The Army Mule and Other War Sketches Part 1

The Army Mule and Other War Sketches.

by Henry A. Castle.

I hail thee Brother--spite of the fool's scorn!

And fain would take thee with me, in the dell Of peace and mild Equality to dwell, Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side!

How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay!

Yea! and more musically sweet to me Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be, Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast!

--COLERIDGE.

THE ARMY MULE

I

The longevity of the Mule is proverbial. He lives on and on, until his origin becomes a musty myth, and age erects a tumor on his brow which betokens superb development of spirituality. The endurance of a hallucination is perhaps greater still. Our civil war closed more than thirty years ago. The Mules employed in the army are mostly dead--not so the hallucinations. These still linger, picturesque but fatiguing.

There still survives in every northern town and village at least one man who habitually a.s.serts, who is willing to verify by affidavit, worst of all, who steadfastly believes, that he put down the rebellion.

The Mules are not supposed to have understood the war, and consequently can not be expected to hold themselves responsible for its results. But the man of distorted perspective, who measures the circ.u.mference of the universe by the diameter of his own egotism, shrinks from no exaltation and shirks no responsibility. He is festooned with self-complacency, wearing always a fourteenth century smile of content.

Controversy is welcome to him, as the advent of a bloomer woman to a social purity club. He relishes argument and he loves to boast. He can readily maintain that his side was eternally right and the other side infernally wrong in the war, for that fact is beginning to be somewhat widely accepted. To establish his own feats is somewhat more difficult, whether he sing like Miriam or howl like Jeremiah in narrating them. But he will cheerfully spend a week in marching one of his deeds past a given point, and skeptics soon discover that it is cheaper to feed him than to fight him. He may be an ex-major-general, or possibly an ex-teamster. Sometimes he is an ex-corporal, mellow as those autumnal days when the golden glory of the sa.s.safras vies with the persimmon's gaudy crimson. Oftenest perhaps he is an ex-captain, for does not every war evolve the greatest captain of the age as its ultimate hero? He may now pa.s.s for a respectable citizen, with houses to let and money to burn, who rashly trusts to his imagination when his memory is out of focus, and lets the b.l.o.o.d.y chasm go on yawning for more gore.

More likely, however, he carries his real estate as well as his religion in his wife's name, fully persuaded that a rolling stone gathers no moss but grinds exceeding fine, razors and tomahawks included. In any event he is a mighty talker before the crowd, bristling with home thrusts that give out a sizzling sound and an odor of roast owl. He is a Chimborazo of noise with an ant-hill of achievement to back it; a miracle of linked hallucinations ludicrously elongated; an extinct incandescent carbon belching black smoke. His sole claim to mention in connection with the useful, unpretentious Mule, is the purely accidental circ.u.mstance of their simultaneous military service. He has no other t.i.tle to consideration in this important historical episode.

He is not a typical old soldier, and must not be so cla.s.sified. He is an exception. When tests are to be applied he can always prove an alibi. His mouth was put on soft and spread; the flush on his nose was acquired at a great expenditure of time and money. He comes to the front in his community, sage of the flannel lip and velvet eye, in accordance with a known law that not always the ablest men are heard, but always the ablest to be heard. He comes to the front with the persistence of a pardoned anarchist, and the flawless joy of a yearling who has maxed in math.

Meantime it is one of the everlasting verities that in hands of men "entirely" great, the calligraph is mightier than the bludgeon. Shall calligraphs stand dumb and the story of days when G.o.d shook the nation until her lakes foamed over their pebbly sh.o.r.es and her rivers gurgled with b.l.o.o.d.y ebullition remain unwrit, in fear of probing blow-holes in the record of some grand snark in the concatenated order of hoo hoos? Shall posterity be given over to moral mushiness, lest some village Goliath of Gath, p.r.o.ne to such nightly exhilaration of spirits as ends in losing the combination of adjacent streets, get shrunken into shreds of paper-rag, brain-web and vapor?

Historians of the war have minutely narrated its grand events--events which rising generations are already reproaching themselves for coming too late to engage in, being relegated to their own nerveless annals penciled on the segment of a film. Most cla.s.ses of partic.i.p.ants in these events have been heard from. Either in plain narrative or wrathful controversy they have ventured an enormous consumption of time and eternity. Whether their anger be a dynamite sh.e.l.l or a soap-bubble, its vocalization is uniformly terrific. The generals and the majors; the teamsters and the staff; even the drafted men and subst.i.tutes, unstable as the heroine who vowed at first that she would never consent, and then relented--all these have spoken or can speak for themselves. Majestically muscled around the mouth, staunchly nerved in the cheek, they need no rhetorical proxy. Since history has accepted most of their averments, they modestly consider themselves endorsed.

There are other cla.s.ses of partic.i.p.ants who must be spoken for--their merits have not yet become the theme of tropical, topical songs. The speechless toilers of the conflict, half horse, half devil, half donkey, stand high on the list of those who should not be forgotten.

We may fling flash-lights of inspection all around the black horizon of war and find no greater faithfulness, not even in Israel.

Under the cadence of march, murmur of camp, clangor of battle and reverberating paeans of victory, rumbles the ground tone of all war's harmonies, the deep contra ba.s.so of a melodious bray, reminding us that justice remains yet to be done to the instrument which made campaigns successful and battles possible. It is an instrument to which due credit has never been given, yet which is infinitely more credit-worthy than many of the boasters, "ablest to be heard," who make the cackle of their villages noxious to mankind.

That instrument is the Army Mule! Let him who hath ears to hear lend them now to a belated attempt at vindication. Let the man of prejudice disinfect his mind and listen. It is naught, saith the buyer, then goeth his way and boasteth; but an _ad valorem_ tax on dudes has never been made to yield any revenue.

The name of the original inventor of the Mule is lost in the immemorial mists. Although, as hereinbefore intimated, his longevity is a chestnut as old as the Morse alphabet, or older, his nativity is still a conundrum. No Mule's teeth, with or without gold filling, glisten among sh.e.l.ls of the pliocene period. No Mule elevates his afterdeck in the granitic formations. None of his petrified footprints are discernible in those anteglacial basins where Afric's sunny fountains now sprinkle her shirtless swarms. Hence, although he possibly antedates all living apostles of lady suffrage, he is presumably not a pre-Adamite. Perhaps his first discoverer was "that Anah" who, to his astonishment, "found Mules in the wilderness," where donkeys had been browsing, etc. See Genesis x.x.xvi, 24. It is not permissible to go behind the returns. What we know is that he was introduced to the American people by antic.i.p.ation, that is to say, through his paternal ancestor, by G. Washington, Esq., of Mount Vernon in Virginia.

Much sarcasm, variegated as Paris green jealousy and red precipitate wrath could dye it, has been expended on this delicate matter of the Mule's paternal ancestry. Among other spiteful things it has been averred that like certain party organizations he has no more ground for pride of descent than he has for hope of posterity. Let us promptly concede the validity of the averment. Argue not with one steeped in kerosene and other fire-waters; matters look ominous when a disputant opens the discussion with foam on his teeth and noises in his nostril. Fill blanks as to name of party by majority vote of those present, and let the proceedings proceed.

It is doubtless true that the speechless, unspeakable Mule, seldom troubles himself about his heirs, executors or administrators. Why should he? He is a monstrosity, physical and metaphysical; the _ne plus ultra_, the "nothing beyond" of his species. Besides, he has little of value to bequeath; he is a disinherited prodigal, with champagne tastes and a root beer revenue, digesting his diet of wild oats; his a.s.sets would scarcely overbalance those of a disbanded Uncle Tom troupe--one blood hound, one death-bed, and two cakes of imitation ice. Moreover, truth to tell, he is probably in no special haste to die. This amiable weakness is shared by certain of our own race.

A hypercritical Boston lady, mistress of the mysteries of nine idioms and five kinds of angel cake, was heard to declare that she would rather not die at all than be buried anywhere outside Mount Auburn.

The speechless, discredited Mule, born old, wise and fuzzy, has little to thank his paternal ancestors for, save phenomenal ears that not even a lion's skin can hide, as witness aesop, and a phenomenal voice that no lion's roar can drown. Both these heritages were preordained for grand service in an epoch when war should gnash loud her iron fangs, and shake her crest of bristling bayonets. Vouchsafe unto the male line grat.i.tude for little else. But as for the female line, who knows? Possibly it runs back to "Araby the blest," where horse pedigrees are cherished like a Connecticut coffee pot, until they fade into genealogical perspectives. Such perspectives, for example, as make the fine art of heraldic blazonry, frescoing and retouching precious to the British n.o.bility--some of whom, by the way, have much less cause than the nameless, unblamable Mule, to canonize the low-neck and short-sleeve branch of their lineage.

Although we do not know precisely who invented the Mule, it must be obvious that he is not a historical tenderfoot. He is not a mere ephemeral product of the county fair season, when alleged acrobats with leaky balloons monopolize the casualty columns. Neither is he one of those picturesque gubernatorial giraffes of the populist era, who come unwanted and go unwept.

Notwithstanding the fact that he is necessarily renewed with each generation, he belongs to an old family--one, in fact, fairly rancid with antiquity. He was the unconsidered drudge of the h.o.a.riest ancients, in those days when the average human heart could be readily split up for floor tiles. He had been promoted thence to the rank of mail carrier as long ago as when Mordecai the Jew "sent letters by riders on Mules" from Babylon, after the king had turned the rascals out with a promptness that compelled the admiration of every taxpayer.

He was bestridden by sprigs of royalty as long ago as when Absolom the lengthy-locked rode under the boughs of a great oak, wherein his hair became entangled, "and the Mule that was under him went away,"--thus sayeth the Scriptures! Unspeakable Mule, fraught with immeasurable destinies! Had he stood until great David's shear-bearers could come up and cut loose the best-beloved, the whole current of Israel's history might have changed, saving vast research to the modern sensational divine working a heresy advertis.e.m.e.nt for all there is in it. Solomon, next-beloved, might never have reigned; his superfluous seven hundred wives and his indispensable three hundred concubines, with their lissome, lightsome round of free hand riots, internal and interminable, might never have been acc.u.mulated; neither seen the sparkle of his three thousand proverbs, nor heard the ripple of his songs a thousand and five.

It is thus manifest that although this interesting hybrid is virtually an afterthought, he is not one of those later-day improvements in a chronic state of apology. This is authentic. It is also rea.s.suring to such typical, representative citizens weighing three hundred pounds each as still have misgivings. Had the speechless unspeakable Mule been simply an unperfected modern invention in the rough, his hair not yet dry, his effectiveness and hope of glory would have been greatly lessened. The surviving boasters "ablest to be heard" now on gra.s.sy village streets, with two million major-generals, colonels, first sergeants and other soldiers, might never have been able to suppress the most causeless and wicked rebellion ever waged by an army of barefooted chevaliers, fed on corn meal, sporadic acid and gunpowder, always in light marching order. N. B. They were always in hard fighting order likewise, since by an eternal law increment of bile is superinduced by shrinkage of commissariat.

Almost any mediocre can compile a ma.s.s of information from the cyclopedia. Even the vague enthusiast who goes through the world wearing an air of crushed strawberry resignation on his face and shaking hands with one finger can do that. But it is not the desideratum in a matter of this sort.

People prefer to see things step out with stereoscopic rotundity. Like the juvenile Lochinvar, they stay not for stone and stop not for air brakes. They demand the decentralization of apothegms. They desire sculpture from a chisel that, ignoring down and dimple, cuts thought and carves breath from the marble, without risk of challenge for implied bias. In the absence of stone-cutters, let a cyclopedia furnish from its cold-storage vaults some preliminary fundamentals. If they be plain, ascertainable, intelligible statements of fact, clothed in tights as it were, devoid of frills and amplifications, so much the better--and briefer! I quote:

"The Mule seems to excel both its ancestral species in natural intelligence. It is remarkable for its powers of muscular endurance.

Its sure-footedness particularly adapts it to mountainous countries.

It has been common from very ancient times in many parts of the East, and is much used, also, in most of the countries around the Mediterranean Sea, and in the mountainous parts of South America.

Great care is bestowed on the breeding of Mules in Spain and Italy, and those of particular districts are highly esteemed. In ancient times the sons of kings rode on Mules, and they were yoked in chariots. They are still used to draw the carriages of Italian cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries."

And more to the same effect.

We respectfully submit that here is a well-b.u.t.tressed certificate of character which fully justified the government in a.s.signing to this useful equine mulatto the important function he performed in putting down the rebellion.

The average American Mule has not the soft fur, fine as dressed seal-skin and smooth as coffin varnish, nor the rich shades of coloring, worn by his pampered kinfolk of Spain or Cyprus or Smyrna.

As to skin, he was, habitually, neither soft nor shining, he was simply tough. As to color, his muzzle was always whitish, as if fresh from a meal-tub, but otherwise he was more various than delectable, sometimes yellow, sometimes dun, sometimes sorrel, but oftenest darkly, deeply, beautifully bay. Second cousin to the New Mexican burro, but happily guiltless of any traceable relationship to the disreputable Texas mustang, his aspect was liable to be as one-sided as a Louisiana riot--seventeen negroes killed and one white man slightly wounded.

But texture and color apart, the harmless, unspeakable servitor of our march and camp was doubtless peer of any the effete monarchies of Europe or the East can boast. He had no overplus of style about him, but he was reliable, he was sincere, his muscularity was conceded by all. His facial angle was a convex curve, which somewhat impaired his beauty, but not his utility. Some knew him who did not love him; few named him except to praise after a reasonable acquaintance. His air of innocent gravity was sometimes mistaken for stupidity--most inexcusable and fatal error! He could look as imbecile as a rustic fop playing "Glory Hallelujah" on an accordeon. He could look as guileless as the youth who murdered his own father and mother and then begged the judge to have mercy on a poor orphan. He could look as soulful as a law clerk summing up to a jury of one with his arm around it. He could look as sober as though his whole intellect were grinding on the plus and minus of some unsolved problem, like that for example which the Book of Mormon and Mohammed's Koran and Clark's Commentaries, with all their attention to detail, have neglected, whether Aaron's golden calf was a Holstein or a Jersey.

Sleepy or asleep he may have seemed, but let some small darkey imp of mischief tweak his patient ear, then note how swiftly that magnetic hoof will lift the tweaker to a pearly seat amidst the celestial cherubim--direct and speedy circuit of nerve-telephone here manifest, without the intervention of any dilatory central office. His drooping lids were thus but the token of a measureless content, which craved not the mere bric-a-brac and gumdrops of existence. But it was liable to shift its specific gravity, if any misfit perfume came between the wind and his n.o.bility, and explode in a sudden touch-and-go style, rocket-like, trigger-like, flashing.

He could smile like a heavenly blessing. His expressive yawn was widely eminent; without it no Mule was genuine. His bray, opening clear and sonorous, like the report of a judiciary committee, rapidly shaded off into a succession of disembodied shrieks and disemboweled groans, that sent thrills of suicidal delirium through all the encircling camps. No further seek his general merits to disclose. They developed constantly on the sensitive plate of our regard, and we have waited long for somebody to take off a blue-print of his ground plan and front elevation. The possessor of many virtues, poor but honest, with a large circulation but small political influence, sagacious and serene he stood, thick of head, tough of hide, hard of heel, the proffered hero of the expressive army shibboleth, "Here's your Mule."

The plutonic, speechless quadruped, Mule, like the platonic featherless biped, man, after being inspected on the hoof, was obliged to graduate through the three military degrees of Recruit, Soldier and Veteran.

We all remember those recruiting days; those first companies of picked men, mostly picked before they were ripe; when the fray was curtained behind song and hurrah, the cataract obscured by the rainbow. Who can forget the wrathful buzz and ferment, the wild tossing and writhing and moaning of an aroused people; the fierce uprising; the keen razor-edge of fervor. Then the enrolling and drilling and marching and evoluting in the moonlit squares and streets; the nocturnal visitations, with fife and drum, to the verandas of oratorical patriots for a "night-cap" of glowing speech, alternated with raids on suspected disloyalists to demand the prompt uphoisting of the star spangled banner. Saxon and Norman and Dane were we, or Celt or Teuton in birth or descent, but all of us then crystallized in the alembic of patriotism into the first generation of unadulterated Americans.

To the blasphemous challenge of secession, our young men, fully advised of the exceeding preciousness of life and yet thoroughly instructed how to dare and die, hurled back deathless daring and defiance. Their eyes, fixed on their idealized leaders, shining like white statues amid the black wreckage of rebellion, they marched into the flaming vortex with new, strange implements in their hands and "hot unutterabilities in their hearts."

These were the boys of '61, the raw recruits of the dawning conflict.

With them went the memory of the girls they left behind them, many of whom were afterwards lost in the shuffle. But the memory, then infinitely sweet, was hourly refreshed by a contemplation of the tangible Testament and pin-cushion. With them went the toe-ache of tight boots, earthly, sensual, devilish, and a flushed consciousness, even when drilling in the awkward squad, that the eyes of the universe were upon them. With them also, or following them, or mayhap meeting them in the dreamy borderland of Kentucky or Missouri to which he is fortuitously indigenous, went the harmless, necessary Mule.

He was a child of wrath, with a throat for melody s.p.a.cious as the funnel of a cyclone; with dexter and sinister ears of renown; with eyes foxy but sad, and saddest when he sang. He carried with him the appet.i.te of a Chippewa maiden clad in cavalry trowsers and a tentfly; also an inherited capacity to stand indefinitely on one foot and kick vehemently with all the others. He was reliable as grandfather's clock and prompt as the railway mail service. He was under a recognizance to support the const.i.tution of the United States, and stamp out the Confederacy to the best of his ability.

He was a raw recruit likewise. When men were beating the wrong way their plowshares into swords, he was out of a job on a dull labor market and could the better be spared. How much of the issues and principles at stake his comprehensive intelligence intelligently comprehended will perhaps never be known. He did not attend crowded war meetings in country school-houses and waste his rhetoric on the fetid air. It may fairly be surmised, however, that he knew better than any northern croaker the futility of trying to repossess our surrendered fortresses with writs of replevin; knew better than any southern fire-eater the folly of attempting to build up a republic with a live negro wriggling under the corner-stone; knew and would gladly have proclaimed, that no lapse of slip-shod years, no h.o.a.riness of unchallenged usage, no deftest hammerings of forensic sophistry can ever fashion a vested right out of a ragged wrong.

At all events, whether wittingly or willingly or neither, he became as potent a factor in the situation militant as when Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of one of his remote ancestors.

He wheeled into line useful, ubiquitous, proud as a deceased Connemarran with a solid silver door-plate on his pearl-plush casket, blazoning his immortal virtues--also quite numerous. A total of 450,000 mules and 650,000 horses served in the various armies. In 1864, the forces actually in the field required for artillery, cavalry and trains one-half as many animals as there were soldiers.

As a recruit, the Mule soon became an object of usurious rates of interest and concentrated curiosity. He was a drawing card, a veritable bargain counter or church scandal in his tractile powers.

His fame had preceded him, and his name was a potent talisman for conjuring ecstatic a.s.semblages. His name p.r.o.nounced, the sensation seekers gathered, as in the manipulation of complicated governmental machinery congress touches the b.u.t.ton, and the department clerks do the rest, subject to approval of the salary and allowance division.