded by God's trmiipcters and the}' awake 
 in a warless world. He firmly believes that they, like enchant- 
 ed warriors, are bound for a season; but someday, escaping 
 from the power that holds them, will pass from dreamless sleep 
 into unfailing life and live forever. Grandpa was almost 
 asleep. He was wear}', oh, so wear\', and God sent sleep, 
 sometimes when the sun was shining, to gi\'e him strength for 
 the morrow. I Ic needed rest and comradeship and prayed 
 
FROM TAPS TILL RKVEIIAJ:. 
 
 that his pilgrimage, among those who did not live in his world, 
 might be short. 
 
 Somehow he felt that his force was spent and that he was in 
 the wa}^ of younger people who could not understand, and did 
 not love him, like Lallie and the parson did. For four score 
 years he had been a pilgrim with his face set toward Jerusa- 
 lem. As he moved from milestone to milestone his path was 
 often obscured, and sometimes hidden by lowering clouds, but 
 faith pierced them and he pressed on, guided by the beckon- 
 ing, undimmed lights of the eternal city which grew stronger 
 and brighter as he neared the mysterious line where the bur- 
 dens of life roll oft" and age takes on perpetual youth. 
 
 Grandpa was never hopeless or despairing. When he was a 
 little boy his mother gave him a Bible for a Christmas gift, 
 which he read \'er}' carefully. lie could not imderstand ever}'- 
 thing in it, but he thought a great deal about the promises, and 
 when he was a man, whether in the depths or on the heights, 
 he believed in and rested on them. 
 
 Grandpa fell asleep and his chin rested heavily upon his 
 breast, while his head rolled uneasily from side to side. A fair 
 young girl, forsaking her companions on the play ground, ran 
 to him and gently awakened him from his slumbers. She sat 
 lightly upon his trembling knees; and as she plowed his snowy 
 hair with her slender fingers, called him a laz\', old rascal 
 told him to wake up and be sociable while she was around, and 
 when he smiled she threw her arms around his \'ielding neck, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL ]IEVEILLK. 
 
 pillowed her sunny head upon his bosom, and kissing his 
 bloodless lips again and again, called him her dear, naught}' 
 old grandpa. Grandpa was transformed. His face was lumin- 
 ous, and his eyes borrowed a light that was not of earth. God's 
 promises are sure. He had lost much, but love was left and 
 love is heaven. Grandpa must wait awhile, but not long, for 
 the tide which carried him out is ebbing now. Some day 
 heaven will open to receive him, and one will come to guide 
 him through chilly waters across its shining portals, and in 
 that far-off land, untouched by sorrow and unclouded b}' care, 
 Lallie and the parson with his comrades who so promptly 
 answered "here" when their names were called, and the boy 
 who made his grave with the unknown, will bid him good morn- 
 ing. They willlook earthward and talk, I doubt not, as they 
 walk on streets of gold and beside crystal waters of the fair 
 young girl who brought the smiles, to grandpa's face one 
 summer afternoon. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 lOtriG Pacts eAboat 09om9n. 
 
 k 
 
 While I have always advocated the rights of women and 
 expect to do so until my lips are sealed by one who silences 
 whom He will, I regret to see a tendenc}' among some of our 
 modern advocates of equal rights to malign the Christian 
 church. With all its faults and its inability or unwillingness 
 to recognize and act upon the broad principles laid down b}' 
 its founder, it has been, in past ages, and is now, the friend of 
 women and has done more to exalt them than any other 
 organization on earth. While the church, theoretically and 
 practically, places women in a subordinate position and denies 
 them the equality to which they are clearly entitled, christ- 
 ian men are adopting more liberal views about women, and con- 
 tinually adding to their rights and enlarging their privileges, 
 and the time will come in which the church will be what 
 Jesus Christ intended it should be — a pure republic. 
 
 Sacred and profane history establish the fact that the man 
 of Galilee was the unwavering friend of women when he 
 was upon the earth, and tradition adds its testimonx' to the 
 same fact. 
 
FJiOM TAJ'S TILJ. IIEVKILU:. 
 
 I can understand how a sensualist, who regards sensual 
 pleasure as the chief end of life, and, regarding women as 
 pleasure producers craves unlimited power over them, can 
 speak contemptuously of Him and the system of religion He 
 came to establish; but I cannot understand how any enlight- 
 ened woman, who knows how many blessings He brought to 
 her sex, when it was degraded, can do so. The man who 
 talked with the woman at the well and wrote in the sand was 
 the avowed enemy of the social system which made the unre- 
 strained sensualist a possibility, and I am not su.rprised when 
 I hear him taking up the cry started in the streets of Jerusalem 
 nineteen centuries ago, "Away with Him," "Crucify Him," 
 "Crucify Him." 
 
 I gi\'e below some facts concerning the condition of women 
 in lands where the influence of Christianity was not felt that I 
 have gathered from various authentic sources: 
 
 Under the Roman law, which underlies and is embodied in 
 our modern laws, the women were always discriminated against, 
 not excepting the period when free marriages were allowed. 
 The father was the center of authority in the family. The 
 mother had no exclusix^e authority over her own children. 
 The husband had absolute control over his wife's property. 
 By marriage a woman lost her famil\' rights and could 
 bequeath nothing to her relatives. She was considered a sister 
 to her own children and the adopted daughter of her husband, 
 who had over her the power of life and death. Gains imputed 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLK. 
 
 to woman " levity of mind"; Cicero "infirmity of purpose," and 
 Seneca characterized her as "a foolish, wild creature, incapa- 
 ble of self control." 
 
 By the old Teutonic Tribes she was assigned a secondar\' 
 place. A husband could be an absolute tja^ant and could put 
 out the eyes and break the limbs of his wife. A wife was 
 purchased like any other piece of property by a husband who 
 had the unquestioned right to sell, punish or kill her. 
 
 Among the Greeks women were perpetual infants, and a 
 public woman, however talented, was considered immoral. 
 
 In Japan her condition was but little better, and in China 
 and India it was worse. Confucius pronounced a woman no 
 better than a slave, and hard to manage. He said: "Ten 
 daughters do not equal one son. When she is young she 
 must obey her father or elder brother, when married she must 
 obey the husband, when a widow she must obey her son; she 
 must not come to any conclusion of her own deliberation." 
 While in China you couldn't bu}' a bo}^ at any price you could 
 buy a girl for a dime. Girl babies were slaughtered by thous- 
 ands because they were not wanted and were regarded as 
 curses rather than blessings. 
 
 Buddha, who believed in the transmigration of souls held 
 out one hope to woman — one only -the possibilit}' that she 
 might sometime or other become a man. The Brahmin 
 would not permit a woman to read the Veda. She 'vas con- 
 sidered soulless without a man. She was commanded to obey 
 
:;() F !!(>,][ T.ll'S TILI. liKVEII.LK. 
 
 her husband without questioning, when he was living, and 
 to be burned on his funeral pyre when he was dead. 
 
 Mohammed treated women with contempt. When a son 
 was born to a Moslem his friends congratulated him, when a 
 daughter came they consoled him the best they could. The 
 Arab sayings, " trust neither a king, nor a horse, nor a woman," 
 and that "women are whips of the devil" are not meaningless. 
 In the beginning of the race the struggle for existence was 
 terrific, and physical strength was esteemed the most x'aluable 
 possession. Women being physically weak had to be pro- 
 tected and were classed with children and despised accord- 
 ingly. They were good for nothing in particular but to act as 
 servants, bear children and gratify the lusts of men. 
 
 The qualities which distinguish refined womanhood now 
 were then unrevealed, or if revealed were unappreciated by 
 men who acknowledged the reign of lust and felt the greed of 
 power, A man's wife was his slave without any rights that he 
 was bound to respect. Tennyson aptly expresses the relation 
 a wife of that day sustained to her husband after the marriage 
 was fully consummated: 
 
 "He shall hold thee when his passion shall have spent its novel force, 
 Somethins;- better than his do,t^, a little dearer than his horse." 
 
 China boasts of a civilization as old as the race. In that 
 country women were counted inferior to men in every way. 
 Confucius taught that the female sex was created for the con- 
 venience of the male. Polygamy was practiced. A man's 
 
FROM TAPS TILL liEVJ'ALLL:. 31 
 
 first wife was usually chosen from a family of equal rank. The 
 inferior wives were usually purchased. Marital unfaithfulness 
 was recognized as a sin only on the part of a wife, and a hus- 
 band had the right to kill a wife who committed adulter}-. 
 He, however treacherous he may have been, did not commit 
 adultery except with a married woman, when some other man's 
 possession was interfered with. 
 
 In Japan a man could ordinarily have but one wife but as 
 many concubines as he desired. Although Japanese women 
 were essentially low in the social scale they were more fortu- 
 nate than their sisters in many other barbarous or unchristian 
 nations. Women were regarded as inferior by Buddhists and 
 Brahmins alike, and lightly esteemed. Says the Hetopadera: 
 "A woman is chaste when there is neither place, time nor 
 person to afford her an opportunity to be immoral." 
 
 A poem widely quoted in Ceylon sa}'s: 
 
 I've seen the aduinbra tree in tiower, white plumage on the crow, 
 And tishes footsteps in the deep have traced through ebb and flow. 
 If man it is who thus asserts bis word you may believe, 
 But all that woman says distrust, she speaks but to deceive. 
 
 Mrs. Duffey says: In Oriental countries and among Mo- 
 hammedans particularly, women are recognized as hax'ing 
 been created but for one purpose— to gratify sensual passion, 
 and as presenting but one predominant attribute, that of sen- 
 suality. Among the wandering tribes of Central, Western and 
 Northern Asia a wife was generally regarded as a thinsj pur- 
 
FllOM TM'S TILL nKVFALLK. 
 
 chased and the property of her husband. Polygann' was not 
 exceptional. Submission on the part of the wife was s}'ni- 
 bolized in some way when the nuptials were celebrated. 
 
 One tribe required the bride to pull off her husband's 
 boots as a sign of servitude. In another tribe the girl's father 
 gave the husband a whip and directed him to use it freely on 
 his wife. In another nation the bride was brought to the pros- 
 pective husband with the words, "Here, wolf, take th\- lamb. ' 
 
 Some of the Bedouin women were very modest; in fact, with 
 them modesty was regarded as the finest grace of the sex It 
 is said that the bride was sometimes so coy that her husband 
 was obliged to tie her up and whip her before she would yield 
 to him. 
 
 Among the Arabs, who were semi-civilized, in a christian 
 sense, women were treated with greater courtesy, and more 
 fully protected than in the countries named. And among 
 the Hebrews they occupied a still more exalted position in 
 public esteem. 
 
 The church is not perfect and is not always abreast of the 
 age. It is conservative, rather than progressive, and is seri- 
 ously affected by its environments. Its members will be 
 dominated more or less by satanic influences until the\' pass 
 out of a mortal into an immortal life, and the church militant 
 becomes the church triumphant. They are sinners saved by 
 grace, who feel the limitations of the flesh and know b}' pain- 
 ful experiences that inherited tendencies and prejudices are 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 not easily overcome, even with divine help. She should be 
 judged fairly, and not unjustly assailed by reformers, whose 
 ideas of liberty and development are in advance of their gen- 
 eration. It is claimed, and in my opinion conclusively shown, 
 that the men and women who have wrested liberty of thought 
 and conscience from obstinate oppressors and political and 
 property rights from organized greed have been, in nearly 
 every instance, disciples of the great Commoner in whom 
 divinity and humanity so beautifully blended. If we, who 
 believe that liberty is necessary to development, and that it 
 belongs to e\'ery human being, will do our best to create pub- 
 lic sentiment and educate public opinion and not waste our 
 time denouncing those who differ with us, we will not labor 
 
 in vain. 
 
 " He, watching over Israel, slumbers not nor sleeps." 
 
 God, in Jesus Christ, will take care of his own. The poor arc 
 His. The oppressed are His. The helpless are His. In every 
 age since the shepherds saw His star in the East He has 
 wrought among men and brought liberty to those who were 
 in bondage. Shackles are breaking, fetters are falling, deliv- 
 erance is coming, and the day of woman's exaltation is at 
 hand. The signs of the times indicate that, within a quarter 
 of a century, American women will be enfranchised and a 
 citizen can sing, without blushing, as he cannot do now — 
 " \() slave l)eneath the starry flag," 
 In our western world will rise, on the ruins of the old, a 
 
34 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 new republic in which eligibility to citizenship will not be 
 determined by the sex of the applicant. There will be, I trust, 
 no violent revolution, no shock of contending" armies, no battle 
 plains drenched with blood. The change will be easy and 
 natural. The best of the old will be absorbed by the new and 
 live in it. Impelled by a sense of justice, even now awakened, 
 men will right the wrongs of a century by clothing women 
 with equality under the law and permitting them to become 
 citizens of a country they are taxed to support, and whose 
 laws they are compelled to obey. The forces at work are 
 irresistible and the result inevitable. 
 
 "There's a light about to gleam, 
 
 There's a fount about to stream, 
 
 There's a flower about to blow, 
 
 There's a warmth about to glow, 
 
 There's a midnight darkness changing into gray, 
 
 Men of thought, men of action, clear the way." 
 
 V| . 
 
FJIOM TAPS TILL liEVEILLK. 
 
 Bill. 
 
 Unfelt the heat, untossed the hay, 
 By sire and son one summer day. 
 
 My ^ray haired sire, with quickening- breath, 
 Talked of the holocaust of death 
 That menaced home and native land — 
 Of man's revolt and God's bared hand. 
 I heard the story from his lips, 
 And drank it in, as a wild bee sips 
 The nectar from the opening flowers, 
 Or thirsting earth, the falling showers. 
 
 Across the field, with stately stride, 
 My brother came to father's side 
 To say Good-bye, ere he should go 
 Where angry hosts surged to and fro. 
 1 marked his uniform -whose hue 
 Was like the arching sky so blue, 
 1 touched his sword, it bore his narne — 
 With which he conquered men and fame, 
 On far-off fields bestrown with dead. 
 Enriched with l^lood by heroes shed. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL liFAKILLE 
 
 He rose full high in my esteem, 
 And seemed the hem of my dream. 
 When in my trundle l)ed I slept, 
 And dreamed of war and loudly \vei)t, 
 Because I could not pack a gun, 
 And fiercely fight from sun to sun. 
 
 The last farewells were (|uickly said, 
 His shapely hands caressed my head; 
 No tear drops laved my father's face. 
 Brave son of an unfearing race. 
 He bade his son be brave and strong, 
 In stniggles tierce, on marches long, 
 And sent him forth, with love and pride. 
 To fight on fields, where legions died. 
 And hear in swamps, the bloodhound's bay 
 When far from prison walls away. 
 
 When rose the sunset's after-glow, 
 With tearful eyes I watched him go. 
 And, as I sadly watched and wept, 
 The gathering shadows o'er me crept. 
 Till I could scarcely sce the hill. 
 Where last I saw my brother Bill. 
 
 I've packed a gun in many a fray, 
 Since my big brother marched away. 
 Have traveled long the way of life. 
 And know its burdens, heat, and strife. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 But as I climb each towering hill, 
 Far in advance moves brother Bill, 
 A giant yet -he seems to me. 
 Where e'er I go on land or sea, 
 
 I'm weary now and bald and gray, 
 And sometimes scarcely see my way; 
 But even now, in life's decline, 
 When pitying stars smile on and shine, 
 Or angry tempests howl and weep. 
 And haunting fears their vigils keep, 
 I see, this side of Shadow Land, 
 A massive form, a shapely hand, 
 The gleaming sword, that bore his name, 
 With which he conquered men and fame. 
 And know the man, far down the hill, 
 Is still my hero — brother Bill. 
 
 Sometimes I think, when I bend low 
 And hear the river's sullen flow. 
 Then cross the flood that rolls between 
 This dying world and one unseen, 
 That I will see, in that strange land, 
 A massive form, a shapely hand, 
 A gleaming sword, that bears his name. 
 With which he conquered men and fame, 
 And he will be, in vision still, 
 My hay field hero — brother Bill. 
 
;W FROM TAPS TILL liEVKILLE. 
 
 ^\lQ /Aassacre. 
 
 Where the Big Horn pours its turbulent flow 
 
 From the rock-ribbed mountains towering high 
 The old fort crumbles where years ago 
 
 It lifted its walls to the star-flecked sky; 
 The wild .wolf prowls where our comrades sleep 
 
 In their nameless graves by the crunibling walls, 
 And our old stockade is a shapeless heap 
 
 Where once we answered the bugle calls. 
 
 Now battered and old are the builders all 
 
 Like the mouldering walls that in ruins lie, 
 We rally no more at the Captain's call 
 
 Nor draw our swords at the trumpet's cry; 
 Our battles are over, and we in peace 
 
 Are waiting the angel that comes to all, 
 That brings to the war-worn sweet release, 
 
 And calls to a land where no shadows fall. 
 
 We think sometimes of the vanished years 
 And the stalwart forms that have gone for aye, 
 
 Of hunger and thirst and maddening fears, 
 And dangers that haunted us night and day; 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 We dream sometimes, when the nig^hts are lonj:^, 
 Of the battles we fought in the dim star-light, 
 
 Of the sabre's flash and the Sioux's war song 
 And the harvest of death in the wintry night. 
 
 We think of the massacre foul as hell 
 
 On the mountain's side and by river's flow, 
 Of the torrents of blood where our comrades fell 
 
 In the hope'ess battle so long ago; 
 We hear the shouts of our gallant men 
 
 As they madiy fight in the ambuscade, 
 The death song floats on the air again 
 
 As it fiercely swelled when the charge was made. 
 
 Of all who fought on that cruel day 
 
 None ever came back to our ranks again; 
 With glory they sleep where in death they lay 
 
 All scalped and mangled by savage men; 
 We honor our comrades who fronted death 
 
 With cheeks unblanched in the throes of pain. 
 Whose whitening bones feel the Winter's breath, 
 
 The sun's fierce heat and the cooling rain. 
 
 Where the serpents hiss and the coyotes cry, 
 When the sun-light falls or the tempests weep, 
 
 Where the storm king broods and wild winds sigh, 
 Unknown and unsung our heroes sleep. 
 
40 FROM TAPS TILL BEVETLLE. 
 
 fpl7e Qrand eArmy of ft^e I^Gpublic. 
 
 ■ A great many people do not fully understand the mission 
 of the Grand Army of the Republic. It is, in some respects, 
 like the Confederate Veterans' Association, and is one of the 
 greatest peace organizations in America. Every comrade 
 prays that our soil may never again be drunk with the best 
 blood of our best people. 
 
 The men who meet around its camp fires have been tested 
 on many fields and know by experience the horrors of war. 
 They conquered peace, and enjoy it by the right of conquest, 
 and so long as the principles for which they fought are undis- 
 turbed will counsel moderation, ''with malice towards none, 
 and charity for all." 
 
 One of the principles for which the}- contended is as old 
 as God, and they are set for its defense. The men who have 
 marched and bivouacked and fought don't want the war 
 drum to throb any more or the bugle to sound another 
 call to arms. The songs of contented women and little 
 children are sweeter far to the gri/zlcd veterans of sixty- 
 one and five than the maddening strains of martial music. 
 The men who dug the trenches and slept in them, who built 
 the forts and defended them, are not disposed to rouse anew 
 the passions and antagonisms arousetl and engendered b}' the 
 
FROM TAJ'S TILL REVEILLE. 41 
 
 civil war. While they recognize the inherent manhood, and 
 honor the superb courage and matchless devotion, of those 
 who hazarded all for the "Lost Cause," and hail as brethren 
 the sturdy men who wept when the "Conquered Banner" was 
 furled forever they do not abate their love for the truths for 
 which they contended. They rejoice that in our great repub- 
 lic there is no North, no South, no East, no West. As years 
 roll by the " boys" desire more and more to meet and discuss 
 the events in which they figured so conspicuously years ago 
 and renew the friendships formed on perilous marches and 
 tented fields, in prison walls and hospital tents. They are 
 lion-hearted yet, and ready to do and dare, if occasion demands 
 action or sacrifice, but their hoary heads and bent forms are 
 prophetic. 
 
 "The young may die, the old must." As age advances 
 the gospel of peace and good will take on a more enchanting 
 sound and thrills them as it has never done before It is like 
 the ripple of cooling waters to those who leave the rainless 
 desert behind them. 
 
 They remember the weaknesses, but reverence the memory, 
 
 of those who have passed out of ranks into the land of shadows. 
 
 They can not forget their comrades who, wrappeti in their 
 
 bloody shirts, rest on the fields where they met death with 
 
 honor. Somehow thc\' believe and sing 
 
 They wear the deathless crowns their valor won 
 And tread with tireless feet the shining- way 
 Beyond the gates ajar. 
 
42 FROM TAPS TILL IIKVEILLK. 
 
 ^^ss. 
 
 You rave abcrut Ellen so young and fair, 
 Her 'blushes and dimples and sunny hair; 
 You envy the breezes that dance and play 
 With her tempting tresses the livelong day. 
 You sing of her pouting and ruby lips, 
 The thrill they send to your hnger tijis, 
 Of the clinging arms and the melting kiss, 
 That makes your soul a sea of bliss. 
 
 She is pretty and winsome, but I confess, 
 She can't compare with my stately Jess, 
 Whose raven crown puts night to shame. 
 Whose dauntless spirit none can tame; 
 Who stands erect with c[ueenly grace, 
 And shows the world a fearless face, 
 Wliere courage nestles and power sleejis. 
 Where beauty lingers and ])assi()n weei)S. 
 
 Her voice r\\v\^ like a trumi)et's blare, 
 When tempe-ts rage in her bosom lair, 
 But softlv woos when storms subside. 
 Like the soothing song of an ebbing tide; 
 Love haunts the <lei)tlis of her taunting eyes, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL liEVELLLK. 
 
 But fears commingle with tears and sighs, 
 When I see her go, with wilhng feet. 
 To the trysting place where she will meet, 
 A handsomer man than I. 
 
 She is cold and grave, but gracious too, 
 Whenever I call to "bill and coo," 
 Ikit the toss of her head unnerves me so, 
 I can not unfold my "tale of woe;" 
 I can't say, " Sweetheart, hear me now. 
 My vows believe, my prayers allow," 
 But sit and stammer, while ill at ease. 
 And shrink from one who is sure to please — 
 A handsomer man than I. 
 
 She is pious and proud, and people say. 
 She is grace itself when she kneels to pray. 
 She reads rare books and papers, too. 
 And knows the tricks that charmers do; 
 She i>lays the flute and the violin. 
 In her cosy home as "neat as a pin," 
 Her cheeks are rosy, but not with paint. 
 And the dinner she cooks will tempt a saint, 
 And a handsomer man than I. 
 
 I love her madly and yet I know 
 She thinks me a laggard, I dally so, 
 I am going to make a gallant fight, 
 And win or lose her this verv night; 
 
44 
 
 FliOM TAPS TILL ItEVEIIJJ-: 
 
 She is worth the wimiiii.i;", yes, I ween, 
 Nniiylit lairer or purer on eartli is seen 
 ^'ou will marry your Ellen, well I ,nuess, 
 I won't surrender my stately Jess, 
 To a han(ls(Miier man than I. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL liEVEILLE. 4.-) 
 
 Scold j+er 6\)Gry Day. 
 
 PARODY on " KISS HER EVERY DAY." 
 
 Says a cliarming singer, this side the sea, 
 
 Singing of life as it ought to be 
 
 And a fettered woman that once was free- 
 
 " Kiss her every day." 
 But Grad Grind thinking it doth appear 
 That wi\'es love best the men they fear, 
 Calls to each husband, far and near — 
 
 "Scold her every day." 
 
 Reader, have you got a wife.^ 
 
 Scold her every day, 
 Scatter all the joys of life, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 Tell her she is looking jaded. 
 That her roses all have faded, 
 With your tongue, stiletto bladed, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 
 Tell her she is growing flabby, 
 
 Every passing day. 
 That she's getting coarse and shabby, 
 
 Scold her everv dav. 
 
4(; FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Tell lier when a woman's man'ietl, 
 Wounded, bruised, and hurt and hai'riecl, 
 Love's advances all are parried. 
 Scold her everv dav. 
 
 Tell her you will never miss her, 
 
 If she ^oes away, 
 Tha< you'll flirt with Gene and kiss ker 
 
 Forty times a day. 
 Tell her she is not your crown, 
 Always leave her with a frown, 
 Never keep your temper down, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 
 Winter, summer, rain or shine, 
 
 Always sulk and lilame, 
 Spring or autumn, always whine 
 
 She's a shrew to tame, 
 Tell her she is cross and cold. 
 Common, shrunken, growing old. 
 Other wives are good as gold, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 
 When there's something wrong with baby, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 She is sick and tired, maylie. 
 
 Scold her any way. 
 Scold her when her soul is sad, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Scold her when her heart is glad, 
 Be your home life good or bad, 
 Scold her every day. 
 
 If she coyly comes behind you, 
 
 Like a child at play, 
 Gently throws her arms around yt)u, 
 
 Dash them off, I pray; 
 Tell her that her touch disturbs you, 
 When she comes, as if to woo 
 Back the love that once was true, 
 
 Scold her every day. 
 
 If you see her tear drojjs rise, 
 
 Wijje them not away. 
 If she weeps show no surprise. 
 
 It is woman's way. 
 Tell her when she sobs and sighs. 
 She is ugly when she cries. 
 Crying wives all men despise. 
 
 Scold her everv day. 
 
 If she begs you for a kiss, 
 
 Scowl and turn away. 
 Though she does not ask amiss. 
 
 Scold her anyway. 
 Do not think of other days, 
 Of your old-time tender ways. 
 Give not words of love or |iraise. 
 
 Scold her e\erv da v. 
 
48 FRO.U TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 lror\ Bull, tl^e ^roW ^\q\. 
 
 Among the Indians who visited our fort on the Big Horn 
 river were Iron Bull and his squaw. He was a superb speci- 
 men of physical manhood and had won renown by his prowess 
 and feats of valor in man\' hird fought battles. .She was an 
 attractive woman in many wa}'s,and superior to her dusky 
 sisters in ever\' respect. Poets and writers of thrilling ro- 
 mances have raved about pretty Indian women, but the}' are 
 extremely scarce, as ever\' one who has lived among our 
 Western tribes well knows. 
 
 Iron Bull was a malignant cnenn' but a faithful friend, and 
 had shown himself to be a sterling friend and ally of the 
 whites. At one time he, with some other chiefs, had gone to 
 Washington to see and confer with the great "White P'ather," 
 and was greatly impressed with the wonderful sights he saw 
 and awed by the numbers and superior intelligence of the pale 
 faces. After this visit he opposed war with the whites, and 
 having plighted his faith, resisted all the efforts of the \'ounger 
 bucks to violate the treat}' and go on the war path. Tall, 
 muscular and graceful, he was fierce but majestic in his bear- 
 ing. No imperial potentate e\er sat upon a throne or trod 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 49 
 
 the earth with more dignity, or greater pride, than this moc- 
 casined and befeathered Chief of the Crows. He had achieved 
 distinction by bravery and skill in battle and was as proud of 
 his conquests as Napoleon could have been of his victories, 
 and would never tire of describing the bloody conflicts in 
 which he had engaged with alien tribes, and the trophies he 
 had won from the Sioux and Blackfeet. He was very vain of 
 his showy apparel and gorgeous trappings. Half barbarian as 
 he was, he had too much respect for the whites to display 
 the scalps he had torn from the heads of his victims, for 
 before he had come in contact with civilixation he was as 
 cruel and blood-thirsty as any other savage in that great 
 hunting ground, "The home of the Crows." 
 
 His wife had taken on many of the graces and refinements 
 of christian people, and the writer remembers many delight- 
 ful visits made by him and his comrades to her tent, and 
 pleasant conversations with her and her husband. She had 
 obtained a number of pictures, photographs of army officers, 
 and little souvenirs from the few whites she had met, and she 
 prized them very highly. When any of our men visited her 
 she brought out her little "keep-sakes" and curiosities and 
 exhibited them, giving in her broken English explanations 
 about each article, not unlike an ingenuous country woman in 
 her simplicity and desire to entertain, showing her guests her 
 latest calico dress or the crazy c]uilt she has just completed. 
 .She was quite hospitable and desired to please her callers and 
 
50 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 win words of commendation from them. No society queen in 
 any of the social circles of our great cities could have displayed 
 greater tact as a hostess than this untutored, semi-civilized, 
 woman. 
 
 This sketch is written to show how savagery yields to civili- 
 zation and christian principle exalts the barbarous. 
 
 Iron Bull was brave. No man dared, except at the peril 
 of his life, to question his courage; but, like all warriors who 
 live by the hunt and the chase and go to war, he was, so far as 
 work was concerned, lazy, and would smoke or sleep while his 
 wife carried wood and built fires upon which the venison he 
 brought in was broiled or roasted. The country was a hunt- 
 er's paradise, overrun by buffalo, bear, deer, elk, antelope and 
 jack rabbits, and he was a mighty Nimrod — with his arrows he 
 had slain many of the wild beasts that roamed in the valleys 
 or prowled in the mountains. 
 
 We who were "pilgrims in a strange land" will never 
 wholly forget the rugged warrior and his kind-hearted squaw. 
 For months at a time we never heard the voice, or looked into 
 the face, of a white woman and the hours spent by us in their 
 wigwam, nestling in the shadow of the great mountain, will 
 abide with us as long as memory reproduces the sights and 
 scenes of our vanished years. 
 
 It may be that the place that knew these noble descend- 
 ants of a dying, but heroic race, knows them no more. It is 
 not itiiprol^able that thc\' ha\c gone to the "happy hunting 
 
FJIOM TAl'S TILL IIKVEILLE. 
 
 5 J 
 
 grounds," reserved by the Great Spirit for good Indians. 
 Somehow we believe it is well with them, whether they walk 
 together in the evening of life, or have passed out of its 
 hurly-burly, into the land of shadows. They were rude and 
 uncultured, but, when they saw the light they moved toward 
 it, and our scriptures surely teach that at the end of every 
 searcher's path stands Jesus, the great Revealer. We, who 
 shared their generous hospitality, devoutly hope that they 
 live in peace or tread the highways of a fairer world, where 
 the death song never floats on the startled air and the war 
 cry is never heard calling the braves to battle and to death. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL ItEVEITJ.K. 
 
 §moofl]in(^ \\iq 09rinWGS ®ut. 
 
 Whyl what are you doing, baby mine 
 
 To grandpa's troubled face, 
 That makes it softly beam and shine, 
 
 Like a star agleam in space? 
 Her voice was silvery, soft and low, 
 
 As she quickly turned about, 
 And said, "I love my grandpa so 
 
 I'm smoothing the wrinkles out." 
 
 You've a healing touch, oh baby mine. 
 
 And a heart aflame with love, 
 Flood furrows deep and gild each line 
 
 With sun-light from above. 
 O, touch, with yours, the bloodless li])S, 
 
 That wait for you just now. 
 The magic dwells in your finger tij)S 
 
 To smoothe his furrowed brow. 
 
 He is liattered and old, oh baby mine. 
 And weary of pain and strife, 
 
 The last to fight, of a noble line, 
 On the battle fields of life. 
 
FUOM TAPS TILL RLVLJfLfj:. 
 
 All gone are the comrades of long ago, 
 Who answered the trumpets call, 
 
 When the clouds of war were hanging low . 
 O'er valley and mountain tall. 
 
 You have winged your way, oh baby mine. 
 
 From a realm of changeless liglit, 
 To brighten the way of one, in time, 
 
 Who threads his way by niglit; 
 To lay on the withered breast of age, 
 
 Your masses of sunny hair. 
 And drive from a heart, where passions rage, 
 
 The jihantoms of dark despair. 
 
 You have brought the light, oh baby mine, 
 
 To grandpa's troubled face, 
 As I watch it softly beam and shine, 
 
 Like a star agleam in sjiace. 
 I bless the sweet voice, soft and low. 
 
 And the girl that turned about. 
 To say, " I love my grandpa so 
 
 I'm smoothing the wrinkles out.' 
 
54 FliOM TAJ'S TILL nKVEILLE. 
 
 W\iQr\ \\iQ Da^li|l7+ ^onquers J^i^l^i 
 
 She sat on my knee, in the \ox\g, ago, 
 
 A prattling child of three, 
 And voiced, in sweet tones soft and low, 
 
 Her boundless love for me. 
 She stroked my hair and touched mv face 
 
 With her dimpled fingers white; 
 Then making my arms her resting i)lace, 
 
 She waited the coming night. 
 
 As it slowly fell we sat and dreamed 
 
 'Neath the sheltering maple tree, 
 While floods of light that brightly beamed 
 
 Rolled downward into the sea. 
 The zephyrs fanned my sun-browned face, 
 
 Stirred gently her locks of gold — 
 And we fell asleep in our trysting place, 
 
 While the banner of night unrolled. 
 
 I dreamed that a reajier, gaunt and grim. 
 Came searching for golden grain. 
 
 That ripened in fields defiled by sin. 
 In a gruesome valley of pain. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 I shrank from his fateful deep-set eyes — 
 
 His withered bird-like hand 
 While clouds obscured the starless kies, 
 
 And darkness veiled the land. 
 
 He swept, with his eyes, my startled face, 
 
 My shrunken form, and old, 
 But chose one fairer, and full of grace. 
 
 For the Shepherd's upper fold. 
 When he waved his wand, a sunny head 
 
 Found a pillow snowy white, 
 And I cried aloud for my baby dead, 
 
 'Till the daylight conquered night. 
 
 I will see in heaven, now bending low, 
 
 My prattling child of three, 
 Who voiced in sweet tones, soft and K)w 
 
 Her boundless love for me. 
 She will stroke my hair and touch my face 
 
 With her dimpled fingers white. 
 And make my arms her resting place, 
 
 When the daylight conquers night. 
 
o(3 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 091]^ ©tiG Drummer pell. 
 
 Arthur started on his trial trip without realizing what it 
 meant to him and what deplorable results would follow his de- 
 parture. His home was a little heaven, where love reigned 
 and its daily ministrations made life worth living His bright- 
 eyed, sunny haired, wife was loving and resourceful, and he 
 never knew when some new revelation would show how she 
 planned for his happiness. He always accepted and returned 
 kisses and caresses, but did not appreciate them fully until he 
 reached the outside world, where the}- were for others and not 
 for him. The children that came one by one into his heart 
 and life never grew weary of showing their childish faith and 
 love in touching and tender ways, and the young folks in his 
 neighborhood seemed tireless in their efforts to show him how 
 much he was to them. When he went away he found that faith 
 and love and tokens of appreciation, that make the sum total 
 of human bliss, had a great deal to do with the happiness of 
 former days before he went out into the world to conquer 
 fortune. 
 
 He had kissed his wife and children and the tearful lasses 
 who came to see him off, and with many protestation of affec- 
 tion, gone to the train. When he 'vas seated in the smoker, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 where he went, because he was slightly unnerved, and drum- 
 mers were in the habit of doing so, he began to feel that some- 
 thing had gone out of his life, but he was determined to show 
 clear grit and dismissed, as unmanly or inconvenient, many little 
 heart-suggestions abou.t home-life being the best life, and pre- 
 pared for his battle royal, his first attack on a hard-headed, 
 miserly old customer who was to be talked into buying some- 
 thing he didn't want, or to dr^ive him ingloriously from the field. 
 One thing seemed strange to him. His life had been lived in 
 pleasant places and women entered into every day's doings, 
 but in the future they were to be ruled out. The hackman 
 that hauled him to the depot was a man; the manager that 
 gave him instructions was a man; the clerk that furnished him 
 his price list was a man; the agent that sold him his railroad 
 ticket was a man; the conductor that punched it was a man; 
 the news agent that sold him the paper, that he read with the 
 assurance of one widely traveled, while he puffed the cigar 
 that a man had sold him, was a man; when he left the omnibus, 
 driven by a man, at the door of a hotel kept by a man; the 
 clerk that sized him up, while he registered, w#s a man; a man 
 showed him to his room, and his breakfast was served by a 
 man; after breakfast he went to the postofifice with a man, and 
 received his mail from a man; desiring to send a telegram, the 
 operator, a man, received his message; a man shaved him while 
 another man shined his shoes, and then he went up town to see 
 a man. This was to be his life and the thought chilled him, 
 
58 FROM TAPS TILL REVETLLE. 
 
 but he was not undone. Sunday was not far off and there 
 would be some change, he thought. 
 
 Sunday came and a man at the hotel, where he was stopping 
 asked him to go to Sunday school. The invitation was accept- 
 ed and he was soon in the place where sex distinctions are not 
 so closely drawn. The hand-shaker, a man, met him at the 
 door and introduced him to another man. The superintendent, 
 a man, invited him to go into the men's Bible class, taught by 
 a man. After the exercises were over he went up stairs, into 
 the audience room, and heard a man preach a powerful sermon 
 about a man. Nausea breeds discontent, and sameness wear- 
 ies. Arthur was a domestic man; one of the rare creatures 
 God sends into the world once in a while, that delights in lov- 
 ing and being loved, and in ninety days of enforced abstinence 
 and heart starvation he lived a century, so he felt. He loved 
 women, as all good men, whether drummers or not, do, and 
 was sick unto death of the whole man business. With him 
 anything in petticoats was above par and he would have appre- 
 ciated a tctc-a-tetc with a woman though she was ignorant and 
 uncanny, more than he would have enjoyed an interview with 
 the greatest wit that ever wore breeches. He was filled to the 
 brim with natural affection and there was no one within reach 
 upon whom he could lavish it. If he courtesied to some 
 ancient maiden lady she withered him with a frown, or called 
 a policeman. If he asked some pretty maiden the way to 
 some place, he knew all about before asking, she seemed to 
 
FROM TAPS TILL BEYFALLE. 59 
 
 divine his purpose and gave some flippant answer or passed 
 him in silence with her nose out of balance. He received let- 
 ters from home, in which the whole neighborhood sent kisses, 
 but the envelopes were not big enough to hold velvet lips to 
 touch his own and snowy hands to press his red brawn. 
 
 As time passed on he felt that love, apart from its object, 
 was not what it ought to be, and that its intensity and perma- 
 nence depended largely on personal contact. He could love his 
 wife of course — though she was far away — and she could love 
 him, but the caresses that love gives could not scale mountains 
 and swim rivers, and such love was a very tame thing after all. 
 While waiting for trains time hung heavily on his hands, and 
 he learned to play poker as a pastime, but soon discovered 
 that playing for small sums made the game much more excit- 
 ing. He had been an abstainer from boyhood, and his wife 
 would have cried until her eyes were as red as the necktie he 
 wore when she first met him at a country picnic, if she had 
 detected the smell of liquor on his breath, and the dear girls in 
 his Sunday school class would have been shocked if they had 
 seen him enter a saloon, but somehow he felt that virtues were 
 for simple-minded folks, and vices for men and women of the 
 world, who require something exhilerating to make them 
 enjoy life that the homely virtues, well enough in common peo- 
 ple, could not give. He felt that an occasional drink with the 
 boys would do no harm, and the desire for comradeship being 
 very strong he disposed of any scruples that may have obtruded 
 
(iO FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 themselves, and being in Rome did as the Romans did. At 
 home he has a choice library of carefully selected books and 
 magazines and he and his wife grew nearer and dearer to each 
 other as they read and discussed their favorite authors and 
 poets. He noticed that very few of his associates read religious, 
 scientific, or historical works, and concluded to while away a 
 rainy afternoon and get abreast of the times by reading one of 
 Ouidas' most sensational stories. He found it very interest- 
 ing, not so much because her language was rich and her sen- 
 tences beautifully rounded, but because there w^as so much in 
 it about women, not unapproachable, prudish, proper women, 
 but women who never had any scruples about meeting strangers 
 without the formality of an introduction. He laid aside the 
 wholesome works he once enjoyed and revelled in the unadul- 
 terated nastiness of French and American realists of the baser 
 sort. By doing so he surely, but unconsciously, lowered his 
 moral standard and cheapened his estimate of the lowly vir- 
 tues that distinguish the pure in heart. When a trio of old 
 campaigners, who had dallied with him over their social cups, 
 suggested that they call on some ladies, not overly nice but 
 decidedly chic, he was prepared to go and went with them. 
 The river was crossed that rolled between the cleaner world 
 with its happy homes and stalwart virtues and the other world 
 where vice disrupts and sensuality degrades. He did not see 
 the end from the beginning, but simply intended to vary the 
 monotony of his life by playing with a temptress and seeing 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 61 
 
 something of the underworld, and as many another fool before 
 him had done, rushed, like an unthinking horse, into danger. 
 He did not realize that he had made a mistake and over- 
 estimated his strength until it was too late. 
 
 Living, as he had so long, a pure life among simple minded 
 people who loved God and each other, he did not understand 
 the resistless power of wine and women. A man inflamed by 
 wine and scourged by passion, is powerless when assailed by a 
 designing woman, with sensuous grace and beauty, who has 
 caught the gleam of his gold and simulates a passion she does 
 not feel to fill her purse. A man, however brave and talented, 
 who places himself in the power of an abandoned woman is 
 hopelessly involved unless he is willing to defy public opinion 
 and flaunt his depravity in its face, no matter how much he 
 may loathe himself and the life he leads. He dare not reveal 
 his sin to the woman he has so cruelly wronged and the friends 
 whose confidence he has abused, and so his life becomes a 
 perpetual lie. He dare not neglect to feed the avarice of the 
 woman who knows his secret and can expose him at any time. 
 Heaven has ordained that tliere shall be two parties to every 
 sin against chastity, and no guilty man is safe until death 
 removes the participant in his debauch. From city to city, 
 and from continent to continent, drift the lost women of the 
 world, carrying with them the names and faces of those whose 
 passions they have fed, and their conquests are published 
 from lip to lip. The fear of exposure makes him a coward. 
 
(12 FROM TAPS TILL JiEVJJJLLK. 
 
 and cowardice is the prolific mother of hypocrites. With self- 
 respect not wholly gone he is ashamed to associate with pure 
 women, as he once did, on terms of equality, but cannot, on 
 account of those he loves, withdraw from good society alto- 
 gether. The desire for companionship remains, -and the spell 
 of the woman whose feet take hold on hell is upon him. 
 Though he knows that the love that money buys is spurious 
 and a general commodity for sale to the highest bidder, he 
 feeds upon the unwholesome remnant she offers him in 
 exchange for the gold that he filches from his wife and chil- 
 dren. He naturally seeks his level and selects for boon com- 
 panions those who care little or nothing for the decencies of 
 life. 
 
 Arthur is not a happy man. He feels unfit for the com- 
 pany of the pure and has too much of the divine in him to be 
 satisfied in the society of the impure. He is a citizen of 
 neither world, and like a man without a country, is a victim of 
 unrest and disappointment. The apples of Sodom were 
 beautiful, but they did not satisfy. The desire to love some- 
 thing goaded him. The desire to be loved became a con- 
 suming passion. Step by step he trod the downward way, and 
 evil associations, vicious literature, and strong drink helped to 
 stimulate the desires that drove him down. Memory goads 
 and conscience whips and self-loathing embitters his life. 
 Having lost confidence in himself, his faith in others is shaken. 
 In his better moods he hates the double life he is compelled 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 63 
 
 to lead but hasn't the courage to give it up. Men say that he 
 ought to abandon his evil ways; and he ought, but the knowl- 
 edge that he has fallen and played the hypocrite makes him 
 fearful, irresolute and unbelieving. 
 
(U FROM TAJ'S TILL in^A'KILLE. 
 
 fpl^e l^eunior\. 
 
 When the "boys in bine" broke ranks thirty years ago the 
 largest volunteer army ever marshalled in the Western world 
 was permanently disbanded. Death has overcome many who 
 were victors then and onl}' a remnant remains to enjoy the 
 peace their valor won. 
 
 Those who have been mustered out forever were not fault- 
 less, but their fame will grow brighter as the world grows older, 
 and they will live, in history and song, as long as men are 
 moved by heroic deeds and women exalt courage and con- 
 stancy. Those who are waiting for their final discharge will 
 soon join their fallen comrades and 
 
 " Sleep the sleej) that knows no waking" 
 until God orders the universal roll call. 
 
 Wlien flaniin,tj: cannon hurled their shot and shell 
 'Gainst Sumpter's walls the stainless flag unfurled 
 
 Above her heights received their leaden rain. 
 Our country called. From every nook and dell 
 In this broad land the smoke from camp tires curled, 
 
 And marching men caught u[) tlie glad refrain; 
 "The star spangled banner in triumj)h shall wave 
 O'er the land of the free antl tlie home of the brave," 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. (55 
 
 From peaceful hills and valleys smiling fair, 
 She bade us go into the deadly strife 
 
 Where Titans grapjiling stood. 
 The war drum's throb borne on the startled air, 
 The trumpet's cry and scream of angry fife 
 
 Inspired our martial brotherhood. 
 
 We southward marched. Our conquering columns strong 
 Faced serried hosts 'neath Southern sun and star 
 
 With battle flame and lines of glittering steel 
 Fought storm and flood, on hurried marches long, 
 And raging thirst from cooling draughts afar 
 
 Heard hunger call above the cannon's peal. 
 
 Four years we fought an ever changing fight, 
 Sometimes we raised the victor's ringing shout 
 
 Sometimes our bugles called retreat; 
 Our watchword this: "Our God will speed the right. 
 Put freedom's foes to sure unrallying rout. 
 
 And send them sore defeat." 
 
 Not all who marched with us in sixty-one 
 
 Are marching neath our tattered flags to-day— 
 
 They watch us from afar; 
 They wear the deathless crowns their valor won, 
 And tread with tireless feet the shining way 
 
 Bdyond the gates ajar. 
 
(if) FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 No braver men e'er trod the quivering earth 
 Than those who met us on ensanguined fields 
 
 'Neath sunny Southland sky; 
 Some were plebeian born and some of gentle birth, 
 They periled all and lost and now their shields 
 
 In broken fragments lie. 
 
 The men who followed Sherman to the sea, 
 And fought with Grant till victory was won. 
 
 Salute the men in gray; 
 The broken ranks of Jackson and of Lee, 
 Who bravely fought until the fight was done. 
 
 Then cast their arms away. 
 
 Above the stars shall march in coming years 
 The blended hosts of our heroic dead, 
 
 Clothed with immortal youth; 
 The Prince of Peace shall calm their rising fears, 
 Drive thrist away and feed with living bread 
 
 The stalwart sons of truth. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 67 
 
 Salufe "^^oar (J^l^ief, 
 
 SUGGESTED BY THE DEATH OF W. B. WYLIE. 
 
 Salute your chief ! Bend low each youthful head, 
 
 While passes by your loved but fallen chief. 
 He ruled you long, but with the conquered dead 
 
 Now calmly sleeps despite your poignant grief. 
 No war drum's throb leads on his funeral train, 
 
 No scream of fife cleaves through the air. 
 To join, with trumpet cries, in martial strain, 
 
 No flags enshroud his stalwart form so fair. 
 
 Salute ypur chief ! Bend low each youthful head. 
 
 He, helpless now, moves with the cortege on, 
 To the bleak house where rest the waiting dead. 
 
 And darkness broods until the breaking dawn; 
 The gloom dispelling dawn, that hunts the graves 
 
 Where dead men wait the coming of their King, 
 Who slays in love, and conquers whom he saves. 
 
 Then calls them forth with angel's trumpet ring. 
 
 Salute your chief 1 Bend low each youthful head. 
 And mourn for him who will not come again 
 
G8 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 And lead your blended ranks, as once he led, 
 Through fields of light that dot a sombre ])lain; 
 
 Help scale the heights where knowledge sways 
 And wisdom's floods in ceaseless torrents pour, 
 
 Where tempters never lure from learning's ways, 
 And myriad minds, enriched, unfettered, soar. 
 
 Salute your chief I Bend low each youthful head, 
 
 And weep for him, who, forceful, firm and kind, 
 Loved well the youth his broader knowledge fed, 
 
 Revealing truths they, searching, could not find. 
 You felt no tyrant's harsh, unreasoning sway. 
 
 But ever saw the hand, outstretched in love, 
 That helped you gain, each swiftly passing day, 
 
 A greater good — a thought gleam from abo\e. 
 
 Salute your chief ! Bend low each youthful head 
 
 To him who passes on, and out, forevermore. 
 And soon will lie with the unanswering dead 
 
 Whose feet do never touch this mortal shore. 
 Xo war drum's throb leads on his funeral train, 
 
 No scream of fife cleaves through the air, 
 To join, with trumpet cries, in martial strain; 
 
 No flags enshroud his stalwart form so fair, 
 But strong men sob and women gently weep. 
 
 While childhood wails its loving, last good-bye, 
 And o'er the form love could not always keep 
 
 Tlie children's tear laved wreaths caressing lie. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 69 
 
 ^l7G poodle and \\}q poodle. 
 
 AN EPISODE IN CHARLIE S CHECKERED LIFE. 
 
 See sweet Mary's smitten noodle, 
 Kneeling at her slippered feet, 
 
 See her jealous, whiskered poodle, 
 Fiercely tear his tender meat. 
 
 .See sweet Mary's weeping noodle, 
 Sprawl upon the parlor floor, 
 
 See the shaggy, savage poodle, 
 
 Rend the stunning clothes he wore. 
 
 See sweet Mary's vanquished noodle. 
 Standing by the mantel tall. 
 
 And her vicious, warlike poodle. 
 Crouching low beside the wall. 
 
 See sweet Mary's blushing noodle, 
 Moving backwards to the door. 
 
 While the noodle-eating jioodle, 
 Smacks his lips and calls for more. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 See sweet Mary's wounded noodle, 
 Lying on his troubled face, 
 
 Hear him swear at Mary's poodle, 
 And the scars he can't efface. 
 
 See sweet Mary hug the poodle. 
 That has fed on noodle meat, 
 
 While she laughs about the noodle, 
 And his trousers incomplete. 
 
 Love sick noodles, watch the poodles, 
 If you want to rise complete, 
 
 For the poodles hate the noodles, 
 When thev kneel at Mary's feet. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL IlEVFALLi:. 
 
 Declarafior^ of principles. 
 
 "In introducing my machines", says a Texas sewing machine 
 agent, " to an ignorant and unthinking, but intelligent and dis- 
 criminating public, I beg the privilege of saying: 
 
 "They are the best, and will remain so, until I arrange to 
 handle an entirely new line. I have sold every reputable and 
 disreputable machine introduced into Texas, in the last decade, 
 and have contributed to the happiness of my customers by 
 always recommending every machine sold as unapproachable 
 in merit and strictly first-class in every particular. 
 
 "By buying in large quantities and never paying for the 
 goods, I am enabled to offer exceptional inducements to buy- 
 ers, and being legally irresponsible and absolutely conscience- 
 less, I cheerfully warrant every machine I sell for any length 
 of time the customer may desire. 
 
 "My opinions are fixed, but flexible; firm, but varying. I 
 recognize and comment with great earnestness on the enor- 
 mities of the liquor trafific when in the society of total ab- 
 stainers and prohibitionists and insist that State and National 
 prohibition is necessary to sustain the life of the republic, 
 perpetuate its institutions, and promote the peace and pros- 
 perity of its sons and daughters. We are in imminent, deadly 
 
FliOM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 peril, and the saloon must go. However, I can not refrain 
 from expressing my profound sympathy for all saloonists who 
 are contending with more than Spartan courage against the 
 merciless and destructive hosts of temperance and fanati- 
 cism in defense of personal liberties and constitutional rights. 
 I am ready and willing to aid them in their heroic struggles. 
 
 "As occasion demands I identify myself with the Baptist, 
 Methodist, Presbyterian or Christian church, and affiliate, if 
 necessary, with the Catholic, Episcopal and independent and 
 dissenting religious bodies. Although I unequivocally en- 
 dorse the principles of these organizations, I am an atheist, 
 infidel, agnostic and free thinker. 
 
 "I belive in and practice monogamy, but advocate polyga 
 my within certain geographical limits. 
 
 "While I recognize the right of the government to punish 
 crimes against society and suppress lawlessness by prohibiting 
 and punishing whatever is vicious and hurtful, though it may 
 occur under the sanction and in the name of religion, I hold 
 that every man has a right, as a religionist, to do as he pleases, 
 and that no power has a right to interfere with him in the 
 exercise of his God given rights. 
 
 " Although I am a Democrat, one of the unwashed, unterri- 
 fied kind, unreconstructed and unrcconstructible, for reasons 
 satisfactory to myself, I vote with the Republican party and 
 endorse its principles. While I do this I am in perfect accord 
 with the Mugwumps and Populists. I believe in a single and 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 double money standard and the single tax theory as advocated 
 by Henry George. 
 
 "I do not hesitate to invoke the wrath of God upon the migra- 
 tory and irrepressible Jews, whose ancestors made the greatest 
 tragedy, mentioned in sacred or profane history, possible. 
 They are aliens who amass colossal fortunes by questionable 
 methods. They know that suckers are born every minute and 
 deceive the people, with whom they affiliate, for gain. They 
 live in luxury, without labor, while those whose hard earned 
 money they acquire by their subtle arts are reduced to poverty; 
 but my soul revolts at the causeless and malignant persecution 
 of these wards of the Almighty, who are peaceable men and 
 good citizens, and have done so much, in their quiet and unsel- 
 fish way, to promote the intellectual, moral, and commercial, 
 interests of America and the world. 
 
 "Like Herr Most, I am an anarchist, but believe in corpora- 
 tions, combines, and trust. I believe that capitalists should be 
 protected in the ownership and control of their property, but 
 am a communist pure and simple, 
 
 "I am for the Union and its unquestioned supremacy over 
 the States and Territories composing it, but believe that the 
 doctrine of States Rights as enunciated by Calhoun and others 
 was born in heaven. While I am willing to die for the Union, 
 right or wrong, I am equally willing to imperil my life and 
 property in defense of the State against the aggressions and 
 exactions of the national government. 
 
74 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 "I believe this should be a government of the whites, by the 
 whites, and for the whites, although I supported with my voice 
 and vote the advocates of the Force Bill. The negro, whether 
 pure or hybrid, is not entitled to the rights and privileges of 
 citizenship. He is an exotic and should be transplanted. He 
 is a cancerous growth on the body politic, a conglomerate of 
 ignorance and depravity, and is unfit to exercise the functions 
 of a citizen; but is chaste, temperate, and industrious, and, as 
 a useful member of society, should be granted and protected 
 in the exercise of all the rights the constitution guarantees him. 
 
 "I believe in capital punishment and that the death penalty 
 should be abolished. 
 
 "I believe that secret societies are born in councils infernal. 
 They are a standing menace to the church, the state, and the 
 home, but I have shown my approval of them by joining every 
 one across whose mysterious portals I have been permitted to 
 go, and around whose sacred altars I have touched elbows and 
 crossed palms with the purest and best of men. 
 
 "I believe that women, though superior, are unequal to men, 
 whether considered as animals that perish, or beings instinct 
 with immortal life. 
 
 "Although I consider their clamor for rights and privileges 
 hitherto ungranted, as baseless, vulgar, and arbitrary, I am 
 in favor of enfranchising them and giving them everything 
 they can, as equals with men, rightfully insist upon. The 
 wrongs of ages ought to be righted. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 75 
 
 "Woman is the savior and destroyer of our race. She exalts 
 and casts down, purifies and corrupts, and leads to loftier 
 heights and lures to lower depths, than any other creature God 
 has made. 
 
 "My mother-in-law, who never tires of telling me how many 
 wise and wealthy men coveted the prize I drew and how 
 unworthy I am of the treasure she gave me, is a woman. My 
 landlady, who so delicately compliments her prompt-paying 
 tenants while reminding me that my rent is overdue, and so 
 patiently details the story of her daily and hourly needs, is a 
 woman. My cook, who sometimes passes me on the street 
 without dunning me and protests that I am a " mighty good 
 feller but a pore pervider," is a woman. In fact, all of my 
 intimate female relatives and friends are women, and, knowing 
 them as I do, I will cheerfully endure martyrdom for their 
 sake. 
 
 "Women are peerless in every way and have lifted us 
 from the lowest depths of barbarism to the highest heights 
 of civilization. They are the purest and sweetest things 
 divinity every fashioned, but are evangels of discord whose 
 venomtipped tongues pierce like damascus blades, and are 
 chronic disturbers of the public peace. Their malicious 
 loquacity and repellant angularities of temper and disposition 
 make this world of ours, that, but for them, would be resonant 
 with song and the abode of unchanging peace, a veritable 
 babel, a perpetual battlefield. 
 
76 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 "I know their mental poverty and moral incompleteness 
 and proclaim their physical inferiority with absolute fearless- 
 ness. While I love women I love truth better. I sprang from 
 a chivalrous and unfearing line and resent their assumptions 
 of equality with undisguised contempt, as every self-respect- 
 ing man is bound to do. 
 
 "Women, despite the fierceness of their gentle natures and 
 their changeless but variable dispositions, are excellent judges 
 of machines, when they buy of me and accept without ques- 
 tioning the marvelous tales I tell. If one is captivated by 
 some other slick tongued deceiver and induced to buy some- 
 thing inferior at a fancy price, she simply exhibits the womanly 
 weakness that has precipitated mental ruin and financial dis- 
 aster upon so many confiding and indulgent fathers, husbands 
 and sweethearts, and should be pinioned aloft as an awful 
 example, upon which others can look and be saved. 
 
 "I have endeavored to state clearly and simply the views I 
 entertain on important subjects, so that the public, I delight 
 to serve, may know that I am made of sterling stuff and can 
 be depended on in an emergency. 
 
 "Those who know me best will testify that I have never 
 abandoned a friend as long as he could be used to advance my 
 interests or I could make a dollar out of him." 
 
 ******* 
 In the foregoing declaration of principles I have endeav- 
 ored to collect into one article the various statements made 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 77 
 
 by the Texas agent under different circumstances and among 
 different kinds of people. I need not add tiiat, while he is 
 recognized as the best all-round liar in his section, he is not a 
 -bright particular star in the local Four Hundred, and will soon 
 be compelled to leave for some other field of operation, where, 
 by being all things to all men and on all sides of all questions, 
 he can'add something to his depleted treasury. 
 
 rpl7G Modern I^uIg. 
 
 Hear you the rule our Teacher gave of old, 
 
 Say those who preach a gospel strange but true, 
 You earnest men, who teach and toil for gold, 
 
 You taskless ones, who neither think nor do; 
 His golden rule, through age on age, shall stand. 
 
 And millions know its silent, forceful sway, 
 The pure and wise of every race and land 
 
 Shall own its power till dawns no earthly day. 
 
 Hear you the rule of a more modern sage. 
 
 Say those who scorn the Man of Galilee, 
 His rule won't work in this self-seeking age, 
 
 When faith lies dead and truth does error flee; 
 Go vaunt your own with subtle, truthless tongue. 
 
 And hold, where blessings flow, your failing cup, 
 Spare not the old, ensnare the guileless young, 
 
 " Do other men or they will do you up." 
 
78 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 fpl7G Mofl]Gr's ©Answer. 
 
 Two little eyes that laugh alway, 
 Two little lips that pout for me; 
 
 Two little feet that sometimes stray, 
 Two little hands that restless be, 
 
 And is that all? 
 
 Two little eyes are closed to-day, 
 Two little lips no speech allow; 
 
 Two little feet find rest from play. 
 Two little hands are folded now. 
 
 And is that all? 
 
 Two little eyes shall see the King, 
 Two little lips His praises sing; 
 
 Two little feet His errands run, 
 Two little hands caress the Son— 
 
 And is that all? 
 
 Two little eyes shall watch for me. 
 Two little lips shout, "Welcome Home;" 
 
 Two little feet my guides shall be, 
 
 Two little hands shall clasp my own — 
 
 And that is all 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 79 
 
 Marf^i'dom and Monuments. 
 
 The world sometimes crucifies its benefactors and atones 
 for its ingratitude by erecting colossal monuments to com- 
 memorate their virtues, while its historians and poets embalm 
 their glorious deeds in history and song after they have passed 
 beyond the reach of praise or blame. Somehow, when his 
 career is ended and his protesting voice is hushed, it recog- 
 nizes divinity in the man who dares to live in advance of his 
 generation and endure persecution for humanity's sake, 
 although it hates and persecutes him for arraying himself 
 against its cherished theories and traditions. The martyrs of 
 one age are the demi-gods of the next, and the crown of mar- 
 tyrdom presages a crown of glory. 
 
 If men ever learn that God loves those who have intelligent 
 convictions and the courage to express them, and that honest 
 thinkers and doers are the saviors of the race, persecution will 
 cease and the cross and guillotine be banished from the earth. 
 
 The man who knows and believes, and knowing and believ- 
 ing, does something to disturb conditions that are created and 
 fostered by ignorance and prejudice, is made of sterling stuff 
 and deserves honorable recognition by thoughtful and consid- 
 
80 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 erate people. Every man should entertain and manifest a 
 reasonable regard for public opinion, but it is argus-eyed and 
 hydra-headed, despotic and unreasoning, imperious and fickle, 
 and no man can captivate its fancy or comply with its require- 
 ments continuously without dishonoring his sense of right and 
 justice and adapting himself, without protest, to his environ- 
 ments. No trimmer can expect posthumus fame, for he who 
 moulds his opinions and shapes his life to harmonize with 
 public opinion, whether it be right or wrong, is devoid of prin- 
 ciple and as variable as the wind. If he changes his views 
 every time he changes his location, without adequate cause, 
 he is destitute of all the characteristics of real manhood and 
 utterly unreliable in any of the emergencies of life and 
 "weighed and found wanting" will be inscribed upon his 
 monument, if he has one, when he has left the world he was 
 too ignoble to serve. He may occasionally be wrong in his 
 conclusions, and sometimes harsh and ungenerous in his judg- 
 ments, but the man who lives for others and acts upon his con- 
 victions at the peril of personal popularity and with the assur- 
 ance that he will incur social ostracism and financial disaster 
 has the distinguishing merits of honesty and courage, and 
 should be regarded by friend and foe alike, as not faultless, 
 but "every inch a man." 
 
 Beautiful in its simplicity is the comment of Joaquin Miller 
 on the forty-niners, the daring men who, searching for gold, 
 turned their faces toward the sunset to meet death on the 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 81 
 
 desert, or in the mines, or to sleep " on the mountain tops 
 nearer the gates of God" their eternal sleep: 
 
 "They were rough, maybe, but they did their level best." 
 He who loves his fellews, and in the fear of God does his 
 level best, is cast in a heroic mould, and will rest in peace, 
 whether after "life's fitful fever," he sleeps with princes in 
 hallowed ground, or with paupers in a potter's field. 
 
82 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Mamie. 
 
 Our Mamie is singing night and day 
 Of lovers present, and lovers away, 
 
 And sweethearts lea' and true; 
 Well, hills rejoice and rivers sing, 
 And angel choirs make Heaven ring. 
 
 With anthems old and new. 
 
 Our Mamie is playing night and day, 
 The "devil's dance" and "pilgrims gray," 
 
 And marches and galops, too; 
 Well, harpers are harping above the stars. 
 While oceans swell despite the bars 
 
 That fetter their waters blue. 
 
 Our Mamie is merry night and day, 
 And seldom thinks to weep or pray, 
 
 Or fathom the depths of life; 
 Well, waves are dancing on every sea. 
 And stars are twinkling o'er every lea. 
 
 Unthinking of woe or strife. 
 
 Our Mamie is loving, night and day, 
 Her friends and sweethearts, grave and gay, 
 And loves with all her might; 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Well, love is older than Adam's race, 
 And those who love shall see God's face, 
 In a world without a night. 
 
 The rivers sing as they onward flow 
 The praises of one who loves men so, 
 
 He lifts their feet with song; 
 The mighty surge of the fettered deep. 
 Where death abides and tempests sweep. 
 
 Proclaims him great and strong. 
 
 The harpers strike their harps of gold, 
 To One whose love can not be told. 
 
 That walked with fallen men; 
 The waves will dance on every sea. 
 And stars will twinkle o'er every lea, 
 
 Till He shall come again. 
 
 Love sways alone the cloudless world. 
 Where saints salute her flag unfurled. 
 
 And sing the old, old song; 
 Whose sons shall come from many lands, 
 To rule, with bright and shining bands. 
 
 The conquered hosts of wrong. 
 
84 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 (Slosie 
 
 IN MEMORIAM, 
 
 I find among my pictures this drear day, 
 
 The shadow of a friend now far away, 
 
 Who walked in peace, if arching skies were bright, 
 
 Or when the world was veiled from human sight; 
 
 No limner's art can trace her matchless grace. 
 
 Nor catch the radiance of her sunny face, 
 
 It can not show, what life alone revealed. 
 
 Nor open tuneful lips that death has sealed. 
 
 Beyond the point where counter currents meet. 
 She safely passed on sure, unfaltering feet. 
 And smiling moved, despite all mocking fate. 
 From girlhood's dreams to woman's proud estate; 
 Her slender hands, that fed the hungry poor, 
 Had often knocked at sorrow's humble door. 
 And lingered long in loving, fond caress, 
 Upon a mother's head to soothe and bless. 
 What limner's art is helpless to portray, 
 Her hands had wrought each passing day. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 85 
 
 The light of truth shone in the earnest eyes 
 That saw, beside her path, no tempter's prize, 
 To lure her from the narrow, upward way, 
 That ends at last in an eternal day ; 
 She saw the good, enshrined in fallen man, 
 That upward tends since Adam's race began, 
 On far off hills beheld a shining light. 
 To guide each way-worn traveler aright; 
 No limner's art can show the stainless soul, 
 That showed despairmg men a heavenly goal. 
 
 She sung no songs devoid of hope or cheer. 
 
 Breathed out no sad refrain of doubt or fear. 
 
 Her silvern voice brought gladness in the home. 
 
 And called in luring tones to all aroam; 
 
 Brave, soothing words, instinct with faith and love, 
 
 Fell from her lips like raindrops from above. 
 
 And aching hearts forgot their secret pain. 
 
 And darkened souls felt light and warmth again. 
 
 No limner's art can show the soul aglow, 
 
 That drove from jfailing hearts despair and woe. 
 
 She treads no more the way of mortal life, 
 
 But safe forever from its heat and strife. 
 
 Will go no more on swift, untiring feet, 
 
 To joyless homes where want and failure meet; 
 
 Nor help the waifs upon a barren plain. 
 
 The outcast poor, who thread their way in pain. 
 
 Nor sing of love, that love may come again. 
 
86 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Nor lift, with song, the feet of weary men. 
 Can limner's art portray the mystic power, 
 That works and wins though tempests lower? 
 
 We wait outside a world that looms afar, 
 
 She calls to us, through gates of pearl ajar, 
 
 To come to her upon the higher height, 
 
 That lifts its head in pure, unfailing light; 
 
 While harpers strike their answering harps of gold. 
 
 She sings a song forever new, yet old. 
 
 Of changeless love, whose banner Christ unfurled 
 
 Above the ramparts of a fallen world. 
 
 Can limner's art the hope of triumph trace, 
 
 In speaking lines upon a pictured face. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 87. 
 
 (J^l7GirlG^ and buella Make Op. 
 
 Luella dropped the poodle and, springing to her feet, stood 
 with eyes distended and mouth wide open, while Charlie an- 
 nounced his determination to join the Senators and play with 
 them against the Chickadaws of Ouinceville. Although she 
 seemed wary and indifferent at times, she loved him with a 
 tenderness and tenacity that human language can not describe. 
 They had met the preceding week and were fast friends from 
 the beginning, even before their engagement which quickly 
 followed their first meeting. Charlie had met several girls in 
 his short, eventful life and had some doubts about the grip 
 Luella's affections had on him, and, in order to test the matter 
 satisfactorily, paved the way for his dramatic declaration by 
 reciting 'numerous harrowing tales of which the dead and 
 mangled heroes of the gridiron were the subjects. 
 
 One of his most intimate friends, a splendid stripling, had 
 left the field minus an eye and with a severed finger in his 
 pocket. Another fine fellow had gone home on a dray carry- 
 ing his broken leg with him. Still another, who was overproud 
 of his superb ivories, had left most of them in the mud where 
 the decisive struggle took place in a match game and lumber- 
 ing Lowman's mammoth foot hit his mouth instead of the ball. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 And Felix Flippen, his bosom friend and boon companion, 
 with elongated neck and colossal feet, had broken his collar 
 bone and died when a misdirected kick by a companion had 
 struck him in the middle, bringing his feet up and his head 
 down. 
 
 Luella admired his courage, but was shocked by his decision. 
 His thrilling description of the dangers that followed the play- 
 ers as closely as a jealous woman trails her faithless lover, 
 though rivers roll between, had a telling effect, and when he 
 told her, calmly and deliberately, that he intended to enlist 
 and serve until the foot ball war was over, unless death or 
 disability met him on the gory field, she reeled like a ship at 
 sea when the storm king troubles the waste of waters, and, with 
 a piercing scream, fell upon his neck and wept bitterly, while 
 the pug looked the astonishment it could not express. 
 
 "Oh, Charlie," she cried, while her tears rolled in torrents 
 dawn his unbent back and soaked the stiffiless out of his 
 E. &W. collar, "my life; do not j.oin that horrid team. Do 
 not defy death on his own territory. You are everything to 
 rne — the only man I ever loved, and I will not have it so. You 
 know I love you better than anything on earth; better even 
 than Jacques, the finest imported pug in America. Listen to 
 me. Do not enlist; stop this side of the danger line; let the 
 awful butchery go on, if it must, but remember the dreadful 
 fate of Lady Macbeth and do not stain your hands with inno- 
 cent blood or enrich the earth with yours, Persist in your 
 
• FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 89 
 
 course and my life is hopelessly wrecked. I shall go into 
 hysterics and my father will call in that ghoulish old doctor 
 who always collects his bills in advance when he practices his 
 killing art in our family. Oh, Charlie, fairest and bravest 
 among men, hear my prayer and answer it now. Christmas is 
 almost here and I want to save my money to buy, for you, a 
 pair of embroidered slippers and a collar button. For your 
 sobbing half-crazed Luella's sake let the whole beastly business 
 alone." 
 
 "Luella, you rave like a weakling and not like one who 
 expects to rest for life in the brawny arms of a man whose 
 courage is only equaled by his speed and muscle. I have 
 spoken and my word is law. The unbreakable laws of the 
 Medes and Persians are as plaster paris compared with my 
 decisions. Danger tempts me as wine tempts the tippler, and 
 I can laugh at death as the child laughs at the scorpion that 
 stings it. I will join the Senators though your pin money 
 goes to the miserly old doctor. Yes, though your heart break 
 and your tears fall like summer rain. I love you much, but I 
 love foot ball more." 
 
 Luella unwound her arms, shut up her fountain of tears and 
 replied angrily, while scorn turned up the corner of one rosy 
 lip: "Your insults are more than I can bear. Go hence, a 
 stranger, and never stand in my presence again. You are a 
 heartless man, a soulless monstrosity, incarnated for some 
 inscrutable purpose that God may understand if he ever thinks 
 
90 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 about disagreeable things. My love has turned to hate and I 
 see you now, as mamma said I would see you some day, a cold, 
 self-willed, cruel man. Go," she exclaimed, flinging the glitter- 
 ing diamond ring, that he had traded his bicycle for and placed 
 on her finger a few minutes before, contemptuously at his feet, 
 "and get glory by shedding blood if you will, but never profane 
 my name by letting it linger on your unhallowed lips again." 
 Then hugging the pug tightly to her throbbing bosom, Luella 
 moved proudly away and left Charlie wondering what on earth 
 would happen next. 
 
 * # * * * *- * * * *t * 
 
 The financial manager of the Senators saluted Charlie and 
 and called for a contribution from him for current expenses as 
 a condition preceding membership. Charlie grasped convul- 
 sively at the silver dollar in his pocket and thought the situa- 
 tion over. His laundry was in the hands of a man who would 
 keep it until the bill was paid, and he would not have another 
 dollar until his mother's monthly boarder settled her account. 
 So rather than wear soiled linen a fortnight, he declined to 
 contribute and did not become a Senator. 
 
 He hunted Luella aud falling upon his knees begged for mercy. 
 He could not be a player without money, but he could be a 
 lover and get embroidered slippers and a collar button, too. 
 He vainly attempted to grasp her elusive hand and cried 
 piteously: "Forgive me, dearest; throw away the pug and take 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 91 
 
 me to your arms again. I have sinned but I have suffered, and, 
 proud as I am, I beg for forgiveness. I did not know what I 
 was doing. I am cast in an heroic mould and the blood of 
 mighty warriors courses through my veins. The thirst for 
 glory and adventure was in me and I would have startled the 
 world by fearless deeds but for your moving appeals. I 
 have flung ambition to the winds, for your sake, and here I am, 
 at your feet, where I will stay until I am forgiven. Luella, 
 hold me in your arms again and press your unpainted lips to 
 mine like you did before we quarreled — before I drove you to 
 madness by my stinging words. Call me your own precious 
 Charlie again and I will be as happy as you are beautiful." 
 
 Luella was as calm as an uptown ofiice when the proprietor 
 steps in unexpectedly, and a look of triumph rested on her face. 
 She cast the pug aside, rose to her feet and bade Charlie 
 unbend his knees and stand face to face with her. The calm, 
 triumphant look passed away and a smile of ineffable sweet- 
 nest overspread her countenance, while love danced, in the 
 depths of her big, blue eyes. The displaced pug was discon- 
 certed, but rnade no demonstrations of joy or sorrow. He was 
 crestfallen, sad and thoughtful, but being very young and 
 unacquainted with the whims of American girls, could not 
 understand. The moon was wiser. It saw what was coming 
 and stepped behind a cloud, while all nature, sympathizing with 
 lovers reconciled, fell asleep till Charlie and Luella finished 
 making up. 
 
92 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Gfl79l and il^G eAlli|afor. 
 
 Tiny, mirthful, star-eyed Ethel played beside the noisome marsh, 
 
 Watches the flowers clamber upward, heard the frog's weird song so harsh; 
 
 Though her dainty head was hatless, and her small white feet were bare. 
 
 Sweetest songs were outward flowing like her soft, dishevelled hair. 
 
 She had southward gone, with papa, from the hills of old Kentuck, 
 
 And was having fun a plenty, and the very best of luck. 
 
 Never thinking as she scampered freely, madly, here and there, 
 
 Of the home she left behind her and the happy times that were. 
 
 Saw no fearful fate impending, heard no danger signal's call, 
 
 But unknowing, and unthinking, went, unwitting, to her fall. 
 
 All unseen an alligator slyly winked, and thus did say: 
 "I will fill my empty stomach with Kentucky girl to-day. 
 She, so very young and tender, will be easy to digest. 
 And to wisely snare and get her I will do my level best; 
 The Kentucky girls are wary and are very hard to fool. 
 And I'll never, never, eat one, if I'm not discreet and cool; 
 Oh, if she were not so restless, so disposed to skip and play, 
 I could quickly catch and eat her and enjoy myself to-day. 
 
 "Mercy, how she taunts and tempts me, with her flesh so gleaming white. 
 She will make a toothsome dessert or a Sunday supper light; 
 Now she nimbly frisks and frolics close beside the noisome marsh, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 93 
 
 Where the flowers clamber upward and the frog's weird song is harsh, 
 And comes closer, closer, closer, as her new born fears depart. 
 Bringing joy and expectation to my wildly throbbing heart. 
 If she stoops to pluck a flower on the marsh's deadly brink, 
 I can surely, safely house her, in my vacuum, I think. 
 
 I have fed on common niggers, with protesting cries and tears, 
 
 And insipid, tanned Floridians a score or more of years, 
 
 I need a change of diet, something wholesome, fresh, and young. 
 
 To cure my indigestion and restore my nerves unstrung; 
 
 I see the little rambler swiftly heading down this way. 
 
 To pluck an opening flower, now fragrant, bright and gay, 
 
 I'll shut my eyes and lie inert, just like a log decayed. 
 
 And soon will hide, from human sight, a trusting girl betrayed; 
 
 I'll never have a finer meal — have never had before, 
 
 Than one, I think, I'm going to have in twenty seconds more." 
 
 She stoops beside the marsh's brink, unmoved by doubts or fears, 
 He opens wide his monstrous mouth and — Ethel disappears. 
 
94 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Before and ©Affer. 
 
 BEFORE THE BURIAL. 
 
 How Still he lies; how calm his massive brow. 
 It's old-time shadows all have passed away, 
 And peace is resting in its furrows deep; 
 He rests, I know, from care and sorrow now, 
 Where doubt ne'er comes and love ne'er goes astray, 
 Yet, knowing all, I cry aloud and weep. 
 
 I saw the shadows gathering on his brow. 
 While he, so patient, wrought and toiled tor me. 
 From dawn 'till noon, from noon 'till eventide, 
 But kissed them not away. They haunt me now, 
 While he, unknowing lies, and I can see 
 The peace an angel brought on him abide. 
 
 I press, with mine, the pale, unanswering, lips 
 That were unsought when red with lusty life. 
 And bathe with tears his white, untroubled, face; 
 He does not heed, though trembling finger tips 
 Press sunken cheeks with death's own pallor rife, 
 And touch the lines my tears cannot efface. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 95 
 
 God help him see my loneliness and woe, 
 Who bore, unhelped by me, life's crushing ills, 
 While I, uncaring, trod a thornless way; 
 God hear my prayer that he may surely know 
 How memory goads and conscience never stills, 
 For, if he knows, he will forgive to-day. 
 
 If, by God's grace, I get another man 
 To bear for me the ills or human life 
 And blaze a way for my uncertain feet; 
 My love, that by the dead began. 
 Will make of me a wise, indulgent, wife, 
 Till death and I in final combat meet. 
 
 ONE WEEK LATER. 
 
 The dead heard not, a love-lorn bumpkin did. 
 He watched her bend above a shrouded form. 
 With piercing cries and swiftly falling tears; 
 And told her soon that purest love lay hid 
 In his heart's depths, unfettered, strong, and warm. 
 That should be her's adown the coming years. 
 
 TWO WEEKS LATER. 
 
 Don't plead my vows you silly, brazen fool, 
 And fret the bonds that fetter you for life. 
 While I move on my own, unquestioned way; 
 
96 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Don't talk of love that wearied and grew cool, 
 Then passed away. Serve me, your queenly wife, 
 Whom wiser men obeyed before your day. 
 
 This lesson learn, oh, bumpkins, young and old, 
 The greed of power is mightier than love. 
 In loveless wives, who loudly wail and weep 
 Above the wronged their arms did once enfold; 
 Their tears flow not from healing springs above, 
 But from the nether springs, impure and deep. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 97 
 
 )ome pamous 09oman §uffra|isfs. 
 
 Those who believe in universal suffrage need not be ashamed 
 to advocate principles that are unpopular in many sections of 
 our country. They may be regarded as dreamers and denounced 
 as fanatics, but their position is impregnable and their argu- 
 ments unanswerable. The truths they hold are self-evident 
 and will some day be universally accepted by thoughtful and 
 justice-loving people. Many of the leaders of thought in 
 England and America have insisted that in a republic woman 
 suffrage is not only inevitable but necessary and desirable. To 
 encourage suffragists who endure contempt for conscience 
 sake and contend with unfailing courage against fearful odds 
 I mention a few men and women, of national reputation or 
 world-wide fame, who have advocated or do advocate suffrage 
 for women. Those whose names are given have been distin- 
 guished as soldiers, statesmen, lecturers, writers, philosophers 
 or philanthropists. The list is necessarily incomplete, The 
 majority on our roll of honor are christians living, or christians 
 dead, worthy disciples of the Galilean commoner and emanci- 
 pator. 
 
98 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, Wendell Phillips, Gen. Neal Dow, Bishop 
 Simpson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W.' Longfellow, 
 John G. Whittier, Henry Wilson, William H. Seward, Chief 
 Justice Chase, Benjamin F. Wade, Dr. Wm. T. Harris, Joseph 
 Cook, Senator Hoar, Senator Blair, Dr. R. S. Storrs, T. DeWitt 
 Talmage, John Stuart Mill, Bishop H. C. Potter, Bishop 
 Spaulding, T. W. Higginson, Charles Kingsley, Herbert Spen- 
 cer, Prof. Huxley, James Freeman Clark, Bishop Gilbert 
 Haven, W. E. Gladstone, Charles Sumner, Wm. Lloyd Garri- 
 son, Dr. Blackwell, ex-Governor Warren, Hon. Carroll D. 
 Wright, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fred Douglass, Theodore Til- 
 ton, Samuel G. Howe, Rutherford B. Hayes. Gov. Banks, Gov. 
 Boutwell, Gov. Claflin, Gov. Washburn, Gov. Talbot, Gov. 
 Ames, Gov. Long, Senator Henry L. Dawes, John M. Forbes, 
 Rev. Robert Collyer, Bishop Bowman, Rev. Phillips Brooks, 
 Rev. A. J. Gordon, George William Curtis. Amanda Way, 
 Florence Nightingale, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Power 
 Cobbe, Zerelda G. Wallace (mother of Ben Hurr), Elizabeth 
 Stuart Phelps Ward, Louisa A. Alcott, Lydia Maria Childs, 
 Harriet Martineau, Mrs. James, Elizabeth Barrett Brooming, 
 Frances E. Willard, Mrs. A. J. Gordon, Alice Stone Blackwell, 
 Mrs. Charles, (author of "The Schonburg Cotta Family,") Mar- 
 garet Fuller, Frances D. Gage, Lucretia Mott, Julia Ward 
 Howe, Lady Somerset, J. Ellen Foster, Rev. Anna Shaw, 
 Mary A. Livermore, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stan- 
 ton, Helen Gougar, Josephine K. Henry, Laura B. Clay, Clara 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 99 
 
 Barton, Abbie W. May, Lucy Stone, Mary F. Eastman, Mary 
 Clemmer, Victoria C Woodhull, Harriett Prescott Spofford, 
 and Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden. The daughters of John D. 
 Rockafeller, the multi-millionaire, are among the young suf- 
 ragists of New Yoric. 
 
 Wise men neither overestimate their strength nor underesti- 
 mate the strength of their. enemies. The universal suffragists 
 know that they have character, intelligence and respectability, 
 but they want numbers, and are trying to secure them. A 
 minority, however select it may be, can not cope with a majority 
 when vital issues are determined by the votes of the people. 
 Multitudes ha^^e joined their ranks, and their growth in num- 
 bers and influence since the war has been phenomenal, but 
 they need more converts, and the work of proselyting goes 
 steadily on. 
 
 Alice Stone Blackwell, in a recent article says: "Sixty years 
 ago women could not vote anywhere. In 1845 Kentucky gave 
 school suffrage to widows. In 1861 Kansas gave it to all 
 women. In 1869 England gave municipal suffrage to single 
 women and widows, and Wyoming gave full suffrage to all 
 women. School suffrage was granted in 1875 by Michigan 
 and Minnesota, m 1876 by Colorado, in 1878 by New Hamp- 
 shire and Oregon, in 1879 by Massachusetts, in 1880 by New 
 York and Vermont. In 1881 municipal suffrage was granted 
 to the single women and widows of Scotland. Nebraska 
 granted school suffrage in 1883, and Wisconsin in 1885. In 
 
iri 
 
 100 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 1886 school suffrage was given in Washington, and municipal 
 suffrage to single women and widows in Ontario and New 
 Brunswick. In 1887 municipal suffrage was extended to all 
 women in Kansas, and school suffrage in North and South 
 Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey. In 1891 school 
 suffrage was granted in Illinois. In 1892 municipal suffrage 
 was extended to single women and widows in the Province 
 of Quebec. In 1893 school suffrage was granted in Connecti- 
 cut, and full suffrage in Colorado and New Zealand. In 1894 
 school suffrage was granted in Ohio, a limited municipal suf- 
 frage in Iowa, and parish and district suffrage in England to 
 women, both married and single. In 1895 f'-ill suffrage has 
 been extended in South Australia to women, both married 
 and single. The world is evidently moving in the direction of 
 equal rights for women. It is better to help draw the car of 
 progress than to be dragged ignominiously at its wheels." 
 
 Their most uncompromising enemies are saloon keepers, but 
 they encounter opposition from all kinds of people. A Kentucky 
 Doctor of Divinity says: "The masses, and the classes, and the 
 asses, are against the preachers." It can be said, truthfully, that 
 these diverse fragments of society, with occasional exceptions, 
 are in many States a unit in opposition to the new evangels, 
 who proclaim the gospel of equality and plead for the enfran- 
 chisement of women. I cheerfully admit, without argument, 
 that millions of the wisest and best people in the United 
 States are opposed to giving the ballot to women. They are 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 101 
 
 earnest, honest and conscientious, and are as clearly entitled 
 to their opinions as are those who entertain contrary views. 
 Equal suffragists can not consistently claim infallibility or a 
 monopoly of truth. Fallible should be written across the 
 creeds of Christendom, the political platforms that men build,- 
 and the published utterances of theorists, philosophers and 
 historians, until human imperfections pass away and the undis- 
 puted reign of the perfect man is ushered in, for behind 
 every creed, platform, philosophy, history, and opinion is a 
 biased or imperfect man or a combination of biased or imper- 
 fect men. They should patiently appeal to the sense of 
 justice in fair-minded men and women and convince the judg- 
 ments of doubting Thomases and inquiring unbelievers by 
 marshalling facts and disclosing principles that command 
 assent. God reigns. If they are right they will succeed; if 
 they are wrong they will fail. 
 
 When John Wesley called slavery the sum of all villainies 
 and Wm. Lloyd Garrison pronounced it a league with death 
 and a covenant with hell, thousands of christians whose ability 
 and piety could not be questioned rallied to its defense and 
 quoted texts of scripture to show that God sanctioned it. So, 
 now, when modern iconoclasts declare the subjection of women 
 to be unjust, ungenerous and unchristian those who magnify 
 the letter and minify the spirit of the law invoke Moses and 
 Paul to prove that woman is man's subject and not his equal. 
 Those who assaulted slavery and led the crusade against it. 
 
102 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 were regarded as agitators, fanatics and disturbers of the pub- 
 lic peace, not only in the slave States but in every part of the 
 Union. History repeats itself, and those who advocate the 
 cause of women now, as Phillips and Garrison championed the 
 cause of the enslaved then, are sowing to the wind and will 
 reap the whirlwind of popular indignation. The public will 
 regard them as enemies of social order and good government, 
 and ease-loving people, who love peace better than they love 
 principle, will denounce them as meddling busybodies or pes- 
 tilent fellows. 
 
 Phillips and Garrison lived long enough to hear shackles 
 falling from a fettered race, and many of those who are 
 despised and rejected now, like their elder brother, who stood 
 for the weak against the strong, will live to hear the trium- 
 phant songs of an emancipated sex. Until wrong is driven 
 from the throne that it has usurped, and right ascends it, they 
 expect opposition from the church and the saloon, society and 
 the rabble, the good and the bad, but they are neither intimi- 
 dated nor discouraged. They believe in their cause. They 
 have faith in themselves and their God, and are not standing 
 like plumed knights with lances at rest waiting for the hosts 
 of oppression to appear, but are marching to meet them and 
 offer battle. Many of their foemen are their equals in courage 
 and constancy, their peers in intelligence, kindness and morals, 
 but many of them are cowardly and inconstant, ignorant, cruel 
 and immoral. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 103 
 
 It is reasonably certain that the heroes of the chr'stian faith, 
 from Abraham to Jesus, wore long hair. There are causes 
 which compel some women to cut off the flowing tresses that 
 add so much to their physical beauty, nevertheless there are 
 men unable to state a proposition or recognize an argument, 
 who imagine that they are prodigiously funny when they talk 
 facetiously about long-haired men and short-haired women, 
 and laugh immoderately, at their borrowed wit, as they ridicule 
 the demands and pretensions of those who insist upon larger 
 liberty for proscribed classes and, in their opinion, make much 
 ado about nothing. Nearly all of our modern reformers wear 
 their hair as custom requires, whether custom has the right to 
 dictate to them or not. It is a matter of surprise that the 
 feeble-minded contingent, with its battle cry, long-haired men 
 and short-haired women still cumbers the earth, but it does, 
 and none but God knows why. It is possible that fools are 
 social necessities and that idiots are proofs of depravity that 
 will exist, as object lessons for those who proclaim. the fall 
 through Adam and redemption through Christ, until the curse 
 is lifted and the race begins a higher life in which character 
 and not hair will make people respectable. 
 
 In His own time the light of the world, panoplied with 
 power, will come to dethrone the prince of darkness and hurl 
 him into the depths from whence he came. When his reign is 
 fully established the regime in which Americans, by withhold- 
 ing the right of suffrage, class their mothers, wives, sisters 
 
104 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 and sweethearts with the irresponsible and dangerous elements 
 of society, minors, criminals, and idiots, will pass away. It is 
 possible, if not probable, that in the new kingdom the equality 
 of the sexes will be recognized and the inequalities existing in 
 man-made governments will be unknown. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 105 
 
 (^l^arley's eAppGal. 
 
 Oh, lay my head upon your bosom fair, 
 
 Oh, plow, with slender hands, my yellow hair, 
 
 Oh, kiss me once again; 
 
 Why laugh in scorn, despite the swelling sigh 
 
 Wrung from white lips, too proud to cry, 
 
 Though in the throes of pain. 
 
 If you could know that in my stainless sonl, 
 I deem your love my chiefest earthly goal, 
 Your cup of bliss would surely overflow. 
 If you could know my dream of coming joy 
 Is your dear self, your love without alloy. 
 Your spirits would not droop so low. 
 
 If you could see, beneath my towering pride. 
 The love that runs to meet an answering tide 
 And knows no changing ebb and flow; 
 If you could know the burden of my song 
 In social whirl, or sleepless hours so long. 
 You would not fear and doubt me so. 
 
 I, from loves thralldom, nevermore am free, 
 But cannot bend, too oft, the supple knee. 
 
106 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 And pour denials in the ear of doubt. 
 Why can't you see that in my inner soul, 
 There bides a changeless love, intense and whole, 
 That puts all other loves to rout? 
 
 You know me well, 'tis strange you can not see, 
 
 That my imperious love, so proud and free, 
 
 Will backward flow, when wrongly scourged and fought, 
 
 And will not bear a doubter's stinging lash. 
 
 Doubt ever tends, when baseless, cruel, rash. 
 
 To breed contempt, where purest love has wrought. 
 
 With lowering brow you hear me chide and pray, 
 
 Your doubts have won; so turn in wrath away, 
 
 Uncaring that I pray in vain; 
 
 " Oh, lay my head upon your bosom fair, 
 
 Oh, plow, with slender hands, my yellow hair. 
 
 Oh, kiss me once again." 
 
 The girl who held my helpless hands to-night. 
 
 In the full glare of the electric light. 
 
 And, though I struggled, kissed me too, 
 
 Was Cousin Gene just home from boarding school; 
 
 You'll learn, I think, when warring passions cool, 
 
 That what she wills she finds a way to do. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 107 
 
 )ome (J^l^risfmas ^l^ou^l^fs aAboaf @i\)in< 
 
 Christmas is here and hearts are heavy or light according to 
 circumstances. I hope our christian people will enjoy the 
 day and imitate one who went about doing good in whose 
 honor it is named. Men who don't feel liberal when Christ- 
 mas comes are sure, enough misers and beyond redemption. 
 Somehow the desire to give dominates christianized men on 
 Christmas Day, as on no other, and the inclination to love and 
 be helpful is very strong in those who are not wholly selfish. 
 There is something in the day which broadens men and opens 
 closed, ungenerous, hearts. The custom of giving is a beauti- 
 ful one where the motives are worthy, but it may be, and often 
 is, abused by people who are not experts. 
 
 A gift, where love animates the giver, is a sacred thing, and 
 is never given with the expectation of receiving an equivalent. 
 The man who gives, in that spirit, does not give, he simply 
 makes an investment. Those who receive real gifts, however 
 insignificant, should appreciate them for the sake of the givers. 
 
 Many gifts are either worthless or inconvenient, but where 
 they are given in the right manner are highly prized by those 
 who receive them. The offerings of the poor are often value- 
 less, in a money sense, but they represent love and sacrifice, 
 
108 FR03I TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 and are weightier than the gifts of princes that are prompted 
 by the love of display or the hope of reward. The gifts 
 of children, often grotesque and inappropriate and seldom 
 valuable, are evidences of childhood's simple faith and the 
 will to manifest, by giving, the love that desires to bestow 
 favors. 
 
 It is unkind, if not vulgar and unchristian, for those who 
 have received many or costly presents to display them vaunt- 
 ingly to those who have been neglected. Somehow a sensi- 
 tive woman or child — even a man, with his masterful contempt 
 for trifles — feels neglect keenly and does not like to be over- 
 looked by the queer looking old gentleman, who drives the 
 reindeers, when he makes his annual distribution, and their 
 hearts are heavy when they see others receiving so many 
 expressions of love while they receive none. It is not so much 
 the lack of gifts that troubles sensitive people as the fact that 
 they are not in the thoughts of others. 
 
 The children of the rich or liberal should say very little, 
 about what they have received, before the children of the poor 
 or illiberal who have received nothing. Oh, how many eyes 
 are red; how many voices are tremulous; how many hearts 
 are aching, in our land to-day because little hands are empty. 
 
 The unremembered or neglected women and children whose 
 stockings have been overlooked and hang unfilled on the 
 walls — where they were hung in hope— appeal very strongly 
 to my sympathy. I may be in error, but I believe that while 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 109 
 
 men, who are so poor that they cannot give, are excusable, men 
 who have well-filled purses and the ability to gladden their 
 wives and children by bestowing little proofs of love and 
 remembrance upon them, but do not do so, are either thought- 
 less or cruel, or both, and justly fall in the estimation of those 
 they are honor-bound to make happy in every proper way. I 
 am not authority on hell, but incline to the opinion that it is a 
 place where love never comes with its gentle ministrations* 
 and where selflessness is unknown. The heart of a selfish man, 
 who never considers the needs and pleasures of others, is such 
 a place, and I would sound a note of warning to those who 
 never take other people into their lives or calculations, who, 
 if they would, fly from the wrath to come, must make room in 
 their hearts for love and its offspring. 
 
 The knowledge that somebody loves and remembers makes 
 gifts precious, and, when none are received, it seems to the 
 average mortal that he is not in the thoughts or affections of 
 others. 
 
 There are some good men who are opposed to observing 
 Christmas. These, of course, are not expected to observe the 
 customs that give the day its distinctive character. 
 
 There are many fathers and husbands who have no money 
 to buy presents and feel genuine sorrow because those they 
 love must be passed by. For the generous poor, who have 
 nothing but the will, there is a valid excuse, but for the stingy 
 rich and well-to-do, who have everything but the will, there is 
 
110 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 no excuse, unless they have conscientious scruples about giv- 
 ing on special days. 
 
 I know no more about the actual date of Christ's birth than 
 a hippopotamus does about Calvin's Institutes, and this fact 
 ought to be explained, over and over again, as there is a 
 tendency to give Christmas an importance and sacredness that 
 does not belong to it. I can approximate very nearly the 
 nativity, but the exact day of the advent is unknown. While I 
 do not know the precise time that God's best gift to man 
 reached the earth, I do know that, wherever Christian civiliza- 
 tion has gone, Christmas is a perpetual witness of one who 
 exalted the humble, raised the fallen, and gave Himself for 
 others. 
 
 Men can not give direct to Him, for He walks no more 
 among men as he did centuries ago, but the poor are always 
 with them and they can give to them, and by so doing give to 
 Him, When the rich and proud rejected Him the poor and 
 the humble received Him. When palace doors were shut 
 against Him he sat as a loved and honored guest in the homes 
 of the common people. The Christ who knew hunger, weari- 
 ness and thirst, remembers those who, in their poverty, did 
 what they could for Him, and has committed the poor as a 
 sacred charge to His representatives, and woe unutterable will 
 come to those who neglect them or refuse to help them bear 
 the burdens that are pressing them down. 
 
 If all, who can, will give something rivers of delight will flow, 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. Ill 
 
 with ever-increasing volume, through the arid plains of our 
 storm-beaten world and songs of hope will drown the cries of 
 despair. If the fault-finding, unsentimental husbands, who have 
 nothing that gleams like gold, will kiss the furrowed brows 
 and withered lips of the wives who have grown old and hag- 
 gard in faithful service as they did before age blighted the 
 roses of youth, faded faces will freshen again. If fretful, care- 
 worn wives will give old-time caresses and words of faith and 
 tenderness to the husbands that, unthought of and uncared 
 for, have toiled, fruitlessly it may be, for them through long 
 and weary years, dead loves will come to life, and harmony 
 build up what discord has torn down. 
 
 Jesus Christ is love and love is heaven. The unfailing test 
 of love is giving. Somehow I believe that when the unending 
 Christmas dawns upon the earth, that before it breaks will feel 
 His transforming power, men will be like Him. Darkness and 
 contention will disappear from their abodes and sunshine will 
 pour its golden floods into homes where peace reigns undis- 
 turbed and across whose portals the twin devils of doubt and 
 despair will pass outward forevermore. Love, radiant as the 
 sun, will drive dark browed hate into the nether depths, from 
 whence he came, and out of the scattered fragment of a war- 
 ring rac6 create a common brotherhood in which each will 
 serve his brother rather than himself. 
 
 The day is fast approaching when men will give, not gold 
 
112 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 alone, but love and sympathy, like the princely giver, whose 
 advent we this day celebrate. 
 
 I wish the old men, who lean heavily upon their staffs as 
 they approach the boundary of shadow land; the old women, 
 who are patiently waiting for the clouds to rift and the gates 
 to open; the stalwart men and strong women, who seldom 
 think of the line that divides mortal and immortal worlds, over 
 which all must pass, or of the clouds that hide from home- 
 bound pilgrims the gates of gold; the sanguine boys and girls, 
 so full of life, love, and hope, who see, far in advance, a cloud- 
 less noon and a night aflame with stars; the unfortunate, the 
 misunderstood and the unhappy, with those who face disaster, 
 endure contempt and fight pain, "A Merry Christmas and a 
 Happy New Year." I surely wish, though I dare not hope, 
 that every stocking, big or little, patched or unpatched, that 
 hangs on the wall of a wayside cabin, or an urban palace, may 
 be filled to overflowing. 
 
 If some who have enough, and to spare, will go in Christ's 
 name, among the outcasts and into the haunts of the vicious, 
 where debauched men and shameless women indulge in ruin- 
 ous excesses, or sit in mute despair and pray for death, in 
 search of those who have no stockings to hang up, and sur- 
 prise them by giving, what they do not expect, it may be that 
 some, who are ready to curse God and die, will thank Him for 
 sending love into the world and bless the messengers who 
 brought its tokens into the depths and made them luminous. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 113 
 
 I^oberf cind -tl^G §far. 
 
 He sat and watched the silent stars, 
 
 Parade the azure sky, 
 Saw Venus bright and regnant Mars, 
 
 Above the hill top high, 
 Saw in the depths, far, far away, 
 
 In the enchanting light, 
 A little star that seemed astray 
 
 To haunting human sight, 
 I watched his thoughtful baby face 
 
 Toward my own upturned. 
 And heard him tell, with childish grace 
 
 The lesson he had learned. 
 
 " Some stars are big and some are small. 
 
 And none too old to grow; 
 My teacher says God made them all 
 
 To shine on us below, 
 1 think the tiny, baby star 
 
 With such a feeble light 
 Is younger than the one afar 
 
 That twinkles all the night. 
 If it is old, why does it not 
 
 Laugh with the rest 'till dawn? 
 It must be young, or God forgot 
 
 To put the twinkles on." 
 
114 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Qene. 
 
 So Gene is dead! Beautiful, wayward, faithless Gene. The 
 man who wrecked her young life walks unchallenged among 
 men and women, who never loved "not wisely but too well," 
 do him reverence. She met death by violence, and left her 
 friends a heritage of dishonor. 
 
 I have read somewhere that God is merciful; and 'tis said by 
 those who saw her in the morgue, that He burnished anew her 
 locks of gold, and brought back to her pain-riven, passion- 
 swept face the sunny smile of her sinless youth. The placid 
 brow, the sleeping eye-lids, and the pouting lips, gave no hint 
 of lawless love and unholy living, but were mute and eloquent 
 witnesses of her innocence before she dallied with lust, and, in 
 her delirium, exchanged the — 
 
 "Lilies and languors of virtue for the roses and raptures of vice." 
 
 Men spoke lightly of the dead Magdalene, and women 
 shuddered at the mention of her shame; but may we not hope 
 that He who, stooping, wrote in the sand and sat upon the 
 well at Sychar will remember her great temptation and the 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 115 
 
 unequal contest she waged with those who "set traps for the 
 unwary." May He not remember that once she believed in 
 Him and called Him by name, and in His matchless mercy, 
 foreive His errine child. 
 
116 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Some pamoas pai 09omGn. 
 
 In big, fat arms young Nero slept, 
 Ere he was crowned and martyrs wept. 
 
 The sensuous "Serpent of the Nile," 
 Was fat and crafty, bright and vile. 
 
 Famed Petrarch's Laura, fat and fair, 
 Had dimpled cheeks and sunny hair. 
 
 Shapely but fat — pray don't forget, — 
 Was queenly, gracious Antoinette. 
 
 Fair Flamminetto, fat and tall, 
 Boccacio loved the best of all. 
 
 The virgin queen, with coarse red hair, 
 Was fat and fickle, vain and fair. 
 
 Though feared by priest and diplomat. 
 Queen Marg'rite of Navarre was fat. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 117 
 
 So, too, were those so famous grown, 
 Whose graces Rubens well has shown. 
 
 Like Russia's Catharine, fat and tall, 
 Were Titian's beauties, one and all. 
 
 Napoleon's cast-off Josephine, 
 Was fat, and fussy too, I ween. 
 
 Fat, too, was one well known to fame, 
 The Madame Roland none could tame. 
 
 Napoleon braved, could but despise 
 The proud DeStael so fat and wise. 
 
 George Sand, who with the scorners sat. 
 Was brave and brilliant, smart and fat. 
 
 Fat, too, the wise Castilian queen, 
 Who sailed her ships to shores unseen. 
 
 Like her who rules, beyond the sea. 
 Our English kinsman, brave and free. 
 
 And him, who trails fresh items down. 
 And gathers news for all the town. 
 
118 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 ^oW fo Bg}]gi\}g af a ^ofel. 
 
 My Dear Charlie: 
 
 I understand you intend to leave this summer and feel dis- 
 posed to offer some suggestions as to your conduct at the 
 hotels you may honor with your presence. 
 
 Always speak patronizingly to the proprietor of the estab- 
 lishment where you may stop, and authoratively to the clerk. 
 Unless you do this they may not fully realize your importance 
 A great many widely traveled men are careless and indifferent 
 about the impressions they make and some are thoughtless 
 enough to talk familiarly with the clerks. 
 
 Never buy but one postage stamp at a time and never offer 
 less than a dollar in making payment. Men who buy several 
 stamps at once, and offer exact change when paying for them, 
 are too considerate of the clerk, who ought to be kept busy so 
 that on Saturday night he can draw his salary with a clear con- 
 science. 
 
 Whenever you can do so get the bell boy to run errands 
 when his services- are needed at the hotel. Never, under any 
 circumstances, hire him to go on a trip when he is at leisure or 
 is not needed by the proprietor or other guests. Landlords 
 and ladies are paid for the accommodations they furnish, and 
 should be put to all the trouble and inconvenience possible. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 119 
 
 The guests expect to be disappointed and will be if they are 
 not. 
 
 Never go to your meals on time. Undignified people, and 
 those who are busy, do that. If everthingis placed before you, 
 fresh from the kitchen and steaming hot, you will have little 
 cause for complaint, and if you don't want to be commonplace 
 you must grumble, not only at the food, but the manner in 
 which it is served. 
 
 Hotel keepers should be reminded frequently, and in strong 
 language, that they do not render equivalents and are not 
 giving satisfaction. They should be kept humble and not be 
 allowed to put on airs, as they are liable to do. Gather up all 
 the newspapers and periodicals in sight and keep them until 
 you have read them. Others may want to read, too, and may 
 be impudent enough to say so and suggest that you divide up, 
 but you must, at all hazards, stand firm. They can wait, and 
 should be compelled to do so. Possession is nine points in law, 
 though the possessor is a hog. You can add a great deal to 
 the general discomfort of your fellow guests by taking the 
 papers to your room, Some ill-bred people may object, but 
 you should not allow yourself to be influenced by them. 
 
 Never graciously accept any explanation or apology that 
 may be offered by the proprietor or any of his employes. 
 Though you may be satisfied that no blame can justly attach 
 to any of them, give them to understand that you have been 
 outrageously treated and will devote the remainder of your life 
 
120 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 to ruining their hotel and diverting trade to their competitors. 
 
 Make it convenient to talk incessantly in the reading room, 
 where drummers and others are writing important letters and 
 making out orders and reports. Drummers are said to be very 
 fastidious about little things and may intimate that "Silence is 
 golden" and that "Your room is better than your company," 
 and may even go so far as to tell you that the office, and not 
 the reading room, is the place for linguistic exhibitions and 
 encounters, but you must stand up for your rights and talk 
 right on whether any body listens or not. Drummers are all 
 right in their places, but what right have they to dictate to a 
 young man of elegant leisure on a pleasure trip? Do every- 
 thing you can — with safety — to annoy them, when they want 
 quiet and seclusion, and you may depend on their hatred and 
 contempt "without money and without price," and may feel 
 sure that by your impertinence you have made the hotel odious 
 to them. 
 
 If, at any time, you see the clerk balancing his accounts or 
 busy assigning rooms to new arrivals, do your level best to 
 draw him into a private conversation. If he shows a disposi- 
 tion to ignore your efforts, get highly indignant, and if you are 
 confident that you are a better man physically than he is, tell 
 him that he is no gentleman and advise him to go to some 
 school of politeness and learn good manners, and then suggest 
 to the proprietor that a change in his office force will increase 
 his business a hundred fold. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 12 L 
 
 If you intend staying several days be careful not to say any- 
 thing about rates, when you register, and call for the best room 
 in the hotel. When you settle demand the lowest weekly rates. 
 If the clerk suggests that, in the absence of any agreement to 
 the contrary, it was expected that you would pay the usual 
 rates for transient guests, and that less desirable room are 
 usually furnished weekly and monthly customers at boarding 
 house prices, work yourself into a passion and insist that you 
 did make arrangements, and if he does not do as you want him 
 to, go to the proprietor and insist upon your rights. Tell him 
 you don't propose to be robbed and that his clerk is an ass 
 any way. 
 
 While you are in town cultivate with great assiduity the 
 acquaintance of the unemployed and have your friends c.all 
 regularly and take possession of the ofifice and reading room. 
 A great many people think that the chairs in a hotel are for 
 guests, but this is not so. They are for the use of those who 
 board elsewhere and spend their leisure in discussing local 
 affairs in public places. Guests who pay $2 a day are able to 
 furnish their own chairs. 
 
 Always give your orders to servants in an indistinct tone 
 and abuse them roundly if they do not understand. Never tell 
 one exactly what you want him to do, but, if he does not do it, 
 report him to the proprietor and insist that he be dismissed at 
 once for incompetency. Servants are employed for guests to 
 
122 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 brow beat and you will be expected to spit venom at them on 
 every occasion that presents itself. 
 
 When you are in the company of other guests never express 
 an opinion until you have found out what they believe, then 
 take the opposite view. If they are christians quote Ingersoll and 
 assert that Tom Paine was the greatest man the infant republic 
 ever knew. If they are Republicans vilify Grant and declare 
 that Lincoln was a mountebank and deserved martyrdom. If 
 they are prohibitionists tell them that the liquor interest over- 
 stops all others and that whiskey dealers have done more for 
 the United States than any other set of men. 
 
 By so doing you will precipitate heated discussions and 
 make yourself a nuisance generally, which will intensify your 
 personality and make you conspicuous. If any one shows a 
 disposition to be friendly and enlighten you about the crops 
 and the state of the weather, snub him — provided he is one of 
 the snubable kind. If he resents the snub, exhibits symptoms 
 of belligerency, and is well muscled or handy with a gun 
 pacify him by all means and be profuse in your apologies if 
 necessary. 
 
 By following my advice you will do your part toward mak- 
 ing men weary of the world and worldly things and thus 
 prepare them to pray for the speedy coming of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
FROM TAPS 7 ILL REVEILLE. 123 
 
 I'm (;omin|, )4G\)Gr pear. 
 
 I pray you pretty one so young and fair 
 With sunshine nestling in your sunny hair, 
 Come go with me this bright spring day 
 To our dear Sunday-school across the way. 
 The answer came, in sweet tones soft and clear, 
 I really wish I could, I'm coming, never fear. 
 
 The years rolled on and she, a woman grown, 
 Was reaping, here and there, as she had sown; 
 I saw her once again; Oh ! she was wondrous fair. 
 With sunshine nestling in her sunny hair, 
 Come go with me this glorious Summer day 
 To our dear Sunday-school across the way. 
 The answer came, in sweet tones soft and clear, 
 I really wish I could, I'm coming, never fear. 
 
 The years rolled on and she, still older grown. 
 
 Was reaping, here and there, as she had sown; 
 
 I saw her care-worn face that yet was wondrous fair, 
 
 The white threads sleeping in her sunny hair. 
 
 Come go with me this radiant Autumn day 
 
 To our dear Sunday-school across the way. 
 
 The answer came, in tones yet soft and clear, 
 
 I really wish I could, I'm coming, never fear. 
 
124 FR03I TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 The years rolled on and she, more aged grown, 
 Was reaping, here and there, as she had sown; 
 I saw the wrinkled face that once was wondrous fair, 
 The sunbeams resting on her snowy hair; 
 Come go with me this storm-swept Winter day 
 To our dear Sunday-school across the way. 
 The answer came, in tones once soft and clear, 
 I really wish I could, I'm coming, never fear. 
 
 I pray you pretty one so young and fair 
 With sunshine nestling in your sunny hair. 
 Come go with me this bright Spring day 
 To our dear Sunday-school across the way; 
 Come now, say not in sweet tones soft and clear: 
 "I really wish I could, I'm coming, never fear." 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 125 
 
 @roWin<^ ©Id. 
 
 There comes a time in every man's life when he realizes that 
 his physical charms are passing away, and that he must depend 
 on other resources to secure the notice and esteem of an 
 exacting public. His hoary head and bent back, his shrunken 
 hands and furrowed cheeks may be pathetic in their sugges- 
 tions, and excite pity, but they will not charm unless they are 
 witnesses of a blameless and self-sacrificing life. 
 
 A beautiful soul makes a radiant face, to which people 
 instinctively turn with love and admiration, though it may 
 show the tracery of age and pain. 
 
 One of the questions men are perpetually discussing is: 
 How can a man be attractive after he has passed his meridian? 
 As a rule, when a man begins to feel the ravages of years his 
 mental state changes for the worse and his spiritual fervor, if 
 he has any, abates or varies with his moods. When he is in 
 perfect health, and his faculties are unimpaired, he has no 
 experimental knowledge of physical pain and is optimistic 
 in his philosophy. When sleep come unsought, and sleepless 
 hours, and the nightmares of so many troubled sleepers, are 
 unknown to him, his days are tranquil and full of peace and 
 hope, but when age and disease beget insomnia and continuous 
 
126 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 depression and suffering, he becomes hypochondriachal and 
 pessimistic. Life becomes a monotonous round of fatiguing 
 duties and cruel disappointments, and unless he possesses the 
 rarest of all gifts — a thankful and contented disposition, — he 
 becomes hopeless. A hopeless man is a mad man. The folly 
 of the man who thinks years constitute lite, and that age, 
 characterless age, should command reverence is astounding. 
 Age can be beautiful, and youth will bow to it, if there is 
 something in it to beget leverence and inspire confidence, 
 but it may be so monstrous and repellant that the pure 
 minded will turn from it with horror. One of the most 
 repulsive things known to human vision — pitiful and affecting 
 though it may be — is an old man whose thoughts are unclean, 
 whose language is foul and whose face indexes a leprous soul 
 and life; who is, even on the verge of the grave, a libertine and 
 a debauchee. The winter of life should be as serene and 
 beautiful as an Italian sky when no clouds obscure its 
 benignant face. 
 
 The man upon whose head the "snows that never melt are 
 falling," and whose back is bending under the ever increasing 
 burdens of life should cultivate the graces of the spirit and sit 
 as a willing disciple at the feet of the Great Teacher, He 
 should, in every way possible, increase his stock of mental 
 supplies and enlarge his spiritual capacities if he expects to 
 be a recognized factor in social, political, and religious circles, 
 and meet grim-fronted death, with a peaceful mind and a 
 
FR03f TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 127 
 
 smiling face, when the curtains are ready to fall, and the last 
 act in the drama of life is on. 
 
 Truth is a fountain of youth, a perennial beautifier, a divine 
 elixir, and he who holds and lives it will never be out of touch 
 with the purest and best of his kind. Sensuous grace and 
 beauty may depart, when the shadows lengthen and the light 
 grows dim, but a sense of spiritual power and companionship 
 will remain. It will not forsake him though he breasts alone, 
 the merciless river that frets its sunless banks and murmurs 
 against the gloom that overshadows it, but will abide, until its 
 floods roll behind, and he enters, unchallenged, the land of 
 perpetual youth. 
 
128 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 (f\lQ IsifflG Maiden's prater. 
 
 You buy me bananas and candies sweet, 
 And hold my hands whenever we meet — 
 
 You darling impudent thing. 
 You swear that you love me night and day, 
 And make me as happy every way 
 
 As a "coon" with a chicken's wing. 
 
 You make me giggle from night till morn. 
 With almanac jokes, "all tattered and torn" — 
 
 You giddy, delightful clown. 
 You flirt with the girls to tease poor me, 
 And make me as wretched as I could be 
 
 If my hair were coming down. 
 
 You tickle my chin and pull my nose, 
 
 Till I tremble and blush like a new-blown rose- 
 
 You lovely, presumptuous tease. 
 You tousle my hair and rumple my sash. 
 Till I feel like knocking you all to smash; 
 
 Don't do so often, please. 
 
FROiM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 129 
 
 Business I^ales. 
 
 Employes- are expected to come late and leave early. 
 
 Any one keeping regular hours and making any effort to 
 master the details of business will be suspected of sinister 
 designs and peremptorily discharged. 
 
 The janitor must quarrel with the office boy as often as possi- 
 ble during business hours and read the papers while the pro- 
 prietor carries in coal and sweeps the floor. 
 
 Any one who does not abuse the management, and betray 
 the secrets he may be entrusted with, will be considered devoid 
 of spirit and instructed to call for his time. 
 
 Any one treating the manager with courtesy will show a 
 spirit of meanness and subordination that will not be tolerated 
 and notified that his services are no longer needed. 
 
 Any employe not drawing his salary in advance and taking 
 days off in the busy season, without notice, will be expected 
 to resign, to escape the humiliation of a dismissal. 
 
 Mercantile establishment are equipped and run for the 
 accorrimodation of employes and managers are employed for 
 them to abuse when not engaged in neglecting business. . 
 
 Every employe must do every thing in his or her power to 
 antagonize the people who, with considerate treatment, may 
 
i:]a FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 be induced to patronize the house or direct their friends to it. 
 
 Employes are required to cultivate the acquaintance of the 
 frivolous and impecunious and ignore, or treat with contempt, 
 the solid and influential who may buy or can influence trade. 
 
 Any one answering important correspondence at the proper 
 time, or making enrries in the books in an orderly manner, 
 will display too much knowledge and consideration and will 
 be notified to quit at once. 
 
 Any lady clerk who meets a customer promptly and dis- 
 cusses the merits of goods, in a business like way, instead of 
 flirting with the dudes, who may drop in or pass by, will dis- 
 play too much enterprise and too little sentiment and her 
 place will be declared vacant. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 131 
 
 fphe (Jail. 
 
 The call to strike sounds o'er the wires 
 
 From Eastern coast unto the'Golden Gate. 
 Shall men obey and fan the smouldering fires, 
 
 Arouse the murderous. force of human hate? 
 They know that giant wrongs prevail and feel 
 
 That toil don't always reap a fair reward; 
 That greed unheeding stands while men appeal 
 
 And shows the suppliant's cry but scant regard. 
 
 Some men, begirt with piles of gleaming gold, 
 
 Reck not of dangers toilers sometimes know; 
 Weep not when hunger's piteous tale is told, 
 
 Nor for the workman's galling want and woe. 
 But shall men leave the engines and the shops, 
 
 Forsake the lines that stretch from sea to sea? 
 When roads shut down, and crippled commerce stops, 
 
 Where will their brimming "Horns of Plenty" be? 
 
 When times are hard, with stealthy, noiseless, tread 
 
 Sore famine comes and stalks through stricken lands 
 Or sits enthroned where men, in voiceless dread, 
 
132 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 In silence brood and fold their bony hands; 
 Or, wrathful, hear their loved ones' piercing wail, 
 
 See filthy rags enshroud their shrunken forms, 
 With glaring eyes and features pinched and pale, 
 
 They call for war — invoke Mar's deadly storms. 
 
 The solemn vows, where money weds with toil, 
 Should blend the two in purpose and in thought; 
 
 And they, made one, in struggle and turmoil. 
 
 Should bear the burdens troubled years have brought. 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 133 
 
 l^\}e PrJGsi and \\ii Mad (J^ap. 
 
 A mad cap fair, with yellow hair, 
 Met a priest upon the stair, 
 
 Where the light was dim; 
 Though she cried, away! away! 
 He so gallant, bold and gay. 
 
 Squeezed her with a vim. 
 
 Holding high her dainty gown, 
 She was tripping gaily down. 
 
 Where the light was dim; 
 Wondering why a lover's kiss 
 Filled anew her cup of bliss, 
 
 When she thought of him. 
 
 When the carpet caught her boot. 
 She could nothing do but scoot, 
 
 Screaming down the stairs; 
 Toiling upward, worn and weary, 
 Came the father, faint but cheery. 
 
 Like an angel unawares. 
 
 Round his massive neck inclined, 
 8nowy arms were fast entwined, 
 
134 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Where the light was dim; 
 Out of mind the lovers kiss, 
 Gone the brimming cup of bliss 
 
 Of the maiden slim. 
 
 Ere he donned the priestly robes 
 And applied the moral probes, 
 
 To his love pugnacious; 
 He had hugged a village belle 
 Hugged her often, hugged her well, 
 Says a scribe veracious. 
 
 When the mad cap, wild with fright. 
 Falling, calling, through the night, 
 
 Headed down the stair; 
 He recalled the village beauty, 
 Cursed the trumpet call of duty. 
 
 Ringing in the air. 
 
 Cursed the Bishop and the Pope, 
 Cloister, sack cloth, knotted rope, 
 
 And his vows infernal; . 
 When she fell into his arms. 
 Conscience rang no dread alarms 
 
 Brought him bliss supernal. 
 
 He, oft wrapped in meditation, 
 
 O'er the problems of creation. 
 
 And the ways of Eve; 
 
FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 13o 
 
 Thought not of a races' glory, 
 Whose traditions, old and hoary, 
 
 He, with facts, could interweave. 
 
 He forgot that woman fell, 
 Opening wide the way to hell, 
 
 When the world was young, 
 Tempted men throughout the ages. 
 Conquered censors, priests and sages, 
 
 With the songs she sung, 
 
 He forgot that legends old. 
 Faded parchments fold on fold. 
 
 Told the ruin woman wrought; 
 And that weak, despairing man, 
 Ever since the race began 
 
 'Gainst her wiles had fought. 
 
 Forgot the legends, weird and old, 
 Forgot the parchments fold on fold 
 
 And monkish dreams of duty; 
 Although she cried away! away! 
 He so gallant grown and gay 
 
 Paid tribute to her beauty. 
 
 Mad cap fair, with yellow hair. 
 Tumbling headlong down the stair. 
 
136 
 
 FROM TAPS TILL REVEILLE. 
 
 Where the Hght is dim; 
 Why cry out away! away! 
 When a father, bold and gay, 
 
 Hugs you with a vim? 
 
 Trembling womanvcalm your fears. 
 Why should you dissolve in tears, 
 
 When he says 'tis well? 
 Fathers grave, with pallid faces, 
 Wisdom rare and courtly graces. 
 
 Sometimes hug but never tell,