Later on I read that the old war horse was called Winchester and that he
was still alive in a blue grass pasture in Kentucky. The report said that
old Winchester wasn't very coltish, and that he was evidently failing. I
gathered the idea that he was wearing store teeth, and that his memory was
a little deficient, but that he might live yet for years. After that I met
a New York livery stable prince, at whose palace General Sheridan's
well-known Winchester war horse died of botts in '71. He told me all
about it and how General Sheridan came on from Chicago at the time, and
held the horse's head in his lap while the fleet limbs that flew from
Winchester down and saved the day, stiffened in the great, mysterious
repose of death. He said Sheridan wept like a child, and as he told the
touching tale to me I wept also. I say I wept. I wept about a quart, I
would say. He said also that the horse's name wasn't Winchester nor
Rienzi; it was Jim.
I was sorry to know it. Jim is no name for a war horse who won a victory
and a marble bust and a poem. You can't respect a horse much if his name
was Jim.
After that I found out that General Sheridan's celebrated Winchester horse
was raised in Kentucky, also in Pennsylvania and Michigan; that he went
out as a volunteer private; that he was in the regular service prior to
the war, and that he was drafted, and that he died on the field of battle,
in a sorrel pasture, in '73, in great pain on Governor's Island; that he
was buried with Masonic honors by the Good Templars and the Grand Army of
the Republic; that he was resurrected by a medical college and dissected;
that he was cremated in New Orleans and taxidermed for the Military Museum
at New York. Every little while I run up against a new fact relative to
this noted beast. He has died in nine different States, and been buried in
thirteen different styles, while his soul goes marching on. Evidently we
live in an age of information. You can get more information nowadays, such
as it is, than you know what to do with.
A Circular.
To my friends, regardless of party.--Many friends having solicited me to
apply for a foreign mission under the present administration, I have
finally consented to do so, and last week filed my application for such
missions as might still remain vacant.
To insure my appointment, much will remain for you to do. I now call upon
my friends to aid me by their united effort. I especially solicit the aid
of my friends who have repeatedly heretofore promised it to me while
drunk.
[Illustration: PLENTY OF CORRESPONDENCE.]
You will see at a glance that I can only make the application. You must
support it by your petitions and letters. It would be of little use for
one man to write five thousand letters to the president, but if five
thousand people each write him a letter in which casual reference is made
to my social worth and 7-1/3 octave brain, it will make him pay attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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