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Quite So By: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) |
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By Thomas Bailey Aldrich Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
I. Of course that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it
is still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or
Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy "Quite So."
It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck to him
with such bur like tenacity, and is so inseparable from my memory of
him, that I do not think I could write definitely of John Bladburn if I
were to call him anything but "Quite So." It was one night shortly after the first battle of Bull Run. The Army
of the Potomac, shattered, stunned, and forlorn, was back in its
old quarters behind the earthworks. The melancholy line of ambulances
bearing our wounded to Washington was not done creeping over Long
Bridge; the blue smocks and the gray still lay in windrows on the field
of Manassas; and the gloom that weighed down our hearts was like the fog
that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and enfolded the valley
of the Shenandoah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and, growing
bolder with the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the tent the
tent of Mess 6, Company A, th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers. Our mess,
consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four. Little Billy,
as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at Manassas;
Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax Court House, shot through
the hip; Hunter and Suydam we had said good by to that afternoon. "Tell
Johnny Reb," says Hunter, lifting up the leather side piece of the
ambulance, "that I 'll be back again as soon as I get a new leg." But
Suydam said nothing; he only unclosed his eyes languidly and smiled
farewell to us. The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that shameful July day
sat gloomily smoking our brier wood pipes, thinking our thoughts,
and listening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the
occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp
for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of
rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge pole of the tent, and
fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong
described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane
fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no
one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to
the result of his cogitations, observed that "it was considerable of a
fizzle." "The 'on to Richmond' business?" "Yes." "I wonder what they 'll do about it over yonder," said Curtis, pointing
over his right shoulder. By "over yonder" he meant the North in general
and Massachusetts especially. Curtis was a Boston boy, and his sense of
locality was so strong that, during all his wanderings in Virginia, I
do not believe there was a moment, day or night, when he could not have
made a bee line for Faneuil Hall. "Do about it?" cried Strong. "They 'll make about two hundred thousand
blue flannel trousers and send them along, each pair with a man in
it all the short men in the long trousers, and all the tall men in the
short ones," he added, ruefully contemplating his own leg gear, which
scarcely reached to his ankles. "That's so," said Blakely. "Just now, when I was tackling the commissary
for an extra candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing blankets." "I say there, drop that!" cried Strong. "All right, sir, didn't know
it was you," he added hastily, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had
thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and
rain that threatened the most serious bronchial consequences to our
discontented tallow dip. "You 're to bunk in here," said the lieutenant, speaking to some one
outside. The some one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the darkness. When Strong had succeeded in restoring the candle to consciousness, the
light fell upon a tall, shy looking man of about thirty five, with
long, hay colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain drops stood in
clusters, like the night dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow... Continue reading book >>
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Short stories |
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