The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 1Newell, R. H. (Robert Henry)
History
The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 1
Newell, R. H. (Robert Henry)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
"Peter Perkins!" says the married chap, with a smile of wild bliss, "I
wouldn't miss the happiness I shall feel when my angel returns to her
native hevings, for the sake of being twenty bachelors. No!" says the
married chap, clutching his bosom, "I've lived on the thought of that
air bliss ever since the morning my female pardner threw my box of
long-sixes out of the window, and called in the police because I
brought a waluable terrier home with me." Here the married chap
uncorked his canteen and eyed it with speechless fury.
Tears came to the eyes of the unwomantic Mackerel; he extended his
hand, and says he:
"Say no more, Bobby--say no more. If you ain't got the correck idea of
Heaven there's no such place on the map."
I give you this touching conversation between two of nature's noblemen,
my boy, that you may appreciate that beautiful dispensation of
Providence which endows woman with the slighter failings of humanity,
yet gives her the power to brighten the mind of inferior man with
glorious visions of joy beyond the grave.
My arm has been strengthened in this war, my boy, by the inspiration of
woman's courage, and aided by her almost miraculous foresight. Only
yesterday, a fair girl of forty-three summers, thoughtfully sent me a
box, containing two gross of assorted fish-hooks, three cook-books, one
dozen of Tubbses best spool-cotton, three door-plates, a package of
patent geranium-roots, two yards of Brussels carpet, Rumford's
illustrated work on Perpetual Intoxication, ten bottles of
furniture-polish, and some wall-paper. Accompanying these articles, so
valuable to a soldier on the march, was a note, in which the
kind-hearted girl said that the things were intended for our sick and
wounded troops, and were the voluntary tributes of a loyal and
dreamy-souled woman. I tried a dose of the furniture-polish, my boy, on
a chap that had the measles, and he has felt so much like a sofa ever
since, that a coroner's jury will sit on him to-morrow.
The remainder of this susceptible young creature's note, my boy, was
calculated to move a heart of stone. She asked if it hurt much to be
killed, and said she should think the President might sue Jeff Davis,
or commit habeas corpus or some other ridiculous thing, to stop this
dreadful, spirit-agonizing war. She said that her deepest heart-throbs
and dream-yearnings were for the crimson-consecrated Union, and that
she had lavished her most harrowing hope-sobs for its heaven-triumph.
She said that she had a friend, named Smith, in the army, and wished I
could find him out, and tell him that the human heart, though repining
at the absence of the beloved object, may be coldly proud as a scornful
statute to the stranger's eye, but pines like a soul-murdered
water-lily on the lovely stream of its twilight-brooding
contemplations.
Anxious to oblige her, my boy, I asked the General of the Mackerel
Brigade if he knew a soldier "of the name of Smith?"
The General thought awhile, and says he:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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