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قراءة كتاب The Army Mule, and Other War Sketches
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The Army Mule, and Other War Sketches
The Army Mule
by
Capt. Henry A. Castle
If he gets loose, he darts through an ambulance or climbs a tree, without compunction. But he seldom gets loose (Page 24)
THE ARMY MULE
AND OTHER WAR SKETCHES
BY
HENRY A. CASTLE
Private, Sergeant-Major and Captain Illinois Volunteers
Past Commander Loyal Legion Commandery of Minnesota
Past Commander Department of Minnesota G. A. R.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
J. W. VAWTER
INDIANAPOLIS AND KANSAS CITY
THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY
M DCCC XCVIII
Copyright, 1897
BY
THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO.
CONTENTS
| PAGE. | ||
| I. | The Army Mule | 1 |
| II. | The Sutler | 91 |
| III. | The Shelter Tent | 140 |
| IV. | Dress Parade | 179 |
| V. | The Boys in Blue Grown Gray | 218 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
| If he gets loose, he darts through an ambulance or climbs a tree, without compunction. But he seldom gets loose | Frontispiece |
| The quenchless, marvelous mule emerges from the mire and clay, with a whooping-cough wheeze | 63 |
| But likeliest from safe shelter of some commodious, commanding stump, observing the struggle with a rural Sunday morning cheerfulness | 135 |
| Blessed is the voluptuousness of reverie, blessed and cheap as an expectant clothier's greeting, while he pauses ecstatically for an appropriate smile | 162 |
| No two companies have been drilled alike; no three consecutive soldiers perform the same antic at the same time | 212 |
| The veterans quietly gathered in the voluntary and involuntary honors.... One state points with pride to her nine soldier governors, and of seven presidents elected since the close of the war, six were ex-soldiers | 230 |
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!
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 asserts, 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 circumference 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