Harvard Stories Part 10

The graduate smiled and then began: "As I said when I just now interrupted your discussion, there was another side to the glory of the war times in the old college. To the war itself there was, of course, another side, and I was on it. Up to the breaking of the storm we boys had not troubled ourselves much about the out-look. Most of us took politics lightly, and though burning then, still, among us at least, they were, as now I suppose, more the subject of good-natured chaff than of bitter feelings. However deeply the more thoughtful of us may have felt, they never allowed their convictions to interfere with their friendships. Of course, there were a few loud-mouthed zealots who made themselves disagreeable, but they were as much so to men of their own opinions as to those of the opposite.

"Hardly any one really expected war, or, if he did, ever said so. The historic shot fired on Sumter was, therefore, as much of a shock to our little community as to all of the North--even more, for a civil war meant more to us. To us, you know, fraternity is a reality.

"When the news came so that it could not be denied, it was not talked of between us Southerners and the rest. Next came the news that my State had gone out. That night my chum Jim Standish and I sat in our window-seat and smoked a long time without speaking. Finally the question came from him, 'Well, old man, are you going?' I said, 'Yes.'

Then he put out his hand and I took it hard. When we had nearly finished our pipes Jim spoke again, 'When this is over, Tom,' he said, 'you will come back and get your degree with us.' I shook my head, I remember, and answered: 'It won't be over until long after our commencement--or else Harvard will be in a country foreign to me.'

"You see I remember that evening and the conversation very vividly. It was all we ever held on the subject. I knew what Jim's opinions were, and he knew mine well enough; but he was too much of a gentleman to make my position any harder for me than it was. I was going to do what I considered my duty,--let that pa.s.s now also; it was more than a quarter of a century ago.

"Very soon the letter came from home, but I did not need it to hurry me.

Jim and I were together almost every minute until I went away, and all my other friends seemed to go out of their way to show me courtesy and affection.

"The night before I left was Strawberry Night at the Pudding, and I remember I had intended not to go to the rooms. They were then in the top of Stoughton. I was packing in my room when Jim and Harry Rodes and one or two others came in, as a committee, to insist on my going. The committee accomplished its purpose by the usual smooth-tongued diplomacy of the undergraduate. They told me not to make a d.a.m.n fool of myself, and that if I did not come round like a man, the theatricals should not go on. So I went, and tried to forget on my last night in the Yard that there was any world outside of it. That is the play-bill of those theatricals hanging over there on the wall now. What a time we had that night!

"I went home next day, with Clayton Randolph, Jack Randolph's father, as the rising generation always puts it. There was not much difficulty in getting South at that time. I enlisted soon after I arrived, and, as a result, was rather busy for four years.

"Of course, for a long time I heard nothing from Cambridge. You boys know how almost the whole graduating cla.s.s went to the front, and many an undercla.s.sman did not wait for his Commencement. You can read the degrees won by some of them in Memorial Hall. Every now and then I saw in that precious booty, a Northern newspaper, a name that I had last heard called in a recitation, or had myself many a time shouted across the Yard.

"The stray Northern papers were not my source of news in all cases.

There was one name that for a time was in the mouths of all our men, and I had to risk their scorn and suspicion in defending it. They would hardly believe that the man who could lead a black regiment, and die in the front of his n.i.g.g.e.rs in that terrible charge on Fort Wagner, was not a hardened ruffian, a desperate mercenary, but a fair-haired boy of five-and-twenty, and the most sunny, lovable gentleman that ever left the ballroom for the battle-field.

"I saw myself the fall of a man of different mould, but of the same metal. We were holding a strong position and had repulsed two heavy charges, when we saw the enemy forming for a third. This time they came closer than in either of the previous attempts, and it looked for a minute as if they would reach us. But our fire was frightful, aided by several batteries that were pouring in grape and canister at short range. The regiment immediately in front of us came on well; but no body of men could stand it, and at last it wavered and then broke. Through the smoke I could see a mounted officer tearing about and trying desperately to rally the men, striking with the flat of his sword, and evidently beside himself with anger. Then, as he found it was no use and his men left him, he turned, rode all alone straight at us, and was shot through and through. I have seen too much of what is ordinarily called courage to be attracted to a man solely by that commonest of virtues; but this man's splendid scorn of surviving his failure, his fury at what he considered disgrace, and his deliberate self-sacrifice, lifted his act above the common run of bravery. That man had breeding, and I wanted to have a look at him. After the fight was over, I went to where he lay dead with his horse. It was Boredon of '61. I had hated that man. He had been one of those disagreeable cranks of whom I have spoken, a man absorbed with one idea and allowing that idea to color all his feelings, and spoil his manners. He had been to me as a red rag to a bull. But when I recognized him there, I would have given a great deal to have been able to tell him how proud I was of him. Evidently he had at least the hard part of a gentleman. I went back to my brother officers, and, with a good deal of boyish swagger I am afraid, said to them, 'That fellow was at Harvard with me. That is the sort of fools they make there.'

"Well, the war went on until we were hemmed in around Richmond in '64.

It was at that time that I ran across Clayton Randolph, whom I had not seen since we left Cambridge together. I came near not recognizing him in the circ.u.mstances in which I found him. A battery of artillery had got stuck in the mud, but as I came up to it the last gun was being dragged out. An officer seemed to be doing most of the work, shoving on the wheels and encouraging his tired men. Shortly afterwards we were again halted next to the same battery, and there was the same officer sitting on a stump. His old uniform was covered with mud and axle-grease; his beard was four days' old; but he was Clayton Randolph, Randolph the dandy, Randolph, the model of neatness, whose perfect clothes had always been an object of chaff among us; Randolph, whose heaviest labor had been to polish his hat, and deepest thought to plan a dinner. He was sharing his piece of stale cornbread with a hungry little darky. You may imagine that we were rather glad to see each other.

Clayton, however, had no more Cambridge news to give me than I had to give him, which was rather a disappointment. His battery was stationed near my regiment that winter, so we managed to see a good deal of each other in camp.

"One day, as I was sitting in front of my tent, I saw Clayton come galloping into the company street as though carrying urgent despatches.

On seeing me he began shouting and waving his cap, as if there was danger that I might not see him and hear what he had to say. He was evidently beside himself about something,--and so was I, when he pulled up and yelled: 'What do you think? Jim Standish is in Libby prison!'

"I forget how he had learned this, but I remember he was very sure of it. By great luck and much energy we both managed to get leave that same day, and go to Richmond together; but we were disappointed in our hopes of seeing Jim. We turned every stone we could, and tried our best with the authorities, but it was no use; we could not get into the prison.

There had been several escapes at that time, and no visitor of any sort was allowed to enter. The provost in charge, however, who knew Clayton, told us we might send Jim a letter, subject, of course, to its examination by the authorities. So we wrote him that we were there, and asked if there was anything he wanted us to send him. We explained that we could not get in to see him, but that he must write us all the news he could.

"In a short time the guard who had taken our note came back and asked what relation to us 'that young feller' was. We told him no relation by blood, but something a little closer, perhaps. 'Well,' said he, 'I never saw a feller take on so when I give him your note. He begged me to let him talk to you, and he most cried. Then he begged worse kind just to let him look out of a window where he could see you. He asked which side of the house you was on, and I reckon if I'd ha' told him he'd ha' made a break for the window and risked my shootin' him. I was right sorry, but I couldn't do nothin' for him but get him some paper. He's writin'

you a letter now, and says for you to be sure and wait for it.'

"There was no danger of our not waiting for it. Neither of us had heard a word from the old place or from any of our friends for three years. I suppose none of you boys has ever been separated from his college friends for a longer time than the long vacation?"

"I was away for a year after graduating," answered Dane Austin. "I was abroad with a cla.s.smate, and I remember the first long letter from one of our chums; all about the Springfield game, and what all 'the gang'

were doing. We read that letter over every day for a month."

"Then you can imagine what it was to get news after three years, and three such years. We waited and waited for that letter, and at last it came out to us--a regular volume. I have it now. I don't believe Jim ever wrote so much in all his college work put together. We sat with our backs against a wall while I read it aloud.

"First it gave us all the news from Cambridge;--among other things, that we had won the boat-race on Lake Quinsigamond. Randolph said that almost made up for Gettysburg, and we had a little cheer all to ourselves. I remember a man came running up to hear what the news was and whether the Yankees had been licked anywhere. We told him not that we knew of, but Harvard had beaten Yale, and he went off d.a.m.ning us for making such a row about nothing. The letter went on to say that there would probably be no race that year, as most of the rowing men had gone off to the war.

Almost all of our old set had gone into the army, it said. That jolly, good-for-nothing rattle, bad Bob Bowling, who was always on the ragged edge of expulsion, always in hot water with the Faculty, and who had been booked by every one for a very bad end, had disappointed them all and found a distinguished career in a cavalry regiment. But the hero of the cla.s.s was little Digges, 'Nancy' Digges, the quiet, shy, little pale-faced student who looked as if he would blow away in a strong wind, and whom no one had thought was good for anything but grubbing for Greek roots. This man had been promoted several times for gallantry. At Gettysburg, when Longstreet's corps was right on top of his battery, when his supports had been driven in, his horses shot, and his gunners were falling around him, he had dragged his guns back by hand, one by one, and stopped to spike the last while one of our men was reaching for him with a bayonet. When I read this we both exclaimed: 'Well, I'll be hanged, Little Nancy!'"

"It was at Gettysburg also that Jim had seen Harry Rodes. The last time that Jim had seen him before that was just before leaving college, when Rodes had been elected president of the Hasty Pudding; this time he was lying in the gra.s.s, where it was red. There was like news of several other old chums.

"'As for your humble servant,' Jim wrote, 'he has only succeeded in getting himself ignominiously jugged by your Johnnies.' I heard, long afterwards, how he had been captured, pinned under his dead horse, with a broken sabre, and three of our men to his score. 'This is not so much fun,' he went on, 'as that night in the Newton jail, which perhaps you may remember, Tom. You got me into that, you riotous companion and perverter of my youth.' I remembered that sc.r.a.pe of our Soph.o.m.ore year very well, but I had a strong impression that it was Jim who upset the officer of the law. He told us he could stand Libby, however, well enough, if he only had a little smoke, and asked if we could not give aid and comfort to the invader in the shape of tobacco. At this Randolph exclaimed: 'Jim Standish without his pipe! That is a real case of suffering among the prisoners!' The letter wound up with an injunction to answer it at once and tell all about ourselves and the other boys on our side, and with the hope that we should all be at the next triennial dinner.

"As soon as we had read the letter we went off and spent all our savings in tobacco. That was the only cheap thing in Richmond in those days, and we got enough to last Jim for months, though I have no doubt that he at once gave most of it away. Then we got some paper, and wrote him all we knew of the Harvard men on our side of the fence. We could give an equally good account of them, too; for though, as disobedient children, Alma Mater has frowned on us, she never had cause to blush. We finished the letter before it was time for us to go back to camp, and sent it with the tobacco to Jim. We promised to try again to see him, but neither of us could get leave for a long time. If we had there would have been little chance of our getting into Libby; and if we had gotten into Libby, we should not have found Jim there."

As the speaker paused Stoughton asked, "Why? did he es----" and then stopped, inwardly cursing himself, as he noticed a look that was coming into the face of the narrator. But the latter at once relieved him immensely by continuing.

"Yes, he escaped--very soon after our visit. A lot of prisoners got out together, Jim among them. The news was sent to all the troops near Richmond and instructions to keep a sharp lookout for them. Jim managed to get to our very outer lines, and one pitch-dark night tried to run the picket. The officer in command saw him in the brush and challenged him. Jim, trusting to the darkness and his old hundred-yard records, tried to make a dash for it. The officer fired and shot--shot him down like a dog."

The speaker's cigar had apparently gone out, and no one looked at him while he relit it. They looked at the walls where the firelight danced over the rollicking play-bills of thirty years ago. In a moment the graduate spoke again:

"As I leaned over the dearest friend I ever had, we recognized each other and he smiled. I took his head in my lap and he died holding my hand."

"Then you saw him before he died? Were you with the picket?" asked Gray.

"Yes.--I commanded the picket."

LITTLE HELPING HANDS.

It was all the result of a violent discussion in Stoughton's room.

Hudson held that four miles an hour was an easy walking gait; Stoughton and Gray said it wasn't.

"I tell you," said the latter, "when you are doing better than three and a half, you are hitting it up pretty well, and you couldn't keep it up for any length of time. Don't you remember, d.i.c.k, we timed ourselves when we walked out from Boston the other night? It took us fifty minutes from the corner of Charles and Cambridge Streets, and that is just about three miles."

"Yes, and we went at a pretty good pace too," added Stoughton.

"That was probably after a supper at Billy Parks'," Hudson explained; "under those circ.u.mstances you undoubtedly covered a great many more miles than the crow flies between here and Boston."

"No, witty youth, it wasn't anything of the kind. We don't follow in your footsteps," retorted d.i.c.k to this innuendo. "No, sir, you couldn't walk four miles an hour all day to save your neck."

"I'm betting I could," Hudson replied, "I have done it often out shooting."

"I dare say you thought so; have you ever tried it over a measured stretch?"

"No, but I can guess at about what rate I am walking, and four miles an hour is a good easy swing. I'll bet you a V that I can do twenty-four miles in six hours."

"I'll take that," answered Stoughton, promptly.

"So will I, if you offer the same," said Gray.

"Yes, I'll bet with you, too," said Hudson.

Just at that moment Ned Burleigh came in, going through the form of giving the door a thump as he opened it, and telling himself to come in.

"What are you abandoned sports betting about now?" he asked, as he covered the whole front of the fireplace as usual.

"Steve thinks he can walk twenty-four miles in six hours," answered Stoughton, "and we each have five dollars worth of opinion that he can't. What do you think about it?"