From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days Read online

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  FROM SCHOOL TO BATTLE-FIELD

  "Come down aff the top o' dthat harrse!"]

  FROM SCHOOL TO BATTLE-FIELD

  A STORY OF THE WAR DAYS

  BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A. AUTHOR OF "TROOPER ROSS," ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED BY VIOLET OAKLEY AND CHARLES H. STEPHENS

  PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1899

  COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "COME DOWN AFF THE TOP O' DTHAT HARRSE!"

  ALMOST SENSELESS, TILL SHORTY STROVE TO LIFT HIS BLEEDING HEAD UPON HIS KNEE

  "I COULDN'T STAND IT. I HAD TO GO"

  SHE WAS PERMITTED TO READ AND TO WEEP OVER SNIPE'S PATHETIC LETTER

  FIRST CAPTURE OF THE ADVANCING ARMS OF THE UNION

  "WHERE'D YOU GET THAT WATCH?"

  FROM SCHOOL TO BATTLE-FIELD.

  CHAPTER I.

  "If there's anything I hate more than a rainy Saturday, call me atadpole!" said the taller of two boys who, with their chins on theirarms and their arms on the top of the window-sash, were gazing gloomilyout over a dripping world. It was the second day of an east wind, andevery boy on Manhattan Island knows what an east wind brings to New YorkCity, or used to in days before the war, and this was one of them.

  "And our nine could have lammed that Murray Hill crowd a dozen tonothing!" moaned the shorter, with disgust in every tone. "Next Saturdaythe 'Actives' have that ground, and there'll be no decent place toplay--unless we can trap them over to Hoboken. What shall we do,anyhow?"

  The taller boy, a curly-headed, dark-eyed fellow of sixteen, whose longlegs had led to his school name of Snipe, turned from the contemplationof an endless vista of roofs, chimneys, skylights, clothes-lines, allswimming in an atmosphere of mist, smoke, and rain, and glanced back atthe book-laden table.

  "There's that Virgil," he began, tentatively.

  "Oh, Virgil be blowed!" broke in the other on the instant. "It's badenough to have to work week-days. I mean what can we do for--fun?" andthe blue eyes of the youngster looked up into the brown of his tallerchum.

  "That's all very well for you, Shorty," said Snipe. "Latin comes easy toyou, but it don't to me. You've got a sure thing on exam., I haven't,and the pater's been rowing me every week over those blasted reports."

  "Well-l, I'm as bad off in algebra or Greek, for that matter. 'Pop' toldme last week I ought to be ashamed of myself," was the junior's answer.

  And, lest it be supposed that by "Pop" he referred to the author of hisbeing, and thereby deserves the disapproval of every right-minded readerat the start, let it be explained here and now that "Pop" was thehead--the "rector"--of a school famous in the ante-bellum days ofGotham; famous indeed as was its famous head, and though they called himnicknames, the boys worshipped him. Older boys, passed on into the capand gown of Columbia (items of scholastic attire sported only, however,at examinations and the semi-annual speech-making), referred to therevered professor of the Greek language and literature as "Bull," andwere no less fond of him, nor did they hold him less in reverence. Whereare they now, I wonder?--those numerous works bound in calf, embellishedon the back with red leather bands on which were stamped in gold ----'sVirgil, ----'s Horace, ----'s Sallust, ----'s Homer? Book after book hadhe, grammars of both tongues, prosodies likewise, Roman and Greekantiquities, to say nothing of the huge classical dictionary. One couldcover a long shelf in one's student library without drawing upon theworks of any other authority, and here in this dark little room, on thetopmost floor of a brownstone house in Fourteenth Street, a school-boytable was laden at its back with at least eight of Pop's ponderous tomesto the exclusion of other classics.

  But on the shelf above were books by no means so scholarly and far moreworn. There they stood in goodly array, Mayne Reid's "Boy Hunters,""Scalp Hunters," "The Desert Home," "The White Chief," flanked by adusty "Sanford and Merton" that appeared to hold aloof from itsassociates. There, dingy with wear though far newer, was Thomas Hughes'sinimitable "Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby." There was what was thenhis latest, "The Scouring of the White Horse," which, somehow, retainedthe freshness of the shop. There were a few volumes of Dickens, andCooper's Leatherstocking Tales. There on the wall were some vivid battlepictures, cut from the _London Illustrated News_,--the Scots Grays inthe melee with the Russian cavalry at Balaklava; the Guards, in theirtall bearskins and spike-tail coats, breasting the slopes of the Alma.There hung a battered set of boxing-gloves, and on the hooks above thema little brown rifle, muzzle-loading, of course. The white-covered bedstood against the wall on the east side of the twelve-by-eightapartment, its head to the north. At its foot were some objects at whichschool-boys of to-day would stare in wonderment; a pair of heavy bootsstood on the floor, with a pair of trousers so adjusted to them that, inputting on the boots, one was already half-way into the trousers, andhad only to pull them up and tightly belt them at the waist. On the posthung a red flannel shirt, with a black silk neckerchief sewed to theback of the broad rolling collar. On top of the post was the mostcurious object of all,--a ribbed helmet of glistening black leather,with a broad curving brim that opened out like a shovel at the back,while a stiff, heavy eagle's neck and head, projecting from the top,curved over them and held in its beak an emblazoned front of blackpatent leather that displayed in big figures of white the number 40, andin smaller letters, arching over the figures, the name, Lady Washington.It was the fire-cap of a famous engine company of the old New Yorkvolunteer department,--a curious thing, indeed, to be found in aschool-boy's room.

  The desk, littered with its books and papers, stood in the cornerbetween the window and the east wall. Along the west wall was acurtained clothes-press. Then came the marble-topped washstand, intowhich the water would flow only at night, when the demand for Gotham'ssupply of Croton measurably subsided. Beyond that was the door leadingto the open passage toward the stairway to the lower floors. In thecorner of the room were the school-boy paraphernalia of the day,--acricket bat, very much battered, two base-ball bats that the boys ofthis generation would doubtless scan suspiciously, "heft" cautiously,then discard disdainfully, for they were of light willow and bigger atthe bulge by full an inch than the present regulation. Beneath them inthe corner lay the ball of the year 1860, very like the article now inuse, but then referred to as a "ten shilling," and invariably made at anold shoe-shop at the foot of Second Avenue, whose owner, a veterancobbler, had wisely quit half-soling and heeling for a sixpence and wascoining dollars at the newly discovered trade. All the leading clubswere then his patrons,--the Atlantics, the Eckfords, the Mutuals, theStars, even the Unions of Morrisania. All the leading junior clubs sworeby him and would use no ball but his,--the champion Actives, the Alerts,the Uncas. (A "shanghai club" the boys declared the last named to bewhen it first appeared at Hamilton Square in its natty uniform ofsnow-white flannel shirts and sky-blue trousers.) Base ball was in itsinfancy, perhaps, but what a lusty infant and how pervading! Beyond thatcorner and hanging midway on the northward wall was a portentous object,an old-fashioned maple shell snare-drum, with white buff leather slingand two pairs of ebony sticks, their polished heads and handlesproclaiming constant use, and the marble surface of the washstand top,both sides, gave proof that when practice on the sheepskin batter headwas tabooed by the household and the neighborhood, the inoffensive stonereceived the storm of "drags," and "flams," and
"rolls." Lifting thecurtain that overhung the boyish outfit of clothing, there stoodrevealed still further evidence of the martial tastes of the occupant,for the first items in sight were a natty scarlet shell-jacket, a pairof trim blue trousers, with broad stripe of buff, and a jaunty littleforage-cap, with regimental wreath and number. Underneath the curtain,but readily hauled into view, were found screwed and bolted to heavyblocks of wood two strange-looking miniature cannon, made, as one couldsoon determine, by sawing off a brace of old-fashioned army musketsabout a foot from the breech. Two powder-flasks and a shot-bag hung onpegs at the side of the curtained clothes-press. A little mirror wasclamped to the wall above the washstand. Some old fencing foils and aweather-beaten umbrella stood against the desk. An open paint-box, muchbesmeared, lay among the books. Some other pamphlets and magazines werestacked up on the top of the clothes-press. Two or three colored prints,one of Columbian Engine, No. 14, a very handsome Philadelphia"double-decker." Another of Ringgold Hose, No. 7, a really beautifulfour-wheeler of the old, old type, with chocolate-colored running gearand a dazzling plate-glass reel, completed the ornamentation of thisschool-boy den. There was no room for a lounge,--there was room only fortwo chairs; but that diminutive apartment was one of the most popularplaces of resort Pop's boys seemed to know, and thereby it became thehot-bed of more mischief, the birthplace of more side-splitting schoolpranks than even the staid denizens of that most respectable brownstonefront ever dreamed of, whatever may have been the convictions of theneighborhood, for Pop's boys, be it known, had no dormitory orschool-house in common. No such luck! They lived all over ManhattanIsland, all over Kings, Queens, and Westchester counties. They came fromthe wilds of Hoboken and the heights of Bergen. They dwelt in massivebrownstone fronts on Fifth Avenue and in modest wooden, one-storycottages at Fort Washington. They wore "swell" garments in some casesand shabby in others. They were sons of statesmen, capitalists, lawyers,doctors, and small shopkeepers. They were rich and they were poor; theywere high and they were low, tall and short, skinny and stout, but theywere all pitched, neck and crop, into Pop's hopper, treated share andshare alike, and ground and polished and prodded or praised, and a morestand-on-your-own-bottom lot of young vessels ("vessels of wrath," saidthe congregation of a neighboring tabernacle) never had poured into themimpartially the treasures of the spring of knowledge. They were of fourclasses, known as the first, second, third, and fourth Latin,corresponding to the four classes of Columbia and other colleges, and tobe a first Latin boy at Pop's was second only to being a senior at Yaleor Columbia. As a rule the youngsters "started fair" together at thebottom, and knew each other to the backbone by the time they reached thetop. Few new boys came in except each September with the fourth Latin.Pop had his own way of teaching, and the boy that didn't know hismethods and had not mastered his "copious notes" might know anybodyelse's Caesar, Sallust, or Cicero by rote, but he couldn't know Latin.Pop had a pronunciation of the Roman tongue that only a Pop's bred boycould thoroughly appreciate. Lads who came, as come in some rare casesthey did, from Eton or Harrow, from the Latin schools of Boston or themanifold academies of the East, read as they had been taught to read,and were rewarded with a fine sarcasm and the information that they hadmuch to unlearn. Pop's school was encompassed roundabout by many anotherschool, whose pupils took their airing under ushers' eyes, to thehowling disdain of Pop's unhampered pupils, who lined the opposite curband dealt loudly in satirical comment. There was war to the knifebetween Pop's boys and Charlier's around the corner, to the end that thehours of recess had to be changed or both schools, said the police,would be forbidden the use of Madison Square. They had many faults, hadPop's boys, though not all the neighborhood ascribed to them, and theyhad at least one virtue,--they pulled well together. By the time it gotto the top of the school each class was like a band of brothers, andnever was there a class of which this could be more confidently assertedthan the array of some twenty-seven youngsters, of whom Snipe and hissmaller chum, Shorty, were prominent members, in the year of our Lordeighteen hundred and sixty.

  Yet, they had their black sheep, as is to be told, and theirscapegraces, as will not need to be told, and months of the oddest,maddest, merriest school life in the midst of the most vivid excitementthe great city ever knew, and on the two lads wailing there at the atticwindow because their fates had balked the longed-for game at HamiltonSquare, there were dawning days that, rain or shine, would call themshelterless into constant active, hazardous life, and that, in one atleast, would try and prove and temper a brave, impatient spirit,--thatshould be indeed the very turning-point of his career.

  Patter, patter, patter! drip, drip, drip! the rain came pelting insteady shower. The gusty wind blew the chimney smoke down into thehollow of the long quadrilateral of red brick house backs. Three, four,and five stories high, they hemmed in, without a break, a "plant" ofrectangular back-yards, each with its flag-stone walk, each with itssquare patch of turf, each with its flower-beds at the foot of the high,spike-topped boundary fence, few with visible shrubs, fewer stilldiversified by grape arbors, most of them criss-crossed withclothes-lines, several ornamented with whirligigs, all on this moistNovember afternoon wringing wet from the steady downpour that came onwith the dawn and broke the boys' hearts, for this was to have been thematch day between the Uncas and the Murray Hills, and Pop's school wasbacking the Indians to a man. One more week and winter might be uponthem and the ball season at an end. Verily, it was indeed too bad!

  With a yawn of disgust, the shorter boy at the open-topped window threwup his hands and whirled about. There on the bed lay the preciousbase-ball uniform in which he was wont to figure as shortstop. There,too, lay Snipe's, longer in the legs by nearly a foot. "There's nothingin-doors but books, Snipy. There's only one thing to tempt a fellow outin the wet,--a fire, and small chance of that on such a day. We mighttake the guns up on the roof and shoot a few skylights or something----"

  "Shut up!" said Snipe, at this juncture, suddenly, impetuously throwingup his hand. "Twenty-third Street!"

  Shorty sprang to the window and levelled an old opera-glass at thesummit of an odd white tower that loomed, dim and ghost-like, throughthe mist above the housetops quarter of a mile away. Both boys' eyeswere kindling, their lips parting in excitement. Both were on tiptoe.

  "Right! Down comes the lever!" was the next announcement. "Upper Fifth,I'll bet a bat! Listen!"

  Suddenly there pealed on the heavy air, solemn and slow, the deep,mellow tones of a great bell. Even as he counted the strokes each boyreached for his cap. One--two--three--four!

  "Fourth!" cried Shorty. "Come on!" And, light as kittens, away scurriedthe two, skimming down three flights of stairs, nearly capsizing asedate old butler, snatching their top-coats in the hall, lettingthemselves out with a bang, leaping down the broad flight of brownstonesteps to the broader walk below, then spurting away for Union Square,fast as light-heeled, light-hearted lads could run.