Doorstep Reminiscences
“Gray brigades of misty shadows come trooping round the door,
And as they spread their tents about, the old lines march once more.”
The corncob pipes are off the rack, and it’s just the hour when a fellow gets to thinking about things that are covered over in the shadowy bygone. It is going to be war tonight, for it is the first time the quartet have met since back in the seventies.
The member of the “Tinth” has finished his first pipe, and now listen:
“Say, Cap., do you remember Sullivan?” questions one of Battle’s boys, as he leans over to strike a match.
“Sullivan? Which Sullivan? There was a Sullivan—John Sullivan—Sullivan First, Sullivan Second, and Sullivan Third.”
“Oh the fellow the ‘muskeeties’ got after at Fort Donelson.”
An audible smile stretched around the group. The man from Alabama assumed a coaxing tone and said: “Go on and tell about the ‘Minies,’ Cap.; I haven’t heard it for a long, long time.” The cushions were drawn closer together and the “old boys” were transported back to the breastworks at Fort Donelson. One of them said: “It was a chilly day with a brisk wind coming up from the river. The Yanks were in the woods in front of us, and the Minie balls were making the air resonant with a ‘ziz-zee,’ ‘ziz-zee!’ A particularly sharp note attracted the attention of big John Sullivan, whose knowledge of war and its implements was very limited. All at once he threw up his hand as if he were feeling for rain-drops.
Sullivan First questioned, ‘Pwhat are yez doin’ John?’ and John replied, ‘I niver felt so many misteeties in me life.’ Whereupon Sullivan Second assured the fool that ‘thim things were bullets.’ John jerked his hand down, saying as he did so: ‘Lord, save us; we’ll all be kilt!’ Sullivan on the left ventured the information, ‘Sure God is good;’ and Sullivan on the right, who was a diplomat in his way, re-echoed, ‘An’ the devil ain’t bad, eyther.’ The West Tennessean and Bill Matthews were out scouting, and reported that the Yanks were camped just two miles away. We all remember that an open log fire inside the humblest cabin was like a bit of heaven in those days.
Well, some of our own people might have been better to us than they were, and the occupants of that cabin were not exceptions. However, the hearth was Bill’s shadow in a weary land, and they only asked to bunk on the floor near the fire. Bill was to keep watch for a while, and later Pat was to take his turn. Well, it is hard to keep awake at such times, and Bill soon left the storm world to go journeying with the Sandman, and his partner was getting under the shadow of the poppy wreath, when he heard a rustling sound, and, turning over, he found that his unwilling host had reached the door on his way to the Yankee camp. See that old horse pistol hanging in there in the hall? He just leveled that at the old man and ordered him to bed. Quiet reigned for about half an hour and then there was a movement over in the corner and the old woman’s voice broke the stillness: ‘Mistah, the Yankees is comin’.’ Pat got up and took a look around. He was an innocent at first, but when she tried it on him a second time the old pistol came out again, and that old lady was snoring to beat Frank McConnell in less than two minutes.”
“Well, ther is an instance I have never seen mentioned in history,” the Alabamian chimed in, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, “and that is about the way a certain fellow used to call to us at Camp Douglas. I wake up sometimes in the night even now, and I think I can hear him saying: ‘Yallar Hammers! Yallar Hammers! Here’s your horse feed; come on with your gun wadding!’ The Irish were not over fond of corn bread, and that was the command to swap our baker’s bread for corn meal. Well, comrades, I didn’t know what dyspepsia was in those days, and could eat almost anything in sight.”
The fat man on the other end of the steps chuckled softly as he put his pipe back in place. “O, we know it,” he commented, and turning to his neighbor, he asked: “Pat, do you mind how you used to let us tear up the kitchen floor in the barracks and catch the big gray rats? We skinned them and made squirrel pies out of them for the ‘Yaller Hammers.’ Ugh! I tasted a hot rat pie once. It was awful, gentlemen.”
A shudder went around the group, and just then a soft voice called to them “Gentlemen, there are four frosted mint juleps in the dining room to take away that rodent flavor.” A few minutes later a moonflower opened out in all its white purity and glanced down in surprise at the vacant cushions and the cob pipes lying in the end of the steps. From somewhere in the distance a fiddle was playing.
Door Step Reminiscences first appeared in Volume 10 of the Confederate Veteran serial in 1902. Confederate Veteran was a monthly magazine founded “in the interests of Confederate veterans and kindred topics”.