From the New York Sunday Mercury
There is a certain something about a sickroom, my boy, that makes me think seriously of may latter end, and recognize physicians as true heroes of the battlefield. The subdued swearing of the sufferer on his bed, the muffled tread of the venerable nurse, as she comes into the room to make sure that the brandy recommended by the doctor is not too mild for the patient, the sepulchral shout of the regimental cat as she recognizes the tread of Lord Mortimer, the sergeant’s bull terrier, outside, all these are things to make the spectator remember that we are but dust, and to return to dust is our destiny.
Early in the week, my boy, a noble member of the Pennsylvania Mud larks was made sick in a strange manner. A draft of picked men from certain regiments was ordered for a perilous expedition down the river. You may be aware, my boy, that a draft is always dangerous to delicate constitutions, and, as the Mud lark happened to burst into a profuse perspiration about the time he found himself standing in this draft, he, of course, took such a violent cold that he had to be put to bed directly. I went to see him, my boy, and while he was relating to me some affecting anecdotes of the time when he used to keep a bar a member of the Medical Staff of the United States of America came in to see the patient.
The venerable surgeon first deposited a large saw, a hatchet and two pick axes on the table, and says he:
“How do you find yourself, boy?”
The mud lark took a small chew of tobacco with a melancholy air and says he:
“I think I’ve got the guitar in my head Mr. Sawbones, and am about to join the angel choir.”
“I see how it is,” says the surgeon, thoughtfully, “You think you’ve got the guitar, when it’s only the drum of your ear that is affected. Well,” says the surgeon, with sudden pleasantness as he reached after his saw and one of the pick axes, “I must amputate your left leg at once.”
The mud lark curled himself up in bed like a wounded anaconda, and says he:
“I can’t see it in that light.”
“Well,” says the surgeon, in a sprightly manner, then suppose I put a fly blister on your stomach, and only amputate your right arm?”
The surgeon was formerly a blacksmith, my boy, and got his diploma by inventing some pills with iron in them. He proved that the blood of six healthy men contained iron enough to make six horse shoes, and then invented the pills to cure hoarseness.
The sick chap reflected on what his medical adviser had said, and then says he:
“Your words convince me that my situation must be dangerous. I must see some relative before I permit myself to be dissected.”
“Whom would you wish me to send for?” says the surgeon.
“My grandmother, my dear old grandmother,” says the mud lark, with much feeling.
The surgeon took me cautiously aside, and says he:
“My poor patient has a cold in his head, and his life depends perhaps on the gratification of his wishes. You have heard him ask for his grandmother,” says the surgeon, softly, “and as his grandmother lives too far away to be sent for we must practice a little harmless deception. We must send for Secretary Welles of the Navy Department and introduce him as the grandmother. My patient will never know the difference.
I took the hint, my boy, and went after the Secretary, but the latter was so busy examining a model of Noah’s Ark that he could not been seen. Happily however the patient recovered while the surgeon was getting his saw filed, and was well enough last night to reconnoiter in force.
The Mackerel Brigade being still in quarters before Yorktown, I am at leisure to stroll about the Southern Confederacy, my boy, and on Thursday I paid a visit to Cotton Seminary, just beyond Alexandria, where the Southern intellect is taught to fructify and expand. This celebrated institution of learning is all on one floor, with a large chimney and a heavy mortgage up on it and a number of windows supplied with ground glass – or rather, supplied with a certain openness as regards to the ground.
Upon entering this majestic edifice, the master, Prex Peyton descended at once from the barrel on which he was seated and gave me a true Virginia Welcome.
“Though you may be a Lincoln horde,” says he in a manorial manner, “the republic of intellect recognizes you as only a man. The Southern mind knows how to recognize a soul, apart from its outer circumstances for what says the logicians? Dues est anima brutorem. Take a seat on yonder barrel friend Hessian and you shall hear the wisdom of youthful minds. First class in computation stand up!”
As I took a seat, my boy, the first class in computation came to the front, and it is my private impression, my boy – my private impression – that each child’s father was the owner of a rag plantation at some period of his life.
“Boys,” says the master, “how is the table of Confederate money divided?”
“Into pounds shillings and pence.”
“Right. Now Master Mason repeat the table.”
Master Mason, who was a germ of a first family, took his fingers out of his mouth and says he –
“Twenty pounds of Confederate bonds make one shilling, twenty shillings make one penny, six pennies one drink.”
“That’s right my pretty little cherubs,” says the master. “Now go and take your seats, and study your bowie knife exercises. Class in Geography stand up.”
The class in geography consisted of one small Southern Confederacy, my boy, with a taste for tobacco.
“Master Wise,” says the master, confidently, “can you tell me where Africa is?”
Master Wise sniffs intelligently, and says he:
“Africa is situated at the corner of Spruce and Nassau streets and is bounded on the north by Greeley, on the south by Slavery, on the east by Sumner and on the west by Lovejoy.”
“Very true, by bright little fellow,” says the master, “now go back to your chawing.”
“You see friend Hessian,” says the master, turning to me, “how superior Southerners are even as children to the depraved Yankees. In my experience, I have known scholars only six years old to play poker like old church members and a pupil of mine euchred me once in ten minutes.”
I thanked him for his courtesy and was proceeding to the door, when I observed four boys in one corner with their mouths so distorted that they seemed to have subsisted upon a diet of persimmons all their lives.
“Venerable pundit,” says I in astonishment, “how come the faces of those offspring so deformed?”
“Oh,” says the master complacently, ”that class has been studying Carlyle’s works.”
I retired from Cotton Seminary, my boy, with a firm conviction of the utility of popular education and a hope that the day might come when a Professorship of Old Sledge would be created in the New York University.
Yours for a higher civilization.
ORPHEUS C. KERR
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 10, 1862, p. 4
