United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
When the troops marched in in the afternoon, the encountered at the
head of the crowd that met them at the crossing of the creek just
ouside of town, a man who seemed filled with deep emotion, and
clothed with strange fancies. He wore a tall silk hat of antique
patter, carefully brushed, which he protected from the rays of the
sun with a huge blue cotton umbrella. A blue broadcloth coat, with
gilt buttons, sat jauntily over a black satin vest, and nankeen
trousers. A pair of gold spectacles reposed in magisterial dignity
about half way down his nose, and a large silver-headed cane in the
left hand balanced the umbrella in the right. By the side of the
man with rare vestments stood another figure of even more limpness
of general bearing, whose garb consisted of a soldier's uniform
pantaloons and woolen shirt--none too clean--set off by a black
dress-coat, and white linen vest.
As the head of the column came up he in the blue broadcloth pulled
off his hat and spectacles, and addressed himself to speech:
“Allow me, shir, to welcome you with hoshpitable hands to a bloody--no,
let me tender you, shir, the liberties of our city, and reshoice
shat she old banner which has braved she battle, hash---”
The column had stopped, and the Captain commanding the advance
was listening patiently to what he supposed was the address of an
enthusiastic, but eccentric old Kentuckian, when one of the sharp-eyed
ones in the company shouted out:
“I declare, it's Kent Edwards and Abe Bolton.”
The yell of laughter and applause at the ludicrous masquerade
shook the hills. The Colonel rode up to see what occasioned it.
He recognized his two men, and his face darkened with anger.
“You infernal rascals,” he shouted, “you have been off plundering
houses, have you, in place of being with your company. I'll stop
this sort of thing mighty sudden. This regiment shall not degrade
itself by plundering and robbing, if I have to shoot every man in
it. Captain, arrest those men, and keep thim in close confinement
until I can have them tried and properly punished.”
Chapter XVII. Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain.
This is the very ecstacy of love,
Whose violent property foredoes itself.
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As often as any passion under Heaven
That does afflict our natures.--Hamlet
Endurance is made possible by reason of the element of divisibility.
Metaphysical mathematicians imagine that there is possibly a “fourth
dimension,” by the existence of which many hitherto inexplicable
phenomena may be explained. They think that probably this fourth
dimension is SUCCESSION OF TIME.
So endurance of unendurable things is explainable on the ground
that but a small portion of them has to be endured in any given
space of time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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