Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864

The scene from the fog is laid open—a battle field fought in the sky!
Eye to eye, hand to hand, all are struggling;—ha, traitors! ha, rebels, ye know
Now the might in the arm of our heroes! dare ye bide their roused terrible blow?
They drive them, our braves drive the rebels! they flee, and our heroes pursue!
We scale rock and trunk—from their breastworks they run! oh, the joy of the view!

Hurrah, how they drive them! hurrah, how they drive the fierce rebels along!
One more cheer, still another! each lip seems as ready to burst into song.
On, on, ye bold blue-coated heroes! thrust, strike, pour your shots in amain!
Banners fly, columns rush, seen and lost in the quick, fitful gauzes of rain.
Oh, boys, how your young blood is streaming! but falter not, drive them to rout!
From barricade, breastwork, and riflepit, how the scourged rebels pour out!
We see the swift plunge of the caisson within the dim background of haze,
With the shreds of platoons inward scudding, and fainter their batteries blaze;
As the mist curtain falls all is blank; as it lifts, a wild picture out glares,
A wild shifting picture of battle, and dread our warm hopefulness shares;
But never the braves of the 'White Star' have sullied their fame in defeat,
And they will not to-day see the triumph pass by them the foeman to greet!
No, no, for the battle is ending; the ranks on the slope of the crest
Are the true Union blue, and our banners alone catch the gleams of the west,
Though the Crossbar still flies from the summit, we roll out our cheering of pride!
Not in vain, O ye heroes of Lookout! O brave Union boys! have ye died!
One brief struggle more sees the banner, that blot on the sky, brushed away,
When the broad moon now basking upon us shall yield her rich lustre to-day:
She brings out the black hulk of Lookout, its outlines traced sharp in the skies,
All alive with the camps of our braves glancing down with their numberless eyes.
See, the darkness below the red dottings is twinkling with many a spark!
Sergeant Teague thinks them souls of the rebels red fleeing from ours in the dark;
But the light shocks of sound tell the tale, they are battle's fierce fireworks at play!
It is slaughter's wild carnival revel bequeathed to the night by the day.
Dawn breaks, the sky clears—ha! the shape upon Lookout's tall crest that we see,
Is the bright beaming flag of the 'White Star,' the beautiful Flag of the Free!
How it waves its rich folds in the zenith, and looks in the dawn's open eye,
With its starred breast of pearl and of crimson, as if with heaven's colors to vie!
'Hurrah!' rolls from Moccasin Point, and 'Hurrah!' from bold Cameron's Hill!
'Hurrah!' peals from glad Chattanooga! bliss seems every bosom to fill!
Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! O brave Union boys! during Time
Shall stand this, your column of glory, shall shine this, your triumph sublime!
To the deep mountain den of the panther the hunter climbed, drove him to bay,
Then fought the fierce foe till he turned and fled, bleeding and gnashing, away!
Fled away from the scene where so late broke his growls and he shot down his glare,
As he paced to and fro, for the hunter his wild craggy cavern to dare!
Thanks, thanks, O ye heroes of Lookout! ye girded your souls to the fight,
Drew the sword, dropped the scabbard, and went in the full conscious strength of your might!
Now climbing o'er rock and o'er tree mound, up, up, by the hemlock ye swung!
Now plunging through thicket and swamp, on the edge of the hollow ye hung!
One hand grasped the musket, the other clutched ladder of root and of bough:
The trunk the tornado had shivered, the landmark pale glimmering now,
And now the mad torrent's white lightning;—no drum tapped, no bugle was blown—
To the words that encouraged each other, and quick breaths, ye toiled up alone!
Oh, long as the mountains shall rise o'er the waters of bright Tennessee,
Shall be told the proud deeds of the 'White Star,' the cloud-treading host of the free!
The camp-fire shall blaze to the chorus, the picket-post peal it on high,
How was fought the fierce battle of Lookout—how won the Grand Fight of the Sky!

ONE NIGHT

I

From the window at which I write, in these November days, I see a muddy, swollen river, spread over the meadows into a dingy lake; it is not a picturesque or a pretty stream, in spite of its Indian name. Beyond it the land slopes away into a range of long, low hills, which the autumn has browned; the long swaths of fog stretching between river and hill are so like to them and to the dissolving gray sky that they all blend in one general gloom. This picture filling my eye narrows and shapes itself into the beginning of my story: I see a lazy, dirty river on the outskirts of a manufacturing city; where the stream has broadened into a sort of pond it is cut short by the dam, and there is a little cluster of mills. They all belong to one work, however, and they look as if they had been set down there for a few months only; 'contract' seems written all over them, and very properly, for they are running on a Government order for small arms. There is no noise but an underhum of revolving shafts and the smothered thud of trip hammers. Ore dust blackens everything, and is scattered everywhere, so that the whole ground is a patchwork of black and gray; elsewhere there is snow, but here the snow is turned to the dingy color of the place. It is very quiet outside, being early morning yet; a cold mist hides the dawn, and the water falls with a winter hiss; the paths are indistinct, for the sky is only just enough lightening to show the east.

The coal dust around one door shows that the fires are there; a cavernous place, suddenly letting a lurid glow out upon the night, and then black again. It is only a narrow alley through the building, making sure of a good draft; on one side are the piles of coal, and on the other a row of furnace doors. The stoker is sitting on a heap of cinder. He is only an old man, a little stooping, with a head that is turning ashes color; his eye is faded, and his face nearly expressionless, while he sits perfectly still on the heap, as if he were a part of the engine which turns slowly in a shed adjoining and pants through its vent in the roof. He has been sitting there so long that he has a vague notion that his mind has somehow gone out of him into the iron doors and the rough coal, and he only goes round and round like the engine. Yet he never considered the matter at all, any more than the engine wanted to use its own wheel, which it turned month after month in the same place, to propel itself through the world; just so often he opened and shut each door in its turn, fed the fires, and then sat down and sat still.

He was looking at a boy of six, asleep at his feet on a pile of ashes and cinder, which was not so bad a bed, for the gentle heat left in it was as good as a lullaby, and Shakspeare long ago told us that sleep has a preference for sitting by hard pillows. The child was an odd bit of humanity. An accident at an early age had given it a hump, though otherwise it was fair enough; and now perhaps society would have seen there only an animal watching its sleeping cub. Presently the boy woke and got on his feet, and began to walk toward the cold air with short, uncertain steps, almost falling against a furnace door. The old man jumped and caught him.

'Ta, ta, Nobby,' he said, 'what's thou doin'? Them's hotter nor cender. Burnt child dreads fire—did knowst 'twas fire?'

He had a sort of language of his own, and his voice was singularly harsh, as if breathing in that grimy place so long had roughened his throat.

'There, go, Nobby, look thee out an' see howst black she is. Ta, but it's hawt,' and he rubbed his forehead with his sleeve; 'it's a deal pity this hot can nawt go out where's cold, an' people needin' it. Here's hot, there's cold, but 'twill stay here, as it loved the place 'twas born—home, like. Why, Net, that thee?'

There was no door to the place to knock at or open, but the craunch of a foot was heard on the coal outside, and a girl came in, moist and shivering. The stoker set her down in a warm corner, and looked at her now.

'Is thee, my little Net?' he repeated.

'Yes, and I've brought your breakfast, father; 'twas striking six before I come in.'

'Too early, my girl, sleep her sleep out. Here's hot an' cosey like, an' time goes, an' I could wait for breakfast, till I'm home. I'll nawt let my little girl's sleep.'

'No, father, I couldn't sleep after five, anyway; and I thought I must bring your breakfast to-day. You'll walk back through the cold easier after something hot to eat.'

'That's my dear little girl. Shiverin' yet, she is. There, lay down on this,' raking out a heap of fresh ashes, 'them warm an' soft like, an' go ye to sleep till I go.'

'No, I must heat your coffee,' she answered, steadying the pot before one of the furnaces with bits of coal.

''Ware that door doan' fly back an' hurt ye; them does so sometimes.'

'Yes, I'll be careful. Why, you've got Whitney here!'

'He come down to-night, Net. By himself, somehow, though I doan' knaw how Lord kep' his short feet from the river bank an' the floom. An' he couldn't go back, nor I couldn't go with him. He's slep' on the cender, nice; all's a cradle to Nobby.'

'Yes, cinder's a good bed, when the eyes are shut,' said the girl, bitterly. 'The coffee was smoking hot when I started, but it's cold out this morning, so there's all this to be done over.'

'Yes, outdoors has cooled it. The world was hungry, like, an' wanted to eat it. Small nubbin' for all the world, but it stole the hot an' the smell o' the meat.'

The girl did not reply to this bit of pleasantry. She was about eighteen, and her face would have been strikingly pretty except for the eager, hungering look of the eye; but in every motion, every look, and even the way in which she wore her neat and simple clothing, there was the word 'unsatisfied.'

Finally, she brought coffee and meat to him.

'Here, Net, take ye a sip,' said he; ''twill warm ye nice. Shiverin' yet she is; 'deed the mornin's clammy cold; there's naw love in thet. Drink! I cawnt take ye home so, an' my time's most up; it's gettin' light.'