Soldiers' record, 1870-03-05

              ONE FLAG, Om LAND, ONE EEART, ONE HAND, ONE NATION, EVERMORE t
YOL. II. HAETEOED, COOT., SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1870. NO. 35.
i o i i r s at i o m c.
[For tlio SOLDIKUS' RECORD.]
MUSmGS.
BY FAITir LYLE.
I see the sunset's gold this evo,
Upou the snow chul ti'eo-tops leave
Its mellow, dying boiinis.
And soon the shadows swiftly come
From out their mystic, unseen home,
And lill my heart -with dreams.
Grey tinted shades, they gayly dance
Above tlie fnelij^lit's cheeri'ul glance,
Tliat changeful o'er them Avavcs;
And musing thus, I note them well,
As fast, yet silent, on they swell
From evening's (luiet caves.
Alone here with my heart thoughts free,
I see the day's "fiiir livery"
'Mid^iomhre hues now blending;
And muse that so these hearts of ours,
Pierced "with thorns or crowned -with ilowers.
To change are ever tending.
Like sliadows grey upon the wall.
Dread sorrow tlu'ows a sable pall.
Oft on the heart when lightest;
Yet 'mid w^oe's deepest, bitter sting.
We know that trials dark can bring
The duwn of joy the brightest.
And pleasure sweet can warmly beam
Upon us, like the tinted gleam,
That ever gently lingers.
When light and shadow.softly lay
Together, when the dying day
Is robed by sunset's fingers.
Thus, mystic, mingled life, so sweet.
Within thee joys and sorrows meet.
And fall upon our Avay ;
E'en as the shades of even' creep
Upon the golden, sun-hills steep,
That crown departing day.
BALTIMOUK, F e b . 1 7 t h , 1 8 7 0.
You talk as though we were ifi a chciuist s
laroratory."
Q'alk about French sang fraid and
Yankee impudence—for cool, iiupertur-bablc
audacity, in theory at least, your
From Putnam's Magazine.
THAWED OUT.
PART TUIHD.
"Lager, or die Metaphysik, which ?"
whispered an irrepressible Yankee at my
elbow.
"Hush ! Mauer's the very man to have
ihe very thing," I answered ; and in a
trice the fellow was back again, bearing,
of all things in the world, a portable gal-vanic
battery.
"Just so," he muttered, in response to
my ecstatic pantomine of approbation.
"When a man—ein Geschopf (apologetic-ally)
has boon sleeping an aoa or soj we
must get pretty close in order to waice
him."
And close enough we got, sending the
subtile, mysterious force through bruin
and marrow and nerve, along the wonted,
yet so long unwonted, courses of vital ac-tion
; but ill vain.
The muscles, indeed, responded, after
a time, in a deliberate, majestic fashion of
their own^ strangely unlike the ghastly
contortions of a human subject. And this
result was so far satisfactory that it prov-ed
the whole body to be still intact, un-invaded
by the slightest touch of corrup-tion
or decay ; but the movements were
so plairly and perseveringly automatic
that even Manor's patience and my hope-fulness
failed at last.
And yet he did not look dead—we
could not persuade ourselves that he was
dead. So we sat down again and stared
at him and at each other—Manor in a
brown-study,! in despuir ^ mitigated, how-ever,
by some vague remnants of hope
from the brown-study for I hud begun to
believe in Mauer.
And not without reason, for presently
a gleam of speculation lighted t le vacant
pale blue eyes, a flash of energy kindled
and stirred in the stolid face, and the
good fellow sprang up alert and eager,
lired with a new idea.
"1 have i t ! " he cried, speaking aloud
for the first time since our entrance. "I
have i t ! This atmosphere is too weak—
too—what you call—dilute. It must have
been richer in the old time to develope
(he called it devil-oyj), such a physique
as that. We must make it for him.''
"Make what?"
'' iS'auerstoff-—oxygen
"Make oxygen ! In an ice-cavern—at
the North Pole ! Mauer, are you mad ?
speculative German tops us all.
"We (7,rein Nature's laboratory," an-svvered
Mauer, quietly, "and we can, be-cause
we must. Behold him ! Conimain il
est magnifiqua ! Ah, yes, we must. Hist,
let me think. The chlorate—I huve it in
mmQ arzenei-liiste—a specific for diphthe-ria,
you know. And manganese—the
peroxyd—one may scrupe it from the
rocks there at the entrance. I saw it but
now as we came in—a brace of oil-flasks,
a tube, the stem of my meerschaum, will
do with a bit of rubber. Ah, yes," rub-bing
his hands gleefully; "ah, yes, we
shall do well—we shall feed lum with liis
multerlu/t—his native air. We can, be-cause
we must;" and off the brave fellow-darted,
to return again laden with, I
l^now not what, clumsy buteflicient chem-ist's
paraphernalia, wi:h which he man-aged
to manufacture, in an incredibly
short space of time, several gallons of
pure oxygen.
Then, by a dexterous application of
needles, directing the current to the pro-per
nerves, he managed to produce a per-fect
simulation of the respiratory action,
and cause the giunt actually to inhale the
vivifying iluid.
With the first flask full there came a
scarcely perceptible yet startling change
ui3on the marble face, a faint dawning of
expectant life, a shadowy hint of possible
expression and with it, tome at least,
a thrill of mingled hope and horror. It
teas sleep, not death then, and the hour of
waking was near. lie was coming to life
again, and if he did—wheii he did—what
should we do with him ? or rather—per-haps
that was the question—what would
he do with ns ?
Mauer, however, seemed to be troubled
with no misgivings. He had set the
Russians at work collecting maijganse
and O't^liea manufacturing oxygen, wliiie
he went on breaking and mending his cir-cuit
witih monotonous regularity, pointing
out to me, meanwhile, with an appearance
of the coolest satisfaction, the gathering
signs of life in his strange subject—the
deepening glow upon the lips, the slight
quiver of the muscles, the faint flutter of
the heart, the shadowy semblance of a re-spiration
which was still kept up when
the galvanic irritation was withheld. The
work of resuscitation went on apace. The
faint flush deepened to a healthy glow—
the fluttering pulse grew full and Arm,
the feeble rcspir.ition gathered strength,
yet patience had her perfect work. I grew
as nervous as an old woman, and even
Mauer's steady face caught a shade of
worry and anixety ; the chlorate was ex-hausted,
and the stock of manganese
which O'Shea, by the help of an old iron
pemmican case and an improvised blow-pipe,
had managed to use by itself, was
running very low, before the slow muste
of the vital forces became complete, and
conscious life began.
Yet it was well worth waiting for, to
witness the serene, complacent majesty of
that awakening, the slow dawning of life
and expression in the beautiful luce—the
gradual unclosing of the glorious blue
eyes—the calm, deliberate survey of the
cavern and its occupants, the look of won-dering
incredulity, melting by degrees
into compassionate indulgence, with which
ho contemplated his discoverers.
Mauer had entrusted to Techulski the
brewing of a vast bowl of superlative
punch with which to inaugurate the su-preme
moment of recovery. This he now
olfered, sinking on one knee with an in-structive
gesture of admiring reverence,
which the stranger acknowledged by a
smile of ineffable sweetness and gracious-ness,
and, rising upon one elbow, quailed
the whole portion at a single draught,
then sank back upon his couch again with
ill) expression of sweet lazy brightness
which reminded me curiously of a newly-wakened
child.
"Bedad, that's a good notion," mut-tered
O'Shea, who had latterly betaken
himself to a renewed gyration of St. Greg-ory's
toe. A veri/ good notion. Give
him another, Techulski ; there's noth'ng
ill earth so good for swatening the tem-per."
It was the first time one of us had spok-en
since the signs of life began to show
themselves, and the giant's awakened sen-ses
evidently caught the sound. A car-rions,
half-puzzled expression came into
his face ; he turned his head quickly, and
looidng straight at O'Shea, uttered in a
ow, clear, exquisitely modulated voice a
single word.
Not one of us understood its meaning ;
and yet it thrilled through every one of
us like an electric shock. I have compared
notes with my companions since, and I
And their experience corresponded in
sion of vigor and youth was wearing away;
he was aging visibly and momently before
our eyes.
Mauer saw it, and snatching from Tec-hulski
the bowl of punch he had been in-dustriously
brewing, offered it as before
upon his bended knee ; but the giant put
it absently aside, and went ou with the
study of his mighty problem.
I never saw so much expression concen-trated
in a human (and, reader, this was
a human) face. We could read its chan-ges
almost as if it had been an open book
spread out before us ; utter bewilderment:
a dim memory, kindling gradually into
clear and perfect, remembrance of some
glorious, ineflable past ; the sudden, par-alyzing
recollection of some tremendous
catastrophe ; agony, horror, unutterable
despair, as the whole truth burst upon hini,
and finally, grandest of all, a stern, hope-less
resignation, calmly accepting the in-evitable.
Meanwhile, the change which was pass-every
particular with my own ; but I al- ing upon his physical being grew every
most despair of conveying to you any idea
of its singular effect.
There was such a vague, tormenting
suggestion of familiarity about the word,
a just-missed meaning, a sensation as if
the sound had gone wandering away into
my brain, seeking in some long-closed,
long-forgotten chamber for the slumbering
idea which, wakened by its echoes, should
breathe into it the breath of life and make
it a living word again.
O'Shea's interpretation of the feeling
would have been comical at any other
time.
"And is it spaking to me he is ?" he
cried, glancing round at us in hopeless,
appealing bewilderment. "And I not
to sense the maning of it, at all, at all ;
though it's Irish, as thrue as you're born !
God be good to us ! And it's maybe St.
Pathrick himself!"
A shadowy reflf.ction of O'Shea's be-wilderment
seemed to pass into the strang-er's
fac<) at this. He looked inquiringly
at the Irishman for a moment, and then,
turning half impatiently towards Mauer,
spoke half-a-dozen words in a clear, full
voice which echoed through the cavern
like the notes of a silver trumpet, bring-ing
into every face the same eager, hope-ful,
baffled expression as before.
"It is not Dentsch," said Mauer, reflec-tively
; "and yet it is liker than any lan-guage
I know. I shall try him with die
S-prache. It is nearest the mother-tongue.
Poor, dear fellow ; it was not, to my
ear, in the least like Dentsch ; yet, with
that sublime confidence in the antiquity
and adaptability of "r//e i^jn-acha" which
never deserts your true German, he ans-wered
with a simple, reverent courtesy
infinitely becoming : "/cA verslehe sie
nicht, Mein Herr. Sprachensie Deutsch V
The giant shook his head ; and this time
we saw our own feelings plainly reflecied
in his face. The language of gesture and
expression, at least, is as old and as broad
as the world.
"Ah !" said Mauer, mournfully ; "the
parent cannot recognize the child any
more than the child the parent."
"Try him with Latin or Greek, Mauer,
German's the i^-rand-daughter ; you must
get farther back," whispered my irrepros
sible Yankee friend ; and
moment more appalling. It seemed as if
time were avenging itself; as if the ages,
held so long in abeyance by that icy wall,
had leaped in one fell host upon their
prey, and were doing in a momont the
work of centuries—blighting with a
breath, crumbling by a touch, that glori-ous
image of immortal youth and vigor
into the very impersonation of decrepi-tude
and decay.
It was a terrible spectacle. Fancy it,
only ; a man aging by lifetimes before
your very eyes, driven with awful stride««,
moment by moment, through the whirling
centuries, and l^den remorselessly by each
with its dread burden of care and weari-ness
and sorrow. Fancy it, if you can ;
we have no words to describe—as, thank
God, we have rare occasion—the horrors
of such a sight.
We stood, I know not how long, speech-less,
spell-bound, watching those minute
ages doing their fearful work, and their
magnificent victim calmly noting its pro-gress
•witli an eye that defied eternity.
Mauer, as usual, was the first to break
the spell.
"Oh ! ho is dying, perishing before our
eyes 1" he- cried in despair. "And he
can tell us nothing ; we shall never, never
know who he is, or whence he came I Oh!
for a scholar, a linguist ! He is a waif
from antiquity ; he holds secrets of the
world's history, the- key of the ages ; and
we shall let him die, perish, wither away,
and make of it no sign ! Stay—hist—he
cannot speak to us. Can he write ? Grote-fend
deciphered the Keilschriften ; Cham-pollion
interpreted the Hosetta stone
there may bo scholars now in Prance, in
Germany. O'Shea ! pen—ink—paper !
quick ! for your life !"
The writing materials were brought,
and Mauer spread them out before him ;
gesticulating like a Frenchman—s^irib-bling
a word or two, and offering the pen
imploringly. He was put aside absently
at first ; but his eager pantomime soon
attracted a sort of half indulgent atten-tion
which by-and-by gave place to curi-osity
and interest. The giunt took the
pen into his huge fingers, examined it
with a half quizical smile, and turned to
Mauer, questioningly. Then his face
lighted up with eager, intelligent com-warm,
of be-v^
Mauer obeved, - , . - m. a • • . -
but all in vain. The most painfufand meitea again into a
persevering efforts to understand only re- thriUuig,/«^m«« expression a look
Llted in a concentration of the bafUed ex- with us, which brought the
pression which we understood so well ; ^ to Mauer 8 honest eyes, and sent
Lid, wearied out at last with fruitless atl | the blood ting ing through al our veins,
tempt, the giant waved his would-be i n t e r - i n t o a sort ot intro-pretor
aside with an impatient gesture ; ' mexpression, as he began rapidly
and, rising hastilv into i sitting posture, 1 c a b a l i s t i c characters
began examining first himself, then the
cavern, and then each of us turn, as if he
were seeking to solve the pioblein of his,
or our, existence.
Then first we saw, or noticed, the start-ling
change vvhich was passing upon him..
The freshness and brightness were fading
rapidly out; the glorious beaming exprcs-upon
the paper.
Several pages were written thus, into
every lino of vvhich the memories of ages
seemed to be condensed ; and with every
line of which the weight of ages seemed
to descend upon the writer ; then the
huge fingers slowly relaxed, the majestic
form, venerable now bey<5nd all human