The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 49, November, 1861

Having gone through the separate items, and looking at the case as a whole, we may easily perceive that in America, as in England and France and every other country, the responsibility of the soldier's health in camp is shared thus.

The authorities are bound so to arrange their work as that there shall be no hitch through which disaster shall reach the soldiery. The relations between the military and medical authorities must be so settled and made clear as that no professional jealousy among the doctors shall keep the commanding officers in the dark as to the needs—of their men, and that no self-will or ignorance in commanding officers shall neutralize the counsels of the medical men. The military authorities must not depend on the report of any doctor who may be incompetent as to the provision made for the men's health, and the doctor must be authorized to represent the dangers of a bad encampment without being liable to a recommendation to keep his opinion to himself till he is asked for it. These particular dangers are best obviated by the appointment of sanitary officers, to attend the forces, and take charge of the health of the army, as the physicians and surgeons take charge of its sickness. If, besides, there is a separate department between the commissariat and the soldiery, to see that the comforts provided are actually brought within every man's grasp, the authorities will have done their part.

The rest is the soldier's own concern. When cruelly pressed by hardship, the soldiers in Turkey and the Crimea took to drinking; and what they drank was poison. The vile raid with which they intoxicated themselves carried hundreds to the grave as surely as arsenic would have done. When, at last, they were well fed, warm, clean, and comfortable, and well amused in the coffee-houses opened for them, there was an end, or a vast diminution, of the evil of drunkenness. Good coffee and harmless luxuries were sold to them at cost price; and books and magazines and newspapers, chess, draughts, and other games, were at their command. The American soldiery are a more cultivated set of men than these, and are in proportion more inexcusable for any resort to intemperance. They ought to have neither the external discomfort nor the internal vacuity which have caused drunkenness in other armies. The resort to strong drinks so prevalent in the Americans is an ever-lasting mystery to Europeans, who recognize in them a self-governing people, universally educated up to a capacity for intellectual interests such as are elsewhere found to be a safeguard against intemperance in drink. If the precautions instituted by the authorities are well supported by the volunteers themselves, the most fatal of all perils will be got rid of. If not, the army will perish by a veritable suicide. But such a fate cannot be in store for such an army.

There is something else almost as indispensable to the health of soldiers as sobriety, and that is subordination. The true, magnanimous, patriotic spirit of subordination is not more necessary to military achievement than it is to the personal composure and the trustworthiness of nerve of the individual soldier. A strong desire and fixed habit of obedience to command relieve a man of all internal conflict between self-will and circumstance, and give him possession of his full powers of action and endurance. If absolute reliance on authority is a necessity to the great majority of mankind, (which it is,) it is to the few wisest and strongest a keen enjoyment when they can righteously indulge in it; and the occasion on which it is supremely a duty—in the case of military or naval service—is one of privilege. Americans are less accustomed than others to prompt and exact obedience, being a self-governing and unmilitary nation: and they may require some time to become aware of the privileges of subordination to command. But time will satisfy them of the truth; and those who learn the lesson most quickly will be the most sensible of the advantage to health of body, through ease of mind. The abdication of self-will in regard to the ordering of affairs, the repose of reliance upon the responsible parties, the exercise of silent endurance about hardships and fatigues, the self-respect which relishes the honor of cooperation through obedience, the sense of patriotic devotedness which glows through every act of submission to command,—all these elevated feelings tend to composure of the nerves, to the fortifying of brain and limb, and the genial repose and exaltation of all the powers of mind and body. I need not contrast with this the case of the discontented and turbulent volunteer, questioning commands which he is not qualified to judge of, and complaining of troubles which cannot be helped. It is needless to show what wear-and-tear is caused by such a spirit, and how nerve and strength must, in such a case, fail in the hour of effort or of crisis, and give way at once before the assault of disease. By the aid of sobriety and the calm and cheerful subordination of the true military character, the health of the Federal army may be equal to its high mission: and all friends of human freedom, in all lands, must heartily pray that it may be so.

There is another department of the subject which I propose to treat of another month: "Health in the Military Hospital."

"THE STORMY PETREL."

Where the gray crags beat back the northern main,
And all around, the ever restless waves,
Like white sea-wolves, howl on the lonely sands,
Clings a low roof, close by the sounding surge.
If, in your summer rambles by the shore,
His spray-tost cottage you may chance espy,
Enter and greet the blind old mariner.

Full sixty winters he has watched beside
The turbulent ocean, with one purpose warmed:
To rescue drowning men. And round the coast—
For so his comrades named him in his youth—
They know him as "The Stormy Petrel" still.

Once he was lightning-swift, and strong; his eyes
Peered through the dark, and far discerned the wreck
Plunged on the reef. Then with bold speed he flew,
The life-boat launched, and dared the smiting rocks.

'T is said by those long dwelling near his door,
That hundreds have been storm-saved by his arm;
That never was he known to sleep, or lag
In-doors, when danger swept the seas. His life
Was given to toil, his strength to perilous blasts.
In freezing floods when tempests hurled the deep,
And battling winds clashed in their icy caves,
Scared housewives, waking, thought of him, and said,
"'The Stormy Petrel' is abroad to-night,
And watches from the cliffs."

He could not rest
When shipwrecked forms might gasp amid the waves,
And not a cry be answered from the shore.

Now Heaven has quenched his sight; but when he hears
By his lone hearth the sullen sea-winds clang,
Or listens, in the mad, wild, drowning night,
As younger footsteps hurry o'er the beach
To pluck the sailor from his sharp-fanged death,—
The old man starts, with generous impulse thrilled,
And, with the natural habit of his heart,
Calls to his neighbors in a cheery tone,
Tells them he'll pilot toward the signal guns,
And then, remembering all his weight of years,
Sinks on his couch, and weeps that he is blind.

A STORY OF TO-DAY

Margaret stood looking down in her quiet way at the sloping moors and fog. She, too, had her place and work. She thought that night she saw it clearly, and kept her eyes fixed on it, as I said. They plodded steadily down the wide years opening before her. Whatever slow, unending work lay in them, whatever hungry loneliness they held for her heart, or coarseness of deed, she saw it all, shrinking from nothing. She looked at the tense blue-corded veins in her wrist, full of fine pure blood,—gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of endurance,—measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work would be long, she knew. She would be old before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised her of good.

All? Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Was there no sullen doubt in the brave resolve? Was there no shadow rose just then, dark, ironical, blotting out father and mother and home, coming nearer, less alien to your soul than these, than even your God?

If any such cold, masterful shadow rose out of years gone, and clutched at the truest life of her heart, she stifled it, and thrust it down. And yet, leaning on the gate, and thinking drearily, vacantly, she remembered a time when God came nearer to her than He did now, and came through that shadow,—when, by the help of that dead hope, He of whom she read to-night came close, an infinitely tender Helper, who, with the human love that was in her heart to-day, had loved his mother and John and Mary. Now, struggle as she would for healthy hopes and warmth, the world was gray and silent. Her defeated woman's nature called it so, bitterly. Christ was a dim ideal power, heaven far-off. She doubted if it held anything as real as that which she had lost.

As if to bring back the old times more vividly to her, there happened one of those curious little coincidences with which Fate, we think, has nothing to do. She heard a quick step along the clay road, and a muddy little terrier jumped up, barking, beside her. She stopped with a suddenness strange in her slow movements. "Tiger!" she said, stroking its head with passionate eagerness. The dog licked her hand, smelt her clothes to know if she were the same: it was two years since he had seen her. She sat there, softly stroking him. Presently there was a sound of wheels jogging down the road, and a voice singing snatches of some song, one of those cheery street-songs that the boys whistle. It was a low, weak voice, but very pleasant. Margaret heard it through the dark; she kissed the dog with a strange paleness on her face, and stood up, quiet, attentive as before. Tiger still kept licking her hand, as it hung by her side: it was cold, and trembled as he touched it. She waited a moment, then pushed the dog from her, as if his touch, even, caused her to break some vow. He whined, but she hurried away, not waiting to know how he came, or with whom. Perhaps, if Dr. Knowles had seen her face as she looked back at him, he would have thought there were depths in her nature which his probing eyes had never reached.

The wheels came close, and directly a cart stopped at the gate. It was one of those little wagons that hucksters drive; only this seemed to be a home-made affair, patched up with wicker-work and bits of board. It was piled up with baskets of vegetables, eggs, and chickens, and on a broken bench in the middle sat the driver, a woman. You could not help laughing, when you looked at the whole turn-out, it had such a make-shift look altogether.

The reins were twisted rope, the wheels uneven. It went jolting along in such a careless, jolly way, as if it would not care in the least, should it go to pieces any minute just there in the road. The donkey that drew it was bony and blind of one eye; but he winked the other knowingly at you, as if to ask if you saw the joke of the thing. Even the voice of the owner of the establishment, chirruping some idle song, as I told you, was one of the cheeriest sounds you ever heard. Joel, up at the barn, forgot his dignity to salute it with a prolonged "Hillo!" and presently appeared at the gate.

"I'm late, Joel," said the weak voice. It sounded like a child's near at hand.

"We can trade in the dark, Lois, both bein' honest," he responded, graciously, hoisting a basket of tomatoes into the cart, and taking out a jug of vinegar.

"Is that Lois?" said Mrs. Howth, coming to the gate. "Sit still, child.

Don't get down."

But the child, as she called her, had scrambled off the cart, and stood beside her, leaning on the wheel, for she was helplessly crippled.

"I thought you would be down tonight. I put some coffee on the stove.

Bring it out, Joel."

Mrs. Howth never put up the shield between herself and this member of "the class,"—because, perhaps, she was so wretchedly low in the social scale. However, I suppose she never gave a reason for it even to herself. Nobody could help being kind to Lois, even if he tried. Joel brought the coffee with more readiness than he would have waited on Mrs. Howth.

"Barney will be jealous," he said, patting the bare ribs of the old donkey, and glancing wistfully at his mistress.

"Give him his supper, surely," she said, taking the hint.

It was a real treat to see how Lois enjoyed her supper, sipping and tasting the warm coffee, her face in a glow, like an epicure over some rare Falernian. You would be sure, from, just that little thing, that no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her walk with a curious rolling jerk, very comical to see. She laughed at it, when other people did; if it vexed her at all, she never showed it. She had turned back her calico sun-bonnet, and stood looking up at Mrs. Howth and Joel, laughing as they talked—with her. The face would have startled you on so old and stunted a body. It was a child's face, quick, eager, with that pitiful beauty you always see in deformed people. Her eyes, I think, were the kindliest, the hopefullest I ever saw. Nothing but the pale thickness of her skin betrayed the fact that set Lois apart from even the poorest poor,—the taint in her veins of black blood.

"Whoy! be n't this Tiger?" said Joel, as the dog ran yelping about him.

"How comed yoh with him, Lois?"

"Tiger an' his master's good friends o' mine,—you remember they allus was. An' he's back now, Mr. Holmes,—been back for a month."