Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
Those Times and These

“Still, Billy,” put in Doctor Lake, “there was a time when all these high-sounding phrases about duty and patriotism meant more to us than they do now – back in the spring and summer of Sixty-one – eh?”

Behind the Judge’s spectacle lenses sparks of reminiscence burned in his faded blue eyes. He lifted his cup ceremoniously and Doctor Lake lifted his, and I knew they were drinking to the memory of olden days.

“Now you’re shoutin’!” Judge Priest assented. “Say, Lew, do you call to mind them speeches Hector Dallas used to utter ‘way back yonder, when Sumter was bein’ fired on and the Yankee Government was callin’ fur troops to put down the Rebellion, ez they seen fit to term it? Heck Dallas was our champion homegrown orator in those times,” he vouchsafed in an aside for my better enlightenment. “Somethin’ about that young feller yonder, that’s speakin’ so brilliantly and so fluently now, puts me right smartly in mind of him. Heck was plenty copious with language himself. When it come to burnin’ words he was jest the same ez one of these here volcanoes. Remember, don’t you, Lew, how willin’ Heck was to bleed and die fur his native land?”

“But he didn’t,” stated Doctor Lake grimly.

“Well – since you mention it – not to any noticeable extent,” said Judge Priest. “Leastwise, any bleedin’ that he done was done internally, frum the strain of utterin’ all them fiery remarks.” Again he included me with a gesture. “You see, son, Heck didn’t go off to the war with the rest of us. Nearly everybody else did – this town was purty near emptied of young fellers of a suitable courtin’ age after we’d gone down to Camp Boone to begin drillin’. But Hecky didn’t go.

“Ez I recollect, he felt called upon to put out first fur Richmond to give President Davis and the Cabinet the benefit of his advice or somethin’; and aimed to join us later. But he didn’t – somehow, somethin’ always kept inter-ferin’ with his ambition to bleed and die, until after a while it seemed like he jest got discouraged and quit tryin’. When we got back home, four years later – sech ez was left of us – Heck had done been entirely reconstructed and was fixin’ to run fur office on the Black Radical ticket.”

“The cat had to jump mighty brisk to beat Hector,” said Doctor Lake; “or else, when she landed on the other side, she’d find him already there, wanning a place for her. I’ve known a good many like Hector – and some of them prospered fairly well – while they lasted.”

“Well, the spring of Sixty-one was a stirrin’ period, and I reckin oratory helped along right smartly at the start,” said Judge Priest; “though, to be sure, later on it came to pass that the boys who could go hongry and ragged, and still keep on fightin’ the Yankees, were the ones that really counted.

“Take Meriwether Grider now: He went in as our company commander and he come out with the marks of a brigadier on his coat collar; but I’ll bet you a ginger cookie Meriwether Grider never said a hundred words on a stretch in his life without he was cussin’ out some feller fur not doin’ his duty. Meriwether certainly learned to cuss mighty well fur a man whose early trainin’ had been so turribly neglected in that respect.”

“Recall how Meriwether Grider behaved the night we organised Company B?” inquired Doctor Lake.

“Jest the same ez ef it was yistiddy!” assented Judge Priest.

He half turned his chubby body so as to face me. By now I was sitting on the log between them. I had scented a story and I craved mightily to hear it, though I never dreamed that some day I should be writing it out.

“You see, boy, it was like this: Upstate the sentiment was purty evenly divided betwixt stayin’ in the Union and goin’ out of it; but down here, in Red Gravel County, practically everybody was set one way – so much one way that they took to callin’ our town Little Charleston, and spoke of this here Congressional District as the South Carolina of the West. Ez state after state went out, the feelin’ got warmer and warmer; but the leaders of public opinion, all except Heck Dallas, counselled holdin’ off till the legislature could act. Heck, he was for crossin’ over into Illinois some nice pleasant dark night and killin’ off the Abolitionists, though at that time of speakin’ there weren’t many more Abolitionists livin’ on that side of the river than there were on this. That was merely Heck’s way of expressin’ his convictions.

“In spite of his desires, we kept on waitin’. But when word come from Frankfort that the legislature, by a mighty clost vote, had voted down the Secession Ordinance and had declared fur armed neutrality – which was in the nature of a joke, seein’ ez everybody in the state who was old enough to tote a fusee was already armed and couldn’t be a neutral – why, down in this neck of the woods we didn’t wait no longer.

“Out of the front window of his printin’ office old Colonel Noble h’isted the first Confederate flag seen in these parts; and that night, at the old market house, there was the biggest mass meetin’ that ever had been held in this here town up to then. A few young fellers had already slid down acrost the border into Tennessee to enlist, and a few more were already oyer in Virginia, wearin’ the grey; but everybody else that was anybody was there.

“Right away Heck took the platform. They’d a had to lock it up somewheres to keep him frum takin’ it. He was up on one of them market benches, wavin’ his arms and spoutin’ about the mudsills and the nigger lovers, and jest darin’ the accursed invader to put one heel upon the sacred soil of the grand old Commonwealth – not both his heels, but ary one of ‘em – when all of a sudden Meriwether Grider leaned over and kissed his wife – he hadn’t been married but a little more’n a year and they had a baby about three weeks old at home. And then he stepped forward and climbed up on the bench and sort of shoved Heck to one side, and called out that there’d been enough talk, and that it was about time for action; and said, ef somebody had a piece of paper handy, he’d like mightily to put his name down as a volunteer fur the Southern Army. And in another second every woman there was cheerin’ with one side of her mouth and cryin’ with the other.

“And Colonel Noble had fetched his flag up and was wavin’ it with both hands; and old Doctor Hendrickson, the Presbyterian preacher, had made a prayer – a heap shorter one than whut he ginerally made – and had yanked a little pocket Testament out frum under his coattails fur the boys to take the oath on. And in less’n no time Heck Dallas was back down in the crowd, in considerable danger of being trampled to death in the rush of young fellers to git up there and sign their names to the roll.”

Doctor Lake slid off the log and stood up, with his black hat crumpled in one gnarled old hand. In the emotion of the moment he forgot his grammar: “You remember, Billy – don’t you? – how you and me and Peter J. Galloway and little Gil Nicholas went up together to sign?”

“I ain’t exactly liable to furgit it, ever,” said Judge Priest. “That was the night I jest natchelly walked off and left my little law office flat on its back. I’d been advertisin’ myself to practise law fur about a year, but whut I’d mainly practised up to that time was economy – that and checkers and old sledge, to help pass away the time. No, suh; I didn’t leave no clients behind me, clamourin’ fur my professional services. Clients were something I’d heared a lot of talk about, but hadn’t met face to face. All I had to do when I quit was jest to put out the fire and shut the door, and come on away.”

“And the last one of all to sign that night was Herman Felsburg,” stated Doctor Lake, as though desirous of rounding out a recital.

“Yes – that’s right too, Lew,” agreed the old Judge. “Herman was the very last one. I remember how some of the crowd begun snickerin’ when he come stumpin’ up on them crooketty little laigs of hisn; but the snickerin’ died out when Meriwether Grider grabbed Herman’s hand and shook it, and Doctor Hendrickson held out the Book fur him to swear on it to be true and faithful to the cause of the Southern Confederacy. A person don’t snicker so very well that’s got a lump in his throat at the moment.

“You see, son, Herman was a kind of town joke them days,” stated Judge Priest, again digressing for my benefit. “There weren’t many furreign-born people in this section back yonder in Sixty-one. Ef a feller come along that was frum Greece or Italy or Spain, or somewheres else down that way, we jest called him a Dago, dry-so – and let it go at that. But ef he hailed from Germany or Holland or Russia, or anywhere in Northern Europe, he was a Dutchman to us.

“There were just two exceptions to the rule: An Irishman was an Irishman, of course; and a Jew was a Jew. We had a few Irish families in town, like the Galloways and the Hallorans; and there was one Jewish family livin’ here – the Liebers; but they’d all been born in this country and didn’t speak nothin’ but English, and, exceptin’ that old man Lieber used to close up his hide-and-pelt store of a Sad’day, instid of Sunday, it never occurred to anybody that the Liebers practised a different religion frum the run of folks.

“Herman had been here about a year, off and on. He didn’t seem to know nobody, and he didn’t have any friends. He wasn’t more’n nineteen years old – or maybe twenty; and he was shy and awkward and homely. He used to go out through the county with a pack on his back, sellin’ gimcracks to country people. He could make change all right – I reckin he jest natchelly inherited that ez a gift – and he was smart enough at drivin’ a bargain; but somehow it seemed like he jest couldn’t learn to talk English, or to understand it, neither, exceptin’ when the subject was business. Understand, that was thirty-odd years back; but sometimes, even now, when old Herman gits excited, you’d think, to hear him, that he didn’t know much English yit. His language matches the shape of his laigs then.”

I nodded understanding, Mr. Felsburg’s conversational eccentricities being a constant fount of material for the town humourists of my own generation. The Judge went on: “Well, anyway, he signed up that night, along with all the rest of us. And after that, fur a few days, so many things was happenin’ that I sort of forgot about him; and I reckin nearly everybody else did too. It seemed like the whole town sort of went crazy fur a spell, whut with the first company, which was our company, electin’ its officers, and the County Battery formin’, and a troop of cavalry organisin’, and the older men enrollin’ fur home defence, and a lot of big-moth fellers standin’ round on street comers lowin as how it was goin’ to be only a ninety-day picnic, anyway, and that any Southern man could whip five Yankees – and so forth and so on.

“And then we’d go home at night and find our mothers and sisters settin’ round a coal-oil lamp, makin’ our new grey uniforms, and sewin’ a tear in with every stitch. And every feller’s sweetheart was makin’ him a silk sash to wear round his waist. I could git a sash round my waist then, but I s’pose if I felt called on to wear one now I’d have to hire old man Dillon, the mattress maker, to make one fur me out of a roll of bedtickin.” And the speaker glanced downward toward the bulge of his girth.

“My mother kept telling me that it would kill her for me to go – and that she’d kill me if I didn’t go,” interpolated Doctor Lake.

“I reckin no set of men on this earth ever went out to fight with the right sort of spirit in ‘em onless their womenfolk stood behind ‘em, biddin’ ‘em to go,” said the old Judge. “That’s the way it was with us, anyway – I know that much. Well then, right on top of everything else, along come the big ball they gave us at the Richland House the night before we left fur Camp Boone to be mustered in, regular fashion. There wasn’t any absentees there that night – not a single solitary one. They’d ‘a’ had to tie me hand and foot to keep me frum comin’ there to show off my new grey suit and my red-striped sash and all my brass buttons.

“Fur oncet, social lines didn’t count. That night the best families mixed with all the other families that was mebbe jest as good, but didn’t know it. Peter Galloway’s old daddy drove a dray down on the levee and his mother took in washin’, but before the ball broke up I seen old Mrs. Galloway with both her arms round Mrs. Governor Trimble, and Mrs. Governor Trimble had her arms round Mrs. Galloway, and both of ‘em cryin’ together, the way women like to do. The Trimbles were sending three sons; but old Mrs. Galloway was givin’ up Peter, and he was all the boy she had.

“We danced till purty near sunup, stoppin’ only oncet, and then jest long enough fur ‘em to present Captain Meriwether Grider with his new gold-mounted sword. You remember, Lew, we buried that sword in the same coffin with him fifteen years later?

“About four o’clock in the mornin’, when the first of the daylight was beginnin’ to leak in at the winders, the nigger string band in the corner struck up Home, Sweet Home! We took partners, but that was one dance which never was finished.

“All of a sudden that sassy little red-headed Janie Thornbury stopped dead-still out in the middle of the floor, and she flung both arms round the neck of Garrett Hinton, that she was engaged to marry, but didn’t – on account of her marryin’ somebody else while Garry was off soldierin’ – and, before everybody, she kissed him right smack on the mouth!

“And then, in less’n no time at all, every feller in the company had his arms round his sweetheart or his sister, or mebbe his mother, and kisses were goin’ off all over that old ball room like paper bags a-bustin’. I fergit now-who ‘twas I kissed; but, to the best of my recollection, I jest browsed round and done quite a passel of promiscuous kissin’.”

“I’ll never forget the one I kissed!” broke in Doctor Lake. “With the exception of the ensuing four years, I’ve been kissing the same girl ever since. She hefts a little more than she did then – those times you could mighty near lock a gold bracelet round her waist, and many’s the time I spanned it with my two hands – and she’s considerably older; but her kisses still taste mighty sweet to me!”

“Go ‘way, Lew Lake!” protested Judge Priest gallantly. “Miss Mamie Ellen is jest ez young ez ever she was; and she’s sweeter, too, because there’s more of her to be sweet. I drink to her!”

Two tin cups rose in swinging circles; and I knew these old men were toasting a certain matron of my acquaintance who weighed two hundred and fifty if she weighed a pound, and had white hair and sizable grandchildren.

“And so then” – Judge Priest was resuming his narration – “and so then, after a spell, the epidemic of kissin’ began to sorter die down, though I reckin some of the boys would ‘a’ been willin’ to keep it up plumb till breakfast time. I mind how I was standin’ off to one side, fixin’ to make my farewells to Miss Sally Machen, when out of the tail of my off eye I seen little Herman Felsburg, over on the other side of the ballroom, lookin’ powerful forlorn and lonesome and neglected.

“Doubtless he’d been there all night, without a soul to dance with him, even ef he’d knowed how, or a soul to speak with him, even ef he could have understood whut they said to’ him. Doubtless he wasn’t exactly whut you’d call happy. Jest about then Miss Sally Machen must ‘a’ seen him too; and the same thought that had jest come to me must ‘a’ come to her too. “‘It’s a shame!’ she said – jest like that – under her voice. And in another minute she was walkin’ acrost the floor toward Herman.

“I remember jest how she looked. Why, ef I was an artist I could draw a picture of her right now! She was the handsomest girl in town, and the proudest and the stateliest – tall and slender and dark, with great big black eyes, and a skin like one of these here magnolia buds – and she was well off in her own name; and she belonged to a leadin’ family. Four or five boys were beauin’ her, and it was a question which one of ‘em she’d marry. Sometimes, Lew, I think they don’t raise very many girls like Miss Sally Machen any more.

“Well, she kept right on goin’ till she came to where Herman was scrouged up ag’inst the wall. She didn’t say a word to him, but she took him by the hand and led him right out into the middle of the floor, where everybody could see; and then she put those white arms of hers round his neck, with the gold bracelets on her wrists jinglin’, and she bent down to him – she had to bend down, bein’ a whole head taller than whut he was – and she kissed him on the lips; not a sweetheartin’ kiss, but the way his own mother might ‘a’ kissed him good-bye, ef he’d had a mother and she’d been there.

“Some few started in to laugh, but stopped off short; and some started to cheer, but didn’t do that, neither. We-all jest stood and watched them two. Herman’s face tum’t ez red ez blood; and he looked up at her sideways and started to smile that funny little smile of hisn – he had one front tooth missin’, and that made it funnier still. But then his face got serious, and frum clear halfway acrost the hall I could see his eyes were wet. He backed off frum her and bowed purty near to the ground before her. And frum the way he done it I knowed he was somethin’ more than jest a little, strange Jew pedlar in a strange land. You have to have the makin’s of a gentleman in you to bow like that. You mout learn it in time, with diligent practice, but it comes a sight easier ef you’re born with it in you.”

From his flat flask the old Judge toned up the contents of their julep cups. Then, with pauses, during which he took delicate but prolonged sips, he spoke on in the rambling, contemplative fashion that was as much a part of him as his trick of ungrammatical speech or his high bald forehead was, or his wagging white chin-beard:

“Well, purty soon after that we were all down yonder at old Camp Boone, and chiefly engaged, in our leisure hours – which we had blamed few leisure hours, at that – in figurin’ out the difference between talkin’ about soldierin’ and braggin’ about it, and actually doin’ of it. There wasn’t no more dancin’ of quadrilles with purty girls then. We done our grand right-and-left with knapsacks on our backs and blisters on our feet. Many and many a feller that had signed up to be a hero made the distressin’ discovery what he’d really j’ined on to.

“All this time little old Herman was doin’ his share like a major. Long before he could make out the words of command, he’d picked up the manual of arms, jest frum watchin’ the others in the same awkward squad with him. He was peart enough that-a-way. Where he was slow was learnin’ how to talk’ so ez you could make out whut he was aimin’ to say. It seemed like that was the only slow thing about him.

“Natchelly the boys poked a heap of fun at him. They kept prankin’ with him constantly. But he taken it all in good part and grinned back at ‘em, and never seemed to lose his holt on his temper. You jest couldn’t help likin’ him – only he did cut such funny mon-keyshines with the Queen’s English when he tried to talk!

“Because he was so good-natured, some of the boys took it into their heads, I reckin, that he didn’t have no real grit; or mebbe they thought he wasn’t spunky because he was a Jew. That’s a delusion which a good many suffer frum that don’t know his race.

“I remember one night, about three weeks or a month after we went into camp, Herman was put on post. The sergeant mighty near lost his mind, and did lose his disposition, drillin’ the countersign and the password into Herman’s skull. So a couple of boys out of the Calloway County company – they called themselves the Blood River Tigers, and were a purty wild and devilish lot of young colts ginerally – they took it into their heads that after it got good and dark they’d slip down to the lines and sneak up on Herman, unbeknownst to him, and give him a good skeer, and mebbe take his piece away from him – sort of play hoss with him, ginerally. So, ‘long about ‘leven o’clock they set out to do so.”

He paused and looked at Doctor Lake, grinning. I couldn’t hold in.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, nothin’ much,” said Judge Priest – “exceptin’ that presently there was a loud report and consider’ble many loud cries; and when the corporal of the guard got there with a squad, one of them Calloway County boys was layin’ on the ground with a hole through his right shoulder, and the other was layin’ alongside of him right smartly clubbed up with the butt end of a rifle. And Herman was standin’ over ‘em, jabberin’ in German – he’d forgot whut little English he knowed. But you could tell frum the way he carried on that he was jest double-dog darin’ ‘em to move an inch. I don’t believe in my whole life I ever seen two fellers that looked so out of the notion of playin’ practical jokes as them two Blood River Tigers did. They were plumb sick of Herman, too – you could tell that frum a mere glance at ‘em ez we toted ‘em in and sent for the surgeon to patch ‘em up.

“So, after that, the desire to prank with Private Felsburg when he was on duty sort of languished away. Then, when Herman took down sick with camp measles, and laid there day after day in the hospital tent under an old ragged bedquilt, mighty sick, but never complainin’ – only jest grinnin’ his gratitude when anybody done a kind turn fur him – we knowed he was gritty in more ways than one. And there wasn’t a man in Company B but whut would have fit any feller that ever tried ag’in to impose on him.

“He was sick a good while. He was up and round ag’in, though, in time to do his sheer in the first fight we were in – which was at Belmont, over acrost the Mississippi River frum Columbus – in the fall o’ that year. I seem to recall that, ez we went into action and got into fire, a strange pair of laigs took to tremblin’ mightily inside the pair of pants I was wearin’ at the time; and most of my vital organs moved up into my throat and interfered some with my breathin’.

“In fact I made a number of very interestin’ discoveries in the openin’ stages of that there fight. One was that I wasn’t never goin’ to be entirely reconciled to the idea of bein’ killed on the field of battle; and another was that, though I loved my native land and would die fur her if necessary – only hopin’ it wouldn’t be necessary to go so fur ez all that – still, ef I lived to git out of this particular war I wasn’t goin’ to love another native land ez long ez I lived.”

“Shucks, William!” snorted Doctor Lake. “Try that on somebody else, but don’t try to come such stuff on me. Why, I was right alongside of you when we went into that charge, and you never faltered!”

“Lew,” stated Judge Priest, “you might ez well know the truth. I’ve been waitin’ fur nearly forty years to make this confession. The fact of the matter was, I was so skeered I didn’t dare to stop goin’ ahead. I knowed ef ever I did slow up, and give myself a chance to think, I’d never quit runnin’ the other way until I was out in the Gulf of Mexico, swimmin’.

“And yit another thing I found out that day was that the feller back home who told me one Southerner could whip five Yankees, single-handed, made a triflin’ error in his calculations; or else the Yankees he had in mind when he uttered the said remark was a different breed frum the bunch we tackled that day in the backskirts of the thrivin’ little community of Belmont, Missoury. But the most important thing of all the things I discovered was about Herman Felsburg – only that come later.

“In the early stages of that little battle the Federals sort of shoved us back a few pegs; but about three o’clock in the evenin’ the tide swung the other way, and shortly thereafter their commandin’ general remembered some pressin’ business back in Cairo, Illinois, that needed attendin’ to right away, and he started back there to do so, takin’ whut was left of his army along with him. So we claimed it ez a victory for us, which it was.

“Along toward dusk, when the fightin’ had died down, our company was layin’ alongside a country road jest outside the town, purty well tuckered out, and cut up some. We were all tellin’ each other how brave we’d been, when along down the road toward us come a file of prisoners, under guard, lookin’ mighty forlorn and low-sperrited. They was the first prisoners any of us had ever seen; so we jumped up from where we was stretched out and crowded up round ‘em, pokin’ fun at ‘em. The guards halted ‘em to let ‘em rest and we had a good chance to exchange the compliments of the season with ‘em. Eight in the front rank of the blue-bellies was one big furreign-lookin’ feller, with no hat on, and a head of light yaller hair. He ripped out somethin’ in German – a cuss word, I take it. Doubtless he was tellin’ us to go plum’ to hell. Well, suh, at that, Herman jumped like he’d been stung by one of these here yaller jackets. I reckin he was homesick, anyway, fur the sound of his own language.

“He walked over and begun jabberin’ in Dutch with the big sandy-haired Yank, and the Yank jabbered back; and they talked together mighty industrious until the prisoners moved on – about fifteen minutes, I should say, offhanded. And ez we went back to lay down ag’in I took notice that Herman had the funniest look on his face that ever I seen on almost any human face. And he kept scratchin’ his head, like there was somethin’ on his mind, troublin’ him, that he jest simply couldn’t make out noway. But he didn’t say nothin’ to nobody then – jest kept on scratchin’ and studyin’.

“In fact, he held in till nearly ten o’clock that night. We made camp right there on the edge of the battleground. I was fixin’ to turn in when Herman got up frum where he’d been squattin’, over by a log fire, lookin’ in the flames; and he come over to me and teched me on the shoulder.“‘Pilly Briest,’ he says in that curious way of hisn, ‘I should like to speak mit you. Please, you gecomin’ mit me.’

“So I got up and follered him. He led me off into a little thicket-like and we set down side by side on a log, same ez we three are set-tin’ here now. There was a full moon that night, ridin’ high, and no clouds in the sky; and even there in the shadders everythin’ was purty nigh ez bright ez day.

“‘Well, old hoss,’ I says, ‘whut seems to be on your mind?’

“I ain’t goin’ to try very hard to imitate his accent – you-all kin imagine it fur yourselves. ‘And he says to me he’s feared he’s made a big mistake.’

“‘Whut kind of a mistake?’ I says.

“‘Ven I j’ined dis army,’ he says – or words to that effect.

“‘How so?’ I says.

“And then he starts in to tell me, talkin’ ez fast ez his tongue kin wag, and makin’ gestures with both his hands, like a boy tryin’ to learn to swim dog-fashion. And after a little, by piecin’ together ez much of his talk ez I kin ketch, I begin to make out whut he’s drivin’ at; and the shock is so great I come mighty near failin’ right smack off that log backward.

“Here’s the way the thing stands with him: That night at the old market house, when the company is bein’ formed, he happens along and sees a crowd, and drops in to find out, ef he kin, whut’s afoot. Presently he makes out that there’s a war startin’ up ag’inst somebody or other, and, sence he’s made up his mind he’s goin’ to live in America always and make it his country, he decides it’s his bounden duty to fight fur his country. So he jest up and signs, along with the rest of us.

“Of course from that time on he hears a lot of talk about the Yankee invader and the Northern vandal; but he figgers it that the enemy comes frum somewhere ‘way up North – Canada or Greenland, or the Arctic regions, or the North Pole, or some of them other furreign districts up in that gineral vicinity. And not fur a minute – not till he talked with the big Dutch prisoner that day – had it ever dawned on him fur a single minute that a Yankee mout possibly be an American, too.

“When he stops I sets and looks at him a minute, takin’ it all in; and he looks back. Finally I says:

“‘And so you went and enlisted, thinkin’ you was goin’ to fight fur the United States of America, and you’re jest findin’ out now that all these weeks you’ve been organism’ yourself to fight ag’inst her? Is that it?’

“And he says, ‘Yes, that’s it.’ And I says: ‘Well, I wisht I might be dam’!’ And he says, well, he wishes he might be dam’ too, or in substance expresses sech a sentiment. And fur another spell we two merely continues to set there lookin’ one another in the face.

“After a little I asts him whut he’s aimin’ to do about it; and he says he ain’t decided yit in his own mind. And then I says:

“‘Well, Herman, it’s purty tough on you, anyway you take it. I don’t rightly know all the rules o’ this here war business yit, myself; but I reckin ef it was made clear to the higher authorities that you was sort of drug into this affair under false pretenses, ez it were, why, mebbe they mout muster you out and give you an honourable discharge – providin’, of course, you pledged yourself not to take up arms fur the other side, which, in a way of speakin’, would make you a deserter. We-all know you ain’t no coward, and we’ll all testify to it ef our testimony is needed. I reckon the rest of the boys’ll understand your position in the matter; in fact, I’ll undertake to make ‘em understand.’

“He asts me then: ‘Whut iss false pretenses?’”

And I explains to him the best I kin; and he thinks that p’int over fur a minute or two. Then he looks up at me sideways frum under the brim of his cap, and I kin see by the moonlight he’s blushin’ ez red ez a beet, and grinnin’ that shy little snaggle-teethed grin of hisn.

“‘Pilly,’ he says, ‘mebbe so you remember dot young lady vot put her arms round me dot night – de von vot gif to me a kiss fur kindness? She iss on de Deexie side – yes? – no?’

“And I says to him: ‘You kin bet your sweet life she is!’”

“‘All right!’ he says. ‘I am much lonesome dot night – and she kiss me! All right, den. I fights fur her! I sticks mit Deexie!’ And when he says that he makes a salute, and I notice he’s quit grinnin’.”