CHAPTER XLVIII
THE RIVER
It yet lacked of six o'clock when the battle lines were finally formed.Only the treetops of the Wilderness now were in gold, below, in thethick wood, the brigades stood in shadow. In front were Rodes'sskirmishers, and Rodes's brigades formed the first line. The troops ofRaleigh Colston made the second line, A. P. Hill's men the third. Abattery--four Napoleons--were advanced; the other guns were coming up.The cavalry, with Stonewall Brigade supporting, took the Plank road,masking the actual movement. On the old turnpike Stonewall Jackson sathis horse beside Rodes. At six o'clock he looked at his watch, closedit, and put it in his pocket. "Are you ready, General Rodes?"
"Yes, sir."
"You can go forward, sir."
High over the darkening Wilderness rang a bugle-call. The sound soared,hung a moment poised, then, far and near, thronged the grey echoes,bugles, bugles, calling, calling! The sound passed away; there followeda rush of bodies through the Wilderness; in a moment was heard thecrackling fire of the skirmishers. From ahead came a wild beating ofFederal drums--the long roll, the long roll! _Boom!_ Into action camethe grey guns. Rodes's Alabamian's passed the abattis, touched thebreastworks. Colston two hundred yards behind, A. P. Hill the thirdline. _Yaaai! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaaiiihh!_ rang the Wilderness.
Several miles to the eastward the large old house of Chancellorsville,set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly windows. Allabout it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the vivid skies. It laylike a sea, touching all the horizon. On the deep porch of the house,tasting the evening coolness, sat Fighting Joe Hooker and several of hisofficers. Eastward there was firing, as there had been all day, but it,too, was decreased in volume, broken in continuity. The main rebel body,thought the Federal general, must be about ready to draw off, follow therebel advance in its desperate attempt to get out of the Wilderness, toget off southward to Gordonsville. The 12th Corps was facing the "mainbody". The interchange of musketry, eastward there, had a desultory,waiting sound. From the south, several miles into the depth of theWilderness, came a slow, uninterrupted booming of cannon. Pleasanton andSickles were down there, somewhere beyond Catherine Furnace. Pleasantonand Sickles were giving chase to the rebel detachment,--whatever it was;Stonewall Jackson and a division probably--that was trying to get out ofthe Wilderness. At any rate, the rebel force was divided. When morningdawned it should be pounded small, piece by piece, by the blue impact!"We've got the men, and we've got the guns. We've got the finest army onthe planet!"
The sun dropped. The Wilderness rolled like a sea, hiding many things.The shaggy pile of the forest turned from green to violet. It swept tothe pale northern skies, to the eastern, reflecting light from theopposite quarter, to the southern, to the splendid west. Wave afterwave, purple-hued, velvet-soft, it passed into mist beneath the skies.There was a perception of a vastness not comprehended. One of the menupon the Chancellor's porch cleared his throat. "There's an awfulfeeling about this place! It's poetic, I suppose. Anyhow, it makes youfeel that anything might happen--the stranger it was, the likelier tohappen--"
"I don't feel that way. It's just a great big rolling plain with woodsupon it--no mountains or water--"
"Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to happenI wouldn't choose a chopped up, picturesque place to happen in! I'dchoose something like this. I--"
"What's that?"
_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_
Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up and came across."Due west!--Howard's guns?--What does that mean--"
_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_
Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. "Bring my horse, quick! Colonel,go down to the road and see--"
"My God! Here they come!"
Down the Plank road, through the woods, back to Chancellorsville, rushedthe routed 21st Corps. Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle,gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out ofcompanies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandishingswords, horsemen, colour-bearers without colours, others with coloursdesperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagonswith tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers--down,back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn,churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall--backon the centre roared and fell the flanked right! Down the Plank road,out of the dark woods of the Wilderness, out of the rolling musketry,behind it the cannon thunder, burst a sound, a sound, a known sound!_Yaaaai! Yaaaaaiih! Yaaiii! Yaaaaiiihhhhh!_ It echoed, it echoed fromthe east of Chancellorsville! _Yaaih! Yaaaaiih! Yaaaaaaaiihh!_ yelledthe troops of McLaws and Anderson. "Open fire!" said Lee to hisartillery; and to McLaws, "Move up the turnpike and attack."
The Wilderness of Spottsylvania laid aside her mantle of calm. Shebecame a maenad, intoxicated, furious, shrieking, a giantess in action, awild handmaid drinking blood, a servant of Ares, a Titanic hostessspreading with lavish hands large ground for armies and battles, aValkyrie gathering the dead, laying them in the woodland hollows amidbloodroot and violets! She chanted, she swayed, she cried aloud to thestars, and she shook her own madness upon the troops, very impartially,on grey and on blue.
Down the Plank road, in the gathering night, the very fulness of thegrey victory brought its difficulties. Brigades were far ahead,separated from their division commanders; regiments astray from theirbrigadiers, companies struggling in the dusk through the thickets,seeking the thread from which in the onset and uproar the beads hadslipped. They lost themselves in the wild place; there came perforce apause, a quest for organization and alignment, a drawing together, acompressing of the particles of the thunderbolt; then, then would it behurled again, full against Chancellorsville!
The moon was coming up. She silvered the Wilderness about Dowdall'sTavern. She made a pallor around the group of staff and field officersgathered beside the road. Her light glinted on Stonewall Jackson'ssabre, and on the worn braid of the old forage cap. A body of cavalrypassed on its way to Ely's Ford. Jeb Stuart rode at the head. He wassinging. "_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_" hesang. An officer of Rodes came up. "General Rodes reports, sir, that hehas taken a line of their entrenchments. He's less than a mile fromChancellorsville."
"Good! Tell him A. P. Hill will support. As you go, tell the troops thatI wish them to get into line and preserve their order."
The officer went. An aide of Colston's appeared, breathless from astruggle through the thickets. "From General Colston, sir. He'simmediately behind General Rodes. There was a wide abattis. The troopsare reforming beyond it. We see no Federals between us andChancellorsville."
"Good! Tell General Colston to use expedition and get his men into line.Those guns are opening without orders!"
Three grey cannon, planted within bowshot of the Chancellor House,opened, indeed, and with vigour,--opened against twenty-two guns inepaulements on the Chancellorsville ridge. The twenty-two answered in aroar of sound, overtowering the cannonade to the east of McLaws andAnderson. The Wilderness resounded; smoke began to rise like the smokeof strange sacrifices; the mood of the place changed to frenzy. Sheswung herself, she chanted.
"Grey or blue, I care not, I! Blue and grey Are here to die! This human brood Is stained with blood. The armed man dies, See where he lies In my arms asleep! On my breast asleep! The babe of Time, A nestling fallen. The nest a ruin, The tree storm-snapped. Lullaby, lullaby! sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep!"
The smoke drifted toward the moon, the red gun-flashes showed the aislesof pine and oak. Jackson beckoned imperiously to an aide. "Go tell A. P.Hill to press forward."
The thunder of the guns ceased suddenly.
There was heard a trample offeet, A. P. Hill's brigades on the turnpike. "Who leads?" asked a voice."Lane's North Carolinians," answered another. General Lane came by,young, an old V. M. I. cadet. He drew rein a moment, saluted. "Pushright ahead, Lane! right ahead!" said Jackson.
A. P. Hill, in his battle shirt, appeared, his staff behind him. "Yourfinal order, general?"
"Press them, Hill! Cut them off from the fords. Press them!"
A. P. Hill went. From the east, the guns upon his own front now havingquieted, rolled the thunder of those with Lee. The clamour aboutChancellorsville where, in hot haste, Hooker made dispositions, streamedeast and west, meeting and blending with, westward, a like distractionof forming commands, of battle lines made in the darkness, amongthickets. The moon was high, but not observed; the Wilderness fiercelychanting. Behind him was Captain Wilbourne of the Signal Corps, twoaides and several couriers, Jackson rode along the Plank road.
There was a regiment drawn across this way through the Wilderness, onthe road and in the woods on either hand. In places in the Wilderness,the scrub that fearfully burned the next day and the next was even nowafire, and gave, though uncertainly and dimly, a certain illumination.By it the regiment was perceived. It seemed composed of tall and shadowymen. "What troops are these?" asked the general.
"Lane's North Carolinians, sir,--the 18th."
As he passed, the regiment started to cheer. He shook his head. "Don't,men, we want quiet now!"
A very few hundred yards from Chancellorsville he checked Little Sorrel.The horse stood, fore feet planted. Horse and rider, they stood andlistened. Hooker's reserves were up. About the Chancellor House, on theChancellorsville ridge, they were throwing up entrenchments. They weredigging the earth with bayonets, they were heaping it up with theirhands. There was a ringing of axes. They were cutting down the youngspring growth; they were making an abattis. Tones of command could beheard. "Hurry, hurry--hurry! They mean to rush us. Hurry--hurry!" A deadcreeper mantling a dead tree, caught by some flying spark, suddenlyflared throughout its length, stood a pillar of fire, and showed redlythe enemy's guns. Stonewall Jackson sat his horse and looked. "Cut themoff from the ford," he said. "Never let them get out of Virginia." Hejerked his hand into the air.
Turning Little Sorrel, he rode back along the Plank road toward his ownlines. The light of the burning brush had sunken. The cannon smokefloating in the air, the very thick woods, made all things obscure.
"There are troops across the road in front," said an aide.
"Yes. Lane's North Carolinians awaiting their signal."
A little to the east and south broke out in the Wilderness a suddenrattling fire, sinking, rising, sinking again, the blue and greyskirmishers now in touch. All through the vast, dark, tangled beatingheart of the place, sprang into being a tension. The grey lines listenedfor the word _Advance_! The musket rested on the shoulder, the footquivered, eyes front tried to pierce the darkness. Sound was unceasing;and yet the mind found a stillness, a lake of calm. It was the momentbefore the moment.
Stonewall Jackson came toward the Carolinians. He rode quickly, past thedark shell of a house sunken among pines. There were with him seven oreight persons. The horses' hoofs made a trampling on the Plank road. Thewoods were deep, the obscurity great. Suddenly out of the brush rang ashot, an accidentally discharged rifle. Some grey soldier among Lane'stensely waiting ranks, dressed in the woods to the right of the road,spoke from the core of a fearful dream: "Yankee cavalry!"
"_Fire!_" called an officer of the 18th North Carolina.
The volley, striking diagonally across the road, emptied severalsaddles. Stonewall Jackson, the aides and Wilbourne, wheeled to theleft, dug spur, and would have plunged into the wood. "_Fire!_" said theCarolinians, dressed to the left of the road, and fired.
Little Sorrel, maddened, dashed into the wood. An oak bough struck hisrider, almost bearing him from the saddle. With his right hand from whichthe blood was streaming, in which a bullet was imbedded, he caught thebridle, managed to turn the agonized brute into the road again. Thereseemed a wild sound, a confusion of voices. Some one had stopped thefiring. "My God, men! You are firing into _us_!" In the road were theaides. They caught the rein, stopped the horse. Wilbourne put up his arms."General, general! you are not hurt?--Hold there!--Morrison--Leigh!--"
They laid him on the ground beneath the pines and they fired thebrushwood for a light. One rode off for Dr. McGuire, and another with apenknife cut away the sleeve from the left arm through which had gonetwo bullets. A mounted man came at a gallop and threw himself from hishorse. It was A. P. Hill. "General, general! you are not much hurt?"
"Yes, I think I am," said Stonewall Jackson. "And my wounds are from myown men."
Hill drew off the gauntlets that were all blood soaked, and with hishandkerchief tried to bind up the arm, shattered and with the mainartery cut. A courier came up. "Sir, sir! a body of the enemy is closeat hand--"
The aides lifted the wounded general. "No one," said Hill, "must tellthe troops who was wounded." The other opened his eyes. "Tell themsimply that you have a wounded officer. General Hill, you are in commandnow. Press right on."
With a gesture of sorrow Hill went, returning to the front. The othersrested at the edge of the road. At that moment the Federal batteriesopened, a hissing storm of shot and shell, a tornado meant measurably toretard that anticipated, grey onrush. The range was high. Aides andcouriers laid the wounded leader on the earth and made of their bodies ascreen. The trees were cut, the earth was torn up; there was a howlingas of unchained fiends. There passed what seemed an eternity and was butten minutes. The great blue guns slightly changed the direction of theirfire. The storm howled away from the group by the road, and the menagain lifted Jackson. He stood now on his feet; and because troops wereheard approaching, and because it must not be known that he was hurt,all moved into the darkness of the scrub. The troops upon the road cameon--Pender's brigade. Pender, riding in advance, saw the group and askedwho was wounded. "A field officer," answered one, but there came fromsome direction a glare of light and by it Pender knew. He sprang fromhis horse. "Don't say anything about it, General Pender," said Jackson."Press on, sir, press on!"
"General, they are using all their artillery. It is a very deadly fire.In the darkness it may disorganize--"
The forage cap was gone. The blue eyes showed full and deep. "You musthold your ground, General Pender. You must hold out to the last, sir."
"I will, general, I will," said Pender.
A litter was found and brought, and Stonewall Jackson was laid upon it.The little procession moved toward Dowdall's Tavern. A shot pierced thearm of one of the bearers, loosening his hold of the litter. It tilted.The general fell heavily to the ground, injuring afresh the woundedlimb, striking and bruising his side. They raised him, pale, now, andsilent, and at last they struggled through the wood to a littleclearing, where they found an ambulance. Now, too, came the doctor, aman whom he loved, and knelt beside him. "I hope that you are not badlyhurt, general?"
"Yes, I am, doctor. I am badly hurt. I fear that I am dying."
In the ambulance lay also his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield,painfully injured. Crutchfield pulled the doctor down to him. "He isn'tbadly hurt?"
"Yes. Badly hurt."
Crutchfield groaned. "Oh, my God!" Stonewall Jackson heard and made theambulance stop. "You must do something for Colonel Crutchfield, doctor.Don't let him suffer."
A. P. Hill, riding back to the front, was wounded by a piece of shell.Boswell, the chief engineer, to whom had been entrusted the guidancethrough the night of the advance upon the roads to the fords, waskilled. That was a fatal cannonade from the ridge of Chancellorsville,fatal and fateful! It continued. The Wilderness chanted a battle chantindeed to the moon, the moon that was pale and wan as if wearied withsilvering battlefields. Hill, lying in a litter, just back of hisadvanced line, dispatched couriers for Stuart. Stuart was far towardEly's Ford, riding through the night in plume and fighting jacket. Thestr
aining horses, the recalling order, reached him.
"General Jackson badly wounded! A. P. Hill badly wounded! I in command!My God, man! all changed like that? _Right about face! Forward! March!_"
There was, that night, no grey assault. But the dawn broke clear andfound the grey lines waiting. The sky was a glory, the Wilderness rolledin emerald waves, the redbirds sang. Lee and the 2d Corps were yet twomiles apart. Between was Chancellorsville, and all the strongentrenchments and the great blue guns, and Hooker's courageous men.
Now followed Jeb Stuart's fight. In the dawn, the 2nd Corps, swung fromthe right by a master hand, struck full against the Federal centre,struck full against Chancellorsville. In the clear May morning broke athunderstorm of artillery. It raged loudly, peal on peal, crash oncrash! The grey shells struck the Chancellor house. They set it on fire.It went up in flames. A fragment of shell struck and stunned FightingJoe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The greymusketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through thescrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart orderedthe ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack againsthis left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right andAnderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again aunit.
Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. Hisbeautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were verygrimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson wasbadly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and thisWilderness remembered. "_Forward. Charge!_" cried Jeb Stuart. "RememberJackson!" He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at theirhead, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. "_OldJoe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_"
By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced,Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all,was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowersbloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army ofNorthern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well,you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"
He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospitalnear Dowdall's Tavern. "_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could Ihave directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country tobe disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which isdue to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,R. E. Lee._"
An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in thedeeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said,"General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God."
For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, atthe Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then theyrested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of theRappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern shoreand the road to Richmond--Richmond no nearer for McDowell, no nearer forMcClellan, no nearer for Pope, no nearer for Burnside, no nearer forHooker, no nearer after two years of war! In the Wilderness andthereabouts Hooker lost seventeen thousand men, thirteen guns, andfifteen hundred rounds of cannon ammunition, twenty thousand rifles,three hundred thousand rounds of infantry ammunition. The Army ofNorthern Virginia lost twelve thousand men.
On the fifth of May Stonewall Jackson was carefully moved from theWilderness to Guiney's Station. Here was a large old residence--theChandler house--within a sweep of grass and trees; about it one or twosmall buildings. The great house was filled, crowded to its doors withwounded soldiers, so they laid Stonewall Jackson in a rude cabin amongthe trees. The left arm had been amputated in the field hospital. He wasthought to be doing well, though at times he complained of the sidewhich, in the fall from the litter, had been struck and bruised.
At daylight on Thursday he had his physician called. "I am sufferinggreat pain," he said. "See what is the matter with me." And presently,"Is it pneumonia?"
That afternoon his wife came. He was roused to speak to her, greeted herwith love, then sank into something like stupor. From time to time heawakened from this, but there were also times when he was slightlydelirious. He gave orders in a shadow of the old voice. "You must holdout a little longer, men; you must hold out a little longer!... Pressforward--press forward--press forward!... Give them canister, MajorPelham!"
Friday went by, and Saturday. The afternoon of this day he asked for hischaplain, Mr. Lacy. Later, in the twilight, his wife sang to him, oldhymns that he loved. "Sing the fifty-first psalm in verse," he said. Shesang,--
"Show pity, Lord! O Lord, forgive--"
The night passed and Sunday the tenth dawned. He lay quiet, his righthand on his breast. One of the staff came for a moment to his bedside."Who is preaching at headquarters to-day?" He was told, and said, "Good!I wish I might be there."
The officer's voice broke. "General, general! the whole army is prayingfor you. There's a message from General Lee."
"Yes, yes. Give it."
"He sends you his love. He says that you must recover; that you havelost your left arm, but that he would lose his right arm. He says tellyou that he prayed for you last night as he had never prayed forhimself. He repeats what he said in his note that for the good ofVirginia and the South he could wish that he were lying here in yourplace--"
The soldier on the bed smiled a little and shook his head. "Better tenJacksons should lie here than one Lee."
It was sunny weather, fair and sweet with all the bloom of May, thebright trees waving, the long grass rippling, waters flowing, the skyazure, bees about the flowers, the birds singing piercingly sweet,mother earth so beautiful, the sky down-bending, the light of the sun sogracious, warm, and vital!
A little before noon, kneeling beside him, his wife told StonewallJackson that he would die. He smiled and laid his hand upon her bowedhead. "You are frightened, my child! Death is not so near. I may yet getwell."
The doctor came to him. "Doctor, Anna tells me that I am to die to-day.Is it so?"
"Oh, general, general!--It is so."
He lay silent a moment, then he said, "Very good, very good! It is allright."
Throughout the day his mind was now clouded, now clear. In one of thelatter times he said there was something he was trying to remember.There followed a half-hour of broken sleep and wandering, in the courseof which he twice spoke a name, "Deaderick." Once he said "HorseArtillery," and once "White Oak Swamp."
The alternate clear moments and the lapses into stupour or delirium werelike the sinking or rising of a strong swimmer, exhausted at last, theprey at last of a shoreless sea. At times he came head and shoulders outof the sea. In such a moment he opened his grey-blue eyes full on one ofhis staff. All the staff was gathered in grief about the bed. "WhenRichard Cleave," he said, "asks for a court of enquiry let him have it.Tell General Lee--" The sea drew him under again.
It hardly let him go any more; moment by moment now, it wore out thestrong swimmer. The day drew on to afternoon. He lay straight upon thebed, silent for the most part, but now and then wandering a little. Hiswife bowed herself beside him; in a corner wept the old man, Jim.Outside the windows there seemed a hush as of death.
"Pass the infantry to the front!" ordered Stonewall Jackson. "Tell A. P.Hill to prepare for action!" The voice sank; there came a long silence;there was only heard the old man crying in the corner. Then, for thelast time in this phase of being, the great soldier opened his eyes. Ina moment he spoke, in a very sweet and calm voice. "Let us cross overthe river, and rest under the shade of the trees." He died.
* * * * *
The bells tolled, the bells tolled in Richmond, tolled from each of herseven hills! Sombre was the sound of the minute guns, shaking the heartof the city! Oh, this capital knew the Dead March in Saul as a chil
dknows his lullaby! To-day it had a depth and a height and was a dirgeindeed. To-day it wailed for a Chieftain, wailed through the streetswhere the rose and magnolia bloomed, wailed as may have wailed thetrumpets when Priam brought Hector home. The great throng to either sidethe streets shivered beneath the wailing, beneath the low thunder of thedrums. There was lacking no pomp of War, War who must have gauds withwhich to hide his naked horror. The guns boomed, the bells tolled, themuffled drums beat, beat! Regiments marched with reversed arms, withcolours furled. There was mournful civic pomp, mournful official. Therecame a great black hearse drawn by four white horses. On it lay the bodyof Stonewall Jackson, and over it was drawn the deep blue flag with thearms of Virginia, and likewise the starry banner of the elevenConfederate States. Oh, heart-breaking were the minute guns, and thetolling, tolling bells, and the deep, slow, heroic music, and thesobbing of the people! It was a cloudless day and filled with grief.Behind the hearse trod Little Sorrel.
Beneath arching trees, by houses of mellow red brick, houses of palegrey stucco, by old porches and ironwork balconies, by wistaria andclimbing roses and magnolias with white chalices, the long processionbore Stonewall Jackson. By St. Paul's they bore him, by Washington andthe great bronze men in his company, by Jefferson and Marshall, by Henryand Mason, by Lewis and Nelson. They bore him over the greensward to theCapitol steps, and there the hearse stopped. Six generals lifted thecoffin, Longstreet going before. The bells tolled and the Dead Marchrang, and all the people on the green slopes of the historic placeuncovered their heads and wept. The coffin, high-borne, passed upwardand between the great, white, Doric columns. It passed into the Capitoland into the Hall of the Lower House. Here it rested before theSpeaker's Chair.
All day Stonewall Jackson lay in state. Twenty thousand people, from thePresident of the Confederacy to the last poor wounded soldier who couldcreep hither, passed before the bier, looked upon the calm face, theflag-enshrouded form, lying among lilies before the Speaker's Chair, inthe Virginia Hall of Delegates, in the Capitol of the Confederacy. Allday the bells tolled, all day the minute guns were fired.
A man of the Stonewall Brigade, pausing his moment before the deadleader, first bent, then lifted his head. He was a scout, a blondesoldier, tall and strong, with a quiet, studious face and sea-blue eyes.He looked now at the vaulted roof as though he saw instead the sky. Hespoke in a controlled, determined voice. "What Stonewall Jackson alwayssaid was just this: _'Press forward!'_" He passed on.
Presently in line came a private soldier of A. P. Hill's, a young manlike a beautiful athlete from a frieze, an athlete who was also aphilosopher. "Hail, great man of the past!" he said. "If to-day youconsort with Caesar, tell him we still make war." He, too, went on.
Others passed, and then there came an artilleryman, a gunner of theHorse Artillery. Grey-eyed, broad-browed, he stood his moment and gazedupon the dead soldier among the lilies. "Hooker yet upon theRappahannock," he said. "We must have him across the Potomac, and wemust ourselves invade Pennsylvania."
* * * * *
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A
* * * * *
THE RIGHT STUFF
By IAN HAY
"Those who love the companionship of people of fine fibre, and to whom asense of humor has not been denied, will make no mistake in seeking thesociety open to them in 'The Right Stuff.'"
_New York Times._
"Hay resembles Barrie, and, like Barrie, he will grow in manyways."--_Cleveland Leader._
"A compelling tribute to the homely genuineness and sterling worth ofScottish character."
_St. Louis Post Dispatch._
"Mr. Hay has written a story which is pure story and is a delight frombeginning to end."
_San Francisco Argonaut._
"It would be hard, indeed, to find a more winning book."--_New OrleansTimes-Democrat._
With frontispiece by James Montgomery Flagg. 12mo.
$1.20 _net._ Postage 10 cents.
HOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANY
publishers icon]
BOSTONANDNEW YORK