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ART. VIII. THE BUGLER OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE, AT

NINETY-FIVE.

O BUGLER brave, whose call rang clear
Upon the crisp November air

With Cardigan, while on the rear

Dashed the Six Hundred charging there,
The smoke, the crash, the stain are gone,

The bugle fifty years unblown.

"Move!" "Trot!" "Charge!" swept the column on

Where thirty thousand waiting stood,

While spoke the guns their awful tone

And shrieked all horror's frantic brood.
"Retire!" was called. The fray was o'er.
How many heard that call no more!

The winter snow, the spring's soft rain,
The summer's verdure heal the ground;
The war-vale keeps no scar or stain;

The songs of birds are sweet around.

The bugler far away still dreams

Of rush and smoke and war's red gleams.

Then to his lips his bugle lays;

"Move!" "Trot!" "Charge!" breathe upon the air.

Where are the men of bygone days?

No Light Brigade sweeps forward there.

Do horse and man, a ghostly train,
Rush viewless down the Vale again?

Hero of years, at front no more

With Cardigan to sound his call,
The Light Brigade has gone before;
Thy breath sings requiem for all.
Rest, soldier born, thy laurels won,
A warrior's, Christian's service done.

The bugler of Balaklava, now the sole survivor of the Six Hundred, has long been my friend and neighbor. At ninety-five he is in good repair of mind and body, and many a conversation do we have of old far-off, unhappy things and battles long ago. His modesty, frankness, and simplicity are charming, and I have no doubt of his record. He is a soldier to the manner born. His grandfather was a general under Wellington on the Peninsula. His father fought at Waterloo and, as officer of the guard, had many a conversation with Napoleon

On the lone barren Isle where the loud roaring billow
Assails the stern rock and the loud tempests rave.

He rode at Lord Cardigan's side that chill November morning and gave the calls responsive to which the Light Brigade rode into the Valley of Death. He saw the long siege and the taking of Sevastopol, the whole Crimean War that fills an historic page with a story of waste and suffering brightened only by the ministries of Florence Nightingale, now a star on life's horizon, but then fullorbed and rising to rule the ascendant and brighten the grim visage of war. He early came to our region, where he raised our first company of Union cavalry. He might have been its captain, but he chose to be simply its bugler and a private. After serving our entire war he took up among us the arts of peace, and to-day in his cottage kept by a daughter's hand he watches the present and calmly recalls the panorama of the bygone. That I find him immensely interesting it is needless to say, but to study how a soldierly career unfolds and trains character has been to me pleasing and useful-pleasing yet shocking! War's wrinkled front is ghastly horrid. But when will its destructions come to a perpetual end? "The unfortunate, entangled young man" upon the Russian throne-so calls him Tolstoi-who so lately was urging the mood of peace upon the wor'd takes, now, upon a giant scale the festivities of Mars. Our own land, divinely above all others placed for the world's peace, spends millions on warships for opportunities yet to come, some strenuous mockheroic dash at some other Spain. If, then, war is indefinitely possible, and the last days when the nations shall learn war no more so long delay their coming, the military character is a fit subject for study. One finds it not devoid of noble elements. The New Testament surely presents the soldierly character in no unfavorable manner. John the Baptist outlines a military duty, seeming to reckon it quite as legitimate as a publican's, though that does not carry a divine approval of war, as Paul's prescribing to servants and masters their duties does not assume the divine approval of slavery. The centurion at Capernaum, humble and trustful among his official enemies, "loveth our nation." "Certainly this was a righteous man," was the frankly told conviction of the openminded captain at the cross. "Julius courteously entreated Paul," and in Cornelius so many graces of character and conduct

appear that he nobly heads the ever-growing procession of heathen converts into the Christian Church. Our own times, still freshly historic, have record of men like Havelock and "Chinese" Gordon. In our own civil war one knew privates steadfastly most prayerful, while subalterns like Henry Ward Camp and generals like Jackson and Howard adorned our annals "beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame."

Conversing intimately with my bugler, a private and nothing more, though, I think, an ideal one, I find in him some features that the world has admired in Philip Sidney, the soldier gentleman, and Pierre Bayard, the final, consummate flower of chivalry. And first I mark my friend's plain, unvarnished truthfulness. Of the great charge-how it shrivels compared with Pickett's at Gettysburg!-he reads Tennyson and says, "The poets tell things as they fancy, with color and glamour." He gives everything as he saw it, mostly over his horse's ears in the smoke, with slung bugle and flashing blade, alert for Cardigan's command. He is no miles gloriosus. In the trenches and at the city's fall his own part, a single thread in a complex weaving, he clearly traces, and how he fared with his fronting foe. Truth is the first element of the knightly character. Not only is the cadet trained to reckon a lie a sneaking meanness, "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," but the mere insinuation of falsehood provokes hot wrath and formerly the deadly duel. Feints and stratagems are not counted falsehoods; they are challenges to the enemy. "Find out if you can!" They all are fair play in war, though Bayard, the first soldier of his day, never, as I can find, deceived his enemy. The scout or sentinel, reporting to his officer, must tell things exactly as he saw them, or harm to many may come of miscalculation. Truth, indeed, is needful in all character and callings, in all human affairs, but in war's dark ways it is a light shining where light is sorely needed or woe ensues. Truth holds the army together as-Stoice-the soul holds the body. Courage is strong in the character which we are presenting. Bravery is by its Celtic etymology a quality of show and splendor, a dash and display. Courage is that calm flow of temper that moves to any form of service that duty may offer. It shrinks from no toil or hardship that the

occasion brings, though it be in darkness or solitude beyond all dream of honor or advantage. "Were you ever afraid of getting hurt?" "Never thought of that," said my bugler; "thought only of what I was to do." The soldier becomes subdued to what he works in, to danger and difficulty, becomes quite unconscious of his courage, and goes almost mechanically to the watch, the rifle pit, or the charge. "Always I felt indifferent, sometimes even desirous, about falling." Strangely, in his years of service he suffered no hurt but a leg-scratch! "God ordered it," and his deep belief in Providence gave common "courage" but small opportunity. In the military character loyalty is prominent. "Gehorsam ist die erste Pflicht," and obedience is written in the articles of war. The penalty of disobedience is death. Army discipline, whether at West Point or in the ranks, has tamed many an unruly temper, and after our war old soldiers were the best of employees. They had gained the habit of doing as they were told, without retort or argument. Commands may in stress of battle be terrific. "Were your officers drunk or crazy," asked a Russian after Balaklava, "that they sent six hundred against thirty thousand?" "Not theirs to reason why." At Chancellorsville Major Keenan, of the Eighth Pennsylvania, with his men dashed unreturning into the jaws of death in one of the most effective charges of the war. Such loyalty holds an army as a body "compacted by that which every joint supplieth," as a solar system, confident in order and movement. Fidelity to the colors, esprit de corps in the organism, trustful comradeship among the men, and instant movement at command-these beautifully relieve the wrinkled front of war. A battle once seen can never be forgotten. Men do as ordered or fall in the doing, but there is a unity of plan, a harmony of action, a devotion to purpose most admirable, and the fate of the individual, "less often sought than found," seems like the quenching of a star in its appointed orbit. At Balaklava "Retire!" was given vocally in the smoke and crash, each obeying as he could. Had that word been unspoken, all the brigade would have fallen. "Would you shoot me?" "O yes, at command, or shoot myself." Obedience is to the soldier more than safety or sacrifice. Compassion, too, belongs in the soldierly character,

The soldier has

"Be sure the Bayard sent

laid as an ennobling tint upon its other qualities. a human heart, wild as may be the rage of battle. hand that's foremost there has wiped away a tear." food to a starving though unyielding foe, and Grant, I know, was as tender in the hospital as he was determined in the field. How touching it sounds from one bending over a fallen foeman, "I'm sorry, but I had to do it"! "Yes," came faintly, "I know it; you did only a soldier's duty." One not himself a combatant but in the smell of villainous saltpeter saw amid things fierce and grimy instances of tenderness "passing the love of women," the tears of warlike men.

If one reckons these features of the chivalrous, the military character, as it appears not in men of renown, in heroes touted by Fame's obstreperous trumps, but in simple privates who have small share in war's pomp and circumstance, but who know its demands of toil and suffering, one asks if the unfolding and training of such is any compensation for war's evils. Of course not. All this may come to the physician, to the locomotive engineer, to the sailor, to other workers in the arts of peace. It is the dark background of war that makes them here conspicuous. The matter has an impressive religious aspect. St. Paul vividly tells in military rhetoric the qualities needed-and the habits as well-of one who would follow Him who came to send upon earth not peace but a sword. The hymns of our liturgy set forth the Christian life as a warfare, and that we are called as to a soldier's service. The Crusaders exaggerated this idea, but it has not vanished, it will not vanish, from Christian thought. One might say that the preacher is a bugler, sounding the call that is bidden him-"I am the voice." And how these soldierly traits unfold in Christian workers in far-away lands, in slums at home, in continuance of service manifold! The field of conflict is the world, and on every part of it is the Commander's eye. "He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment."

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