The Statesmen Snowbound. Robert Fitzgerald
It was with regret that I left this attractive home, and I gladly accepted an invitation to return in the fall for the shooting. For the shooting, indeed! Why, that was all over! Dan Cupid never aimed truer! My wife—a Kentuckian—says that I will never shine as a Nimrod, but it seems to me that I have had pretty fair success in that rôle.
II
SENATOR BULL AND MR. RIDLEY—TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE NEWLY FLEDGED MEMBER.
Again on the train, our troubles were over, and we pulled out of the station amid cheers and yells from hundreds of throats—an odd contrast to the mournful silence of the throng upon our arrival.
In our party were Senators Baker, of Kentucky; Bull, of Montana; Wendell, of Massachusetts; Hammond, of Michigan; Pennypacker, of West Virginia; and Congressmen Holloway, of Illinois; Manysnifters, of Georgia; Van Rensselaer, of New York; a majority of the Kentucky delegation, Mr. Ridley, Senator Bull's private secretary, and several newspaper men.
Senator Bull is seventy, tall and massive. His features are striking—a big nose, heavy, grizzled mustache, bushy brows emphasizing eyes blue and kindly, a wide mouth, tobacco-stained, with a constant movement of the jaws—bovine, but shrewdly ruminative. A leonine head of shaggy white hair crowns the whole. Ridley, the private secretary, is about the same age. He is a ruddy-cheeked, round-paunched little fellow, scarcely measuring up to the Senator's shoulder. The thin fringe of hair around his shining pate gives him the appearance of a jolly friar. He peers at you through gold-rimmed spectacles, and is quite helpless without them. He has been with Senator Bull for years, serving him faithfully in various capacities, and is now a partner in the enterprises which have made the Senator many times a millionaire. The title of "private secretary" is one of courtesy merely, and seems to highly amuse the two friends.
Senator Bull and Sammy Ridley.
At nightfall we had left the storm behind us, and were speeding over the mountains. The sunlight, lingering on the higher peaks, cast great shadows into the depths beyond. There had been much snow all winter, and the summits sparkled and shone out dazzlingly, then went pink and crimson and purple as the radiance slowly faded. The lamps had not been lighted in the car, and most of us had gathered at the observation end, impressed by the grandeur of it all, when the silence was broken by Mr. Ridley.
"That's a pretty sight, sure! It gives me a kind of solemn feeling all over. The glory up there makes me think of dying, and heaven, and angels, and all that," he said gravely. "That patch of light calls to mind the fellows I know who climb the heights, and when they get near the top the sunshine of prosperity, or fame, or notoriety, or whatever you call it, strikes them and it wilts them, and they can't stand it for long, so they fall back, and you don't hear of them any more. There're others, though, who get up there and fairly bask in it all, walk around, lie down, eat and sleep in it. They can stand it, and, my, what big shadows they throw!"
"Well, well, well, Sammy Ridley, I never heard you talk like that before," said Senator Bull; "it must have been that funeral to-day. Got on your nerves, eh? Some folks are affected like that. Come away from that window, boy, and get back to earth again." Thus urged, Mr. Ridley got back to earth again, and took a drink of generous size. Several of the delegation joined him. The movement seemed a popular one.
The conversation then turned to the deceased, his many good qualities, his probable successor in the Senate, and the bearing his death would have upon the political situation in Kentucky.
"We will miss him in the Senate," said Senator Wendell; "we will miss his wise counsel, the broad statesmanlike views, and the kindly personality that endeared him to us all. Thurlow was a great man, and the State of Kentucky will no doubt erect a fitting memorial."
"Yes," said Mr. Ridley, "I suppose they will. They ought to. It may be some consolation to the family anyhow. But it is an empty sort of thing, after all, when you come to think of it. A man's life and actions are his best monument; those who loved him will never forget him, his enemies will be sorry they spoke, and there will be something more than appropriate cut on his tombstone—that's certainly all a man should want. What's the use of waiting for a fellow to die before immortalizing him in marble or bronze? It is small satisfaction to him personally. Why not put up a statue while he is living, and let him have the pleasure of walking past it with his wife and children on a fine Sunday afternoon when all the folks are out?"
"There is a rich vein of truth in what you say, Sammy," said Senator Bull; "but you are alive and well, and it is almost impossible for you to take a dead man's view of the situation."
"I don't know but what you are right, Senator," observed Mr. Ridley thoughtfully, and the group relapsed into silence.
"You are a Southern man, I believe, Mr. Ridley," said Representative Van Rensselaer a few minutes later, as they touched glasses.
"I was one, sir, very much of one; that's why I am limping around now. I was in the Confederate Army, up to the fall of sixty-three, and then I was taken prisoner."
"So you have had a taste of Union prisons, eh?" asked Senator Baker, who spoke feelingly—his "Recollections of Johnson's Island" had just made its appearance.
"Just a leetle might of a taste, Senator; nothing like your experience, though. You see, it was this way with me. I was captured by a pretty good sort of a fellow—a big, husky, soft-hearted chap who wouldn't hurt a flea. That's him over there," pointing to Senator Bull, "and he has held me prisoner ever since. He ran up against me at Chickamauga."
"Well?" said Senator Baker expectantly.
"Tell them the whole story, Sammy," said Senator Bull, as several of the party drew their chairs up closer to the private secretary; "tell them the whole story; it will kill time, anyway."
"Yes," continued Mr. Ridley, "I was taken prisoner, and it all came of my foolishness and scorn for the enemy. We boys of the—th Arkansas thought any Johnny Reb could whip five Yanks, and it made us kind of careless-like, I reckon. I was a raw country lad when the war broke out, as tough a specimen as ever Jefferson County turned loose on the unsuspecting public, but I wasn't much worse than the rest of the boys who loafed around Todd's livery stable swapping lies, chawing tobacco, and setting the nation to rights. We were all full of fight when the Sumter news came, and anxious to get in it; and I saw a heap of it, too, before I made the acquaintance of Nathan Bull.
"There was some lively skirmishing on the morning of September twentieth, sixty-three, before the armies got together in earnest. It was real comical to see the boys tearing up their love-letters and playing-cards just before going into battle. The roads and fields were speckled with the scraps just like a snowfall on the stage, as I reckon all of you have seen in plays like 'Alone in London,' and the 'Banker's Daughter.' It was in one of those preliminary set-tos that somehow my company strayed away, and left me up in the woods with a bullet in my leg. I was looking around for some place where I could lie down and nurse myself a bit, and at the same time keep clear of the shells and other things flying around. The air was full of them—making a noise like 'Whar-izz-yer?' 'Whar-izz-yer?' Haven't you often heard that sound, Senator? Some poor devil hears it once too often, every now and then, doesn't he?
"It was very hot and dusty, and I was plumb crazy for water. Somehow I managed to work my way out to a big clear space on the side of the hill. The brush and weeds were up to your neck. At the foot of the hill was a piece