Under The Stars And Bars Part 19

Fifth Sergeant, J. D. Marshall.

First Corporal, W. H. Miller.

Second Corporal, Thos. O'Hara.

Third Corporal, Bradford Merry.

Fourth Corporal, M. V. Calvin.

Secretary, Henry P. Richmond.

Musicians, W. B. White, E. A. Young.

PRIVATES.

Anderson, W. F. E.

Bruckner, J. D.

Bunch, G. M.

Ba.s.s, Geo. F.

Boddie, John S.

Boulineau, W. A.

Cheesborough, C. M.

Carroll, J. R.

Cleckley, A.

Duke, J. B.

Duke, John F.

Duke, B. F.

Duvall, R. B.

Duddy, Wm.

Epps, W. D.

Fowler, J. C.

Gardiner, H. N.

Gates, Wm.

Hall, E. H.

Hall, A. G.

Helmuth, F.

Hendrix, W. H.

Hinton, G. W.

Isaacs, Wm.

King, Jesse.

Kerniker, Edward.

Lamback, Geo. F.

Mulherin, Wm.

Manders, J. J.

Morgan, Evan.

Mathis, J. T.

Nelson, T. C.

Peppers, J. M.

Peppers, A. H.

Roberts, Chas. P.

Roulett, M.

Robinson, James.

Shaw, A. W.

Shaw, W. D.

Stephens, E. A.

Samuels, W.

Tobin, John.

Tant, Alex.

Talbot, J. M.

Taylor, Wm.

Tuttle, D. W.

Wise, T. C.

Wolff, M.

Young, J. R.

SUPPLEMENT.

As this is my first, and will probably be my last attempt at authors.h.i.+p, in deference to the possibly too partial judgment of friends, I have ventured to include in the volume two additional sketches in no way connected with the memories, which precede them. Yielding to the same kindly criticism I have added also a war poem, intended to perpetuate an incident whose hardly paralleled pathos has not, I trust, been marred by the poetic dress in which I have attempted to preserve it.

ONE OF MY HEROES.

Personal courage, when from the lack of selfish ends, it rises to the plane of real chivalry, has always met with willing homage from the hearts of men. I do not know that hero-wors.h.i.+p has entered largely into my own mental or moral makeup, and yet for thirty years and more my heart has paid its silent and yet earnest tribute to one, who in unadulterated grit and innate chivalry was the peer of any man I have ever known. I have called him my hero, but he was mine, perhaps, only by right of discovery. I found him in a little Florida village in the winter of '66. There was nothing in his appearance to indicate the hero.

No t.i.tle, civil or military added dignity to his name. So far as I know no stars or bars had gilded the old grey uniform he had laid aside with Lee's surrender. He was simply plain Bob Harrison. Of his lineage or earthly history I learned but little. I know that he was the son of a Methodist minister who, some years before, had moved to Florida from South Carolina, and who, by right of apostolical succession, was not only a good preacher but a good fisherman as well. I know, further, that in one of the battles in Virginia my friend had been shot through the lungs and had been left upon the battlefield to die.

The surgeons in their hurried rounds pa.s.sed by on the other side, declining to waste their time on one, who in a few short hours would be beyond the reach of human aid. Despairing of any relief from them, he had tied his handkerchief around his chest to staunch the life blood that was ebbing away, and through the long, long lonely night had waited for death or help to come. On the morrow the burial corps had found him still living, and in the hospital he was nursed back to partial health again. The press had placed his name among the dead, and far away in his Southern home loving ones mourned for him until one summer's day his feeble footsteps on the walk and his pallid arms about their necks brought to their hearts a resurrection just as real as that which gladdened Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus. Of his service as a soldier I know no more than I have written. My claim for him is based upon incidents that occurred when the war had ended and his record as a soldier had been made up.

At the date and in the section of which I write the tide of lawlessness that followed in the wake of war had not yet reached its ebb. During my stay a party of toughs came to the village and for a week or more terrorized the place. An effort was made to secure their arrest by civil process, but from lack of nerve in the officers, or failure to secure a posse, the effort failed and the gang was having its own sweet will without let or hindrance.

At this juncture Bob Harrison rode into the village one day from his country home. The lady, at whose boarding house these men were stopping, told him of their misdoings. He was living six miles away and had no personal grievance against them. His wounded lung had never healed and frequent hemorrhages from it had paled the color in his cheeks and weakened a body none too strong when in perfect health. But the appeal stirred the chivalry of his nature and he did not hesitate a moment. He went to them and in vigorous English denounced their conduct as ungentlemanly and dishonorable and told them it must stop.

That afternoon a challenge came to him to meet them at a designated place next morning to answer for the insult he had given. He rode in before breakfast and at the appointed hour he was promptly on hand armed with a brace of pistols and a bowie knife. For three hours he offered satisfaction in any shape they chose to take it, and with any weapon they might select, but his nerve had cowed them and the offer was declined. Then he said to their leader, "You have been making threats against my friend, Charlie P-- for some fancied wrong. He has a wife and children to mourn him if he falls. I have none. I stand in his shoes today and any satisfaction you claim from him you can get from me here and now." The bully failed to press his claim. The gang soon left the village and quiet reigned again.

A short time prior to this incident a young lady had made her home in the village--a stranger, without relatives or friends. A citizen of the place taking advantage of her unprotected condition, began to circulate rumors reflecting on her character. These reports reached Bob Harrison's ears. She was bound to him by no ties of blood or special friends.h.i.+p, but her helplessness was claim enough. He called on the author of the slander and asked to see him privately. The man showed him into a room and Bob locked the door and put the key in his pocket. "Now, Mr --,"

he said, "you have circulated slanders about Miss --. She has no relative here to protect her and I have come to put a stop to it. I don't propose to take any advantage of you. I am going to lay these two pistols on this table. You will stand with your face to that wall and I will stand with my face to this. When I give the word if you can secure a pistol first you are at liberty to shoot. If I get one first, I am going to shoot. You have got to do that or you have got to sit down at this table and sign a "lie bill." The man looked into Bob's eyes a moment and said, "I'll sign the lie bill," and Miss --'s name was safe from slanderous tongues from that day on.

In neither of these cases did he have the slightest personal interest.

His conduct was prompted solely by the chivalry of the man. He impressed me as ordinarily one of the gentlest and mildest mannered of men and yet I believe he would have led a forlorn hope to certain death without a tremor.

With the close of winter I returned to my Georgia home and over the gulf of silence that has intervened since that spring day in '67, no tidings have come to me of my friend, Bob Harrison. If he still lives my heart goes out in tender greeting to him today, and if he sleeps beneath the daisies I trust this little tribute to his worth will cause the sod that lies above him to press none the less lightly over his manly heart.

BEN HILL AND THE DOG.

A REMINISCENCE.

Just fifty years ago in the unceiled, unpainted and largely unfurnished rooms of an "Old Field School," holding a blue-backed speller in my boyish hands, I sat with a row of barefoot urchins on a plain pine bench and watched with sleepy eyes the mellow suns.h.i.+ne creeping all too slowly towards the 12 o'clock mark cut by the teacher into the school room floor. This primitive timepiece that marked the boundary line between school hours and the midday intermission, known in schoolboy vernacular as "playtime," was never patented, although it had the happy faculty of never running down and never needing repairs. To the student of today reveling in the luxuriant appointments of the present public school system there may come sometimes a touch of pity for the simple methods and the meagre equipment of the old field school, whose teachers in addition to the inconvenience of having to "board around," were sometimes forced to receive partial compensation for their work in home made "socks." Such of my readers as may be disposed to discredit the free and unlimited knitting of socks as a circulating medium for the payment of school salaries, are respectfully referred to my friend, W.

J. Steed, for the historical accuracy of this statement.