Decatur Eagle, Volume 10, Number 14, Decatur, Adams County, 29 June 1866 — Page 1

THE DECATUR EAGLE,

VOL. 10.

DECATUR EAGLE, ISSUED EVERY FRIDAY MORNING, BY A. J. HILL, PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR. OFFICE—On Monroe Street in the second Moryofthe building, formerly occupied by Jess* Niblick as a Shoe Store. Terms of Subscription: One copy one year, in advance, $1,50 If paid within the year. 2.00 If not paid until the year has expired, 2, >O (ETNo paper will be discontinued until all arreraees are paid, except at the option of the publisher, Rates of Advertising: One column, one year, JOO,OO One-half column, one year 35,00 One-fourth column, one year, 20,00 Less than one-fourth column, proportional rates will be charged. Legal Advertisements! One square [the apa-e of ten line* t.-re-v lerJ one insertion, SI ,50 Each : .ibsequent insertion. 59 JTNo advertisement will be considered less thau'onc square; over one square will be counted and charged as two; over two as three,die. tTLocal notices fifteen cents a line for each insertion. IT Religio se and Educational notices or advertisements , may be contracted fur at lower rates, by application at the office. ETDeathsaud Marriages published as news JOB PRINTING. We are prepared to do all kinds of Plain and Fancy Job Printing, at the most reaionahle rates. Give us a call, we fuel confident that satisfaction can be given.

[From Harper’s Msgaz,ne [ ONE OF MY SCHOLARS. BI W. W. «IKBS. lam the old choolmaster that has tought the district-school in the little stone schoolhouse under the elms in Gray Street, in our village, for nowtwenty years. I atn sitting in the scoelroom, at my table, engaged upon this production of the pen. The village has grown a little, but not much in these twenty years. There have been some gre t changes during this time even with us. The railroad has come, and the telegraph has been put up, and we are nearer to the city by a whole day than we were before these improvements were made. My little scbool-room, however, is almost unaltered. I suppose schoolhouses such as mine are quite an uncommon thing to see in villages nowadays—even villages so small as Dale Manor is—but I think I should not like to have it improved. We have done vary well here for these twenty years, end I hope the old schoolmaster will not b* disturbed nor his nest broken for a ” little longer. lam nigh seventy now, add it is not to be supposed that I shall occupy the space within these four walls much longer. After lam laid in my quiet grave it will be time enough lor the trustees to tear the old stone house down, and errect a brick one with green blinds and a patent iron chimney. But now all is as of yore, and I love every crack in the worn floor and every knothole in the old wooden shutters; so that lam afraid that it would break my heart if my school house were to be destroyed. Plato loved not his olive groves so well as I love the old school-house under the elms.

There stands the old black-board on ■ its two sturdy legs just as it bas always stood. How many successive growths of urchins have scratched their unhappy heads before that old black board! It has groaned with many a tedious sum in rule of three, and it bas laughed with many a grotesque image done by some incipient Rembrandt at recess. There was George Trenholm; I always shall remember how he used to make my aides ache with suppressed, laughter over his caricatures. George is now a great artist, and makes pictures for Harper’s Weekly, for which ho receives substantial remuneration, I am informed. There, too, are the sameold brown wooden benches, and they bear testimony enough to the bent for sculpture possessed by a great number of my youthful geniuses, from whom no Praxiteles or Phidias has yet appeared, to my knowledge; though Silas Fosdick— who, as you know, invented a reaping-machine— | used to be one of the worst whittiers in : school. I glance out the window, and behold the plain board fence against whose smooth-rubbed sides many a wellaimed mat b e has been jerked by young fingers. And the yard with its fringe of scant grass against the fence, and the rest of its space worn smooth as a ballroom floor by the tread of little bare feet. Here and there you can see a well-roun-ded hole, done on a wet day by some bare-foot urchin’s boel, moulding a receptacle for the marble in knuckle-down. , Behind the door, in the entry, on a stooi not too high for the little boys nor too low lor the big ones, you may see the veteran water pail, with its rusty tin dish

into which many a youngster has thrust his warm, red face, drinking slowly and breathing audibly in the cup. and rolling his eyes around on the impatient waiters for their turn. In the entry, too, is tbe row of nail* where the boys and girls bang their headgear, and th* row of shelves where they keep their dinnerbaskets. And here, in tbe middle of the school-room, is the rusty old stove, around which the red-fingered children cluster in winter, and which always stands undisturbed all summer long, for the boys to sharpen their slste-pencils in and lor me to empty the dust-pan into when I sweep out in the morning. And ( here am I, the master, as unchanged as all the rest—with my careful, old-fash-ioned ways, my well-kept slippers, and my smooth ruler; which latter instrument is, in my hands, merely the emblem of authority—tbe sceptre, so to speak—and pot the instrument of torture which, I regret to say, it is in the hands of some schoolmastars. Twenty years have I taught school in this bouse, and during that long period I have never lifted my hand to inflict a blow upon a child that God made; no, never once. I can punish the worst-dispositioned child that breathes, and never once stoop to adopt tbe modes of torture that brutalize, lower self-respect, and injure more than they improve. Schoolmaster Baldwin never struck a child, and you cannot perhaps conceive what pleasure there is in tbe lemembrance. as I look about here on the well-thumbed books, and broken slates, and bits of muggy sponge—all eloquent as trivial things are—till my old eyes grow dim with memories of the boys that have been to school to me. Mrs Curtis’s boy, when be was one of my scholars, bad that seat in the corner where the girl's row meets the boys’ row Johnny had that place for the whole six years that he went to school to me. He was a right down good boy. Yes, he was a thoroughly good boy; and as I muse upon bis sad fate 1 do not wonder at tbe reverence and love in which all Dale Manor now holds his memory. It is his story which I am now about to relate.

Jobny Curtis lived with bis mother in Gray Street, near the old Beech Woods, which shadowed the southern edge of the town. His father was a drunkard. He spent all his life in hanging about grogshops, where he earned, or was treated to, enough whiskey to him always just so boozy— sleepy enough to enjoy his pig life behind the stove, end wakeful enough to saw a bit of wood, or bring a pail of waler, or “come up and drink ” He seldom came home, even to his meals and when be did he would slink into a corner and say nothing. He never 1 brought a cent of money into the bouse. Johnny was more of a man by tar than he was—more of a father to Bessie and Ellen, the two little gills his sister. It is a natural though t enough that such a father was not likely to make a very good son out of of Johnny; but I have often observed that drunkards who are utterly shiftless seldom have drunken eons; the good mother counteracts ail the evil example of the father.— And when a drunkard’s son does follow in his father’s tracks, there you may generally see provided the mother’s woeful lack. Mrs. Curtis was a God-loving woman—indtistrous, modest, low voiced smooth-tempered. Sbe supported her little ones by her usc-dle. But after he was ten Johnny never was an expense to bis mother. He earned a good deal ol money in various ways. Ha had a habit of gathering together bits of old iron, copper and brass which other people threw away, or gave, him or sold for a trifle; and every few months he would gather his heard together and drag it to the store in his go-cart for a grand clear-ing-out sale. The money went right into his mother's pocket always. In the w inter he would smoke the neighbors’ pork-hams in a little smoke house that be built himself. This brought in many a clean sixpence. Then, in the summertime, he used to drive up cows for different families in the village, from the Beech Woods pasture. He had so many as ten under his care sometimes, and he got sixpence a week from each person whose cow be drove, and a shilling from Dr. Bel), who lives over the river. As early as four o'clock of a June morning, when I have been taking my customary walk, I have seen Johnny Curtis letting down the bars of ths Beech Woods pasture, to let bis cows out, to bo driven up to milk at their different owners, and back again to pastuie before Johnny got his breakfast. How the little fellow i mannaged to get the cows together from ' all parts of that great pas'ure, a poition of which was covered with a deep wood, might have been a mystery to the unsophisticated. But the cows ware always either at the bars or within hail. The ground under that solitary old; accrn tree near the bars was as bare as I my school-yard, where the cows had Hid |

"Our Country’s Good shall ever be our Aim —Willing to Praise and not afraid to Blame.”

DECATUR, ADAMS COUNTY, INDIANA, JUNE 29, 1866.

chewing their cuds and waiting for Johnny; and when they were not there he ! would mount into the tree and cry, "Bos! [ Come, bosl Come bos!” end the cows I would trott up to him with full udder I swinging. So Johnny was a great help to his poor, worse than widowed mother. At the same time his school was not neglected. He was as regular in attendance as the master himself. Johnny was not a boy to shine much in composition and declamation, be was best at mathematics. He was smaller 'even then bis age would warrant, and [generally wore a quiet, half dreamy air that did not promise very much for his future. One would have thought, who did not know Johnny, that be had not energy at all; but his deeds Cold another story. His mother knew better I can assure you. ’ I was sorry, in view of all Jobnnys’s good qualities, that be had the reputation of being a coward among his fellows. He was so meek that it was next to an impossibility to put an affront upon him. To tell the truth, however, be was too well liked by his comrades to ■be put to that test often, I do uot remember having known of but one instance of the sort There was a black eyed, long-haired, foreign boy who came to Dale Manor to live one summer , when Johnny was about twelve years old. I I don’t know really of what country he ■ was, his name was Mark Lowenstien —a German name’ I think he had more Italian than German blood in hitn. His father kept a livery stable at the hotel, and sent his boy to my school. He affronted Johnny very saueily one day—called him a vile name and dared him to fight. Johnny just turned hie back and walked away, and Mark Lowenstein followed him and struck him an ugly blow in the face with the back of his hard hand. I bad seen the whole transaction, and I took Mark into custody. I do believe Johnny felt worse about than be did at being struck, I shall never forget the scene presented by those two boys as they stood beside me then; for, laier events in which they have been I actors rr."de t 1 cm m re tl-an heroes of romance. Johnny, with his soft blue eyes and sturdy little figure, wiping the blood from his face with his red silk hankerehief; Mark with bis sullen black eye, and tall, lithe form, waiting his sentence. ‘‘l am as much to blame as he is, Mr. Baldwin,” said Johnny. You shou.l have seen the astonished gazo young Lowenstein shot from bis black eyes at this! “You to bUme!” said I. "What did you do John?” "I turned my back on him, Sir. He had a good right not to like it.” Mark Lowenstein put his fists into lus eyes and began to cry at that. I understood his feelings I never chill repentance in a boy w'th icy justice; I put Mark’s hand in johnny’s and sent them off together. A minute after I looked out a window and saw Mark in a corner of the fence emptying his pockets of their total contents into Johnny's. Johnny blushed and said, "I don’t want ’em Mark;” but Mark insisted doggedly, and so knife, marbles, peg-top, whistle and potatoes pop gun all went into Johnny’s possession. Alter that such fast friends as those boys were! And I never had a better-behaved boy in my school than Mark Lowenstein became.

Mary Ostrander occupied that seat next to Johnny’s, where the girl’s row i and the boy’s row meet. She was a I laughing little brown-eyed beauty, as full |of fun as an elf out of school, but in school Johnny’s perfect match in good I behavior. The worst thing I ever knew Mary to do was to give Johnny Curtis ahsndful of beech-nuts one day in schoolhours, which Johnny receiving tremblingly—for be knew he ought not to do so, but how could he refuse her? —spilled partly on tbe floor. It was inevitable. I for tbe sake of discipline, that the offense j should be punished. Mary was the tempter, and on her should have fallen the I punishment, but I raw in that boy a eye’s that 1 should break his heart if I j touched Mary. Hence, Johnny stood for ' half an hour perched on my chair with a i handful of beecb-nuts in each outstretched palm. He was only ten years old I then. That was fourteen years ago and before Mark Lowenstein’s coming. This is enough of that period. You are somewhat acquainted with my hero by this time. (I don’t use the term bero in a story-telling senes; this is history;! mean a hero.) Ten years passed away and Johnny was a man. In those ten years what life lies wrapped! The love-life of JohnCurtis and Mary Ostrander is all the-e, end I know well how beautiful it was. I had watched those children as if they | w»re my own, I am a childthss widower. , Macy a long Saturday afternoon had that I hsppy pair sees, in their favorite haun», 1

the old Beech Woods, dering these ten years, gathering yellow mandrakes and brown beech-nuts; swinging in the big swing; picking through deep autumn leaves that filled the hollows; talking and looking love and feeling it. Oh, those old woods! How many merry picnic ; parties I have seen there—bevies of white aproned girls—warm-faced hilarious boys prone to “show off”—the leafy avenues ringing with their shouts and laughter! Mary Ostrander was a recognized romp till her eighteenth birthday; your grand city society, which lam told is very well behaved, would have been quiet horrified to see Marry "carry on;” she bubbled with joyousness as naturally , and as healthfully as a living spring of pure, pure water. And when she was tired nothing would rest her like going over to where Johnny was, looking on in his quiet manner, heartily pleased, and putting her band in his for a moment with a great sigh of content. They were early betrothed. Johnny was a small man—about five feet only—but plump little Mary’s curly head came just so high as bis manly breast when they stood together. If my hero were a mere novel hero he should be taller, young ladies, for your pleasure, and strikingly handsome; but Johnny never grew tall, though handsome he always was, with that best beauty which is tbe I glow in the face of a pure, true soul. In these ten years there had also been deaths. Mr. Curtis, the drunkard, had screamed and danced his life out in a fit of delirium tremens one day, leaving Johnny no more fatherless than he had always been. This death was not a matter of importance to any one left behind in the world. Mrs. Curtis shed some natural tears. But the small-pox; which raged so badly in 1856, made a dreadful mark. It took, among others, Mrs. Curtis’s two little girls, and it deft its shot-marks on the mother’s face also. It took Mr. James Os’.rader, and left Mary without a father. In 1861 came the war, and made the greatest change of all. Dale Manor raised a whole company, and a hundred young men was a great number to be taken from our vilage at once, you may be sure; though some of tbe number were farmer's boys, and not exactly taken out oi the village. It seemed as it the whole population of Dale Manor was at the railroad depot on the morning when our soldier-boys departed. There wae much talking in groups. About every soldier was the centre of one such. Hidden loves came out in that hour. No maiden, no matter how coy, could hide her true feelings from her lover at such a parting! Tears, and smiles struggling against tears, were everywhere. Mark Lowenstein, I remember, was in a very moody frame of mind, arising, as I have since learned, from the fact that Sarah Buswell, the hotel keeper’s daughter, had refused to marry him when he offered her his hand the night before, to j be “seized end possessed” when he should return from the war. Mark looked as ifj he had not a friend on earth. By-and-by i I saw Sarah go up to him and shake hands with him. Mark was very cool and brushed his long black bair behind his ears so proudly that Sarah began to cry. Mark looked on in astonishment, and then bentover and whispered a word in the little body's ear, and the little body nodded her head with much energy, ao that a bright light chased away Mark’s shadows, and after that till the minute of parting be was another man. Lieutenant Johnny was is high spin's. His face shone with light, and he chatted as gayly with Mary and hie mother and a circle of others as if he wer® merely going out for a holiday. What has come over the boy? thought some; he was usuually so quiet. They remembered the scene afterward, when his fate was known almost with awe.

1 Too soon for the group of talkers the engine came dragging its long train from behind Swallow Hill, gay with flags, and with more companions of soldiers leaning out the windows, clustering on the plats forms, standing upon the very tops of the cais. They poured out like a swarm of ' (rev-colored bees as soon as the train i s’opped, shaking hands and laughing and exchanging salutations with their Dale Manor acquaintances —for these soldiers ' were from Rich Harbor, and Charlotte, ■and Bowenville. and all the places in our immediate vicinity. Ten minutes later and the train was off. My old head almost whirled in the unwonted bustle and confusion. I just saw Johnny Curtis strain his mother to his heart, imprint a kiss on Mary’s ripe lips an another on Mrs. Ostrander’s cheek; and then he was waving his cap to us from the rear platform of the last ear as tbe train glided away, with tbe band placing tbe ‘‘Starspangled banner,” leaving me nursing my right-hand with' my lift, for it was aching to the elbow with the shaking it had undergone.- There were snore than

a score of my former scholar* in that company, and Johnny was but one of them. The strongest grip my hand got was from Mark Lowestein, whose face was one glow of joy; and he certainly must have pumped some of it inti my heart, foi I think that hour was the proudest and happiest in my rhole life, with all its sadness. I don’t suppose city people can reali ize at all what a gap was made in our I village by the hundred men that train bore away to the war, not one of them to return till the war was over, as it proved. The crowd of women, children, and elderly men strayed away homeward with strange, half-sad faces, where that warm light glowed too, wlsich faded slowly, slowly in the coming days, as enthusiasm settled into routine and common duty and the heroism of waiting. The events of those four years have [ been like a dream to some. As for me, my old eyes have followed this war along [through one representative— Johnny Curtis. He has typified all things to me. — I All those great battles before Richmond ( are to me Johnny’s daily life. He was ,in them all, and I saw all his letters j home. Winter and summer Mary Os- [ Hander brought them to me. Here, in I my school room, I sat when she brought 'me the news of his first battle, and how ’for bis bravery Colonel Wood took him ;by tbe hand with thanks. How proud Mary was with that I I remember I I drew a map of the "situation” on the blackboard, and Mary was f-ll of buoyant enthusiasm over it, and made me promise not to rub it out till she could bring his mother to see it. I remember too, the summer morning when I was walking in the Beech Woods pasture, and a little boy—not Johnny now—came to let down the old bars for tbe cows to come out; and the emerald sward was everywhere flecked with daises and butter cups, and the still air was made stil er by the hollow rattle of an occasional cowbell. I heard a cheery voice cry, |”Mr. Baldwinl” and looking up I saw Mary tripping toward me with a white ; letter floating high in her hand. That I was the letter that told how Johnny fared [at Antietam, and how he washed off th» , blood and dirt afterward and had not a scratch; and Mary laughed a little bub--1 bling laugh that came from deep down in her heart. Just such another morning jit was when came the picture of Gettysburg. From early dawn till late in the afternoon, through the furious conflict, Iwe saw Johnny struggling with Lee’s I blood-drunk rebels; and we saw him when [he took 'nto bis lap the head of poor [Captain Berry, who fell on that field. At last the change came. In that dreadful battle of tbe WilderI ness, Johnny was taken prisoner, with about a dezen others of the Dale Manor icompany. Soon after we heard from him through an exchanged prisoner from I Richmond, who brought us a letter from | Mark Lowenstein. i "Why should Mark write instead of I Johnny?” | In this question read the emotions of lour hearts, which found expression in no other words than these, but could not have been painted in volumes. The prisoners bad been taken to Libby prison in Richmond. Out of the thirteen Dale Manor men every one save Johnny fell sick and was placed in the hospital. [(When the prisoners first arrived there ' they were stripped of the most of their clothing, and any valuables they had.— Johnny possessed a cornelian ring that once was Mary’s, and this he secreted in his mouth while being stripped, and as terward buried it in the ground secretly, pointing out the spot to Mark Lowestien only.) Mark afterwaro became convalescent, and found that Johnny had disappeared—no one knew whither. And this was what be wrote Mrs. Curtis.— [ Whether her boy was dead or alive he I could not tell the mother. This was ' all.

As the wcvks dragged slvwiy by now, and no tidings ever came of Johnny’s Slate, the bloom began to fade quite out of Mary’s cheek, and in poor widow Curtis' eyes there dwelt a light so sad it made my old heart acbe to observe her. In vain I tried to say some poor comforting words. I could not speak of the boy as dead; but if living, we knew too well the horrors of Southern prisons to be cheered even by that hope. There is nothing so calculated to wear tbe life out of a loving heart as the bare knowledge that the dear one is swallowed up in a great black gulf of oblivion, almost more frightful than death itself, yet leaving room for a weary ray of hope. It may be usually a matter for thankfulness when there is room for hone; but when tbe hope is based on inch pitebly feeble tenure, and goes on week alter week, with no new life, no breath of intelligence even, good or bad, no faintest tidings—only long, agonizing suspense—ah, my friends, there is nothing that so saps the life-blood— i nothing!

8o the auiumn crept slowly away.— Tbe dead leaves lay thick in the Beech fVoods hollows. So the winter cataw, and the snow covered the ground and the trees tossed their bare limbs against the sky. Spring melted the snows away and the May sun shone, and tbe patridgs drummed in tbe woods, and the meadow lark sang in tho pasture, and the orioles and swallows were everywhere, brightening the branches of many a tree with color and life. Then we heard from Johnny. Dead at Andersonville! One who was with Johnny there, and I left him dead therein April when ha came away, brought to Mrs. Curtiss j brown rebel newspaper whose broad marlgin wns scrawled with bloody words.— This Murv brought to me in the Beech Woods pasture, nnd I sat me down under the guant acorn tree by the bars and read tbe words with streaming eyes. I have since copied them from the paper in the order in which I judge them to have [ been written They follow. "Darling mother. Darling brown* eyed Mary. Words I write in my own [ blood, there being no ink here, but blood lin plenty. lam shot in 15 places. I tried to get out of the pen last night.— I wish I Lad waited, for the boys are go ing home now. My heart is filled with joy, for the war is over. Too late for Johnny. Dear Mary, don’t cry for me. How much I love you! He called me a damned gnake when he dragged me into the pen fast night. You will be told how we. have suffered. You would shudder to see Johnny. lam as black as a negro with pitch pine smoke, and my lips are swollen and sore and one of my cheeks most ate away. It is scurvey. I could not help it. Oh, how I wanted to get away where there was water and fresh air! Libby prison was pretty bad but not so bad as this one. How I wish I couid see you once more! The boys will be marching home now. There will be great times at the Manor, I suppose. [ Dear, dear mother and Mary, don't cry about me. It has been pretty tough, but some of us must die I wish it bad been in battle that’s all, Written in my blood. How is schoolmaster Baldwin? I hope I Mark Lowenstein got off all right. Is jyour mother pretty well, Mary? DarI ling girl, we shall roam no more in the old Beech Woods. There’ll be some | hack pay for you, mother. Ask Captain j Snow about it. Good by forever. Oh, I dear mother, dear Mary, if 1 had one touch of your clean hands! You could i not kiss poor Johnny. 1 should die [ much happier if 1 could be clean. Good* i by, good-by, good-by!” With these words ringing in my ear* j like the mournful reverberation of some 'solemn bell, I sat on the great round jstone under the tree, and looked about ; me through the veil of tears that dimmed imy eyes. The gra's was as bright as of old. The butter cups and daisies, the clovsr-tope, the raspberry bushes in the corners of the old zig zag rail fence, the fragrant Ireathed cows chewing their cud by the bars—all these were just as they had been years ago, when Mrs. Curtis' boy used to come to drive the cows home down the long shaded road in whoso deep soft dust bis naked feet paddled content* I edly. Then my eyes fell upon the pet-ite-form of Mary Ostrander, as she leaned her bare head against the trunk of the old acorn, and gazed with her sad brown I eyes away off into the long southward distance, while her chestnut curls blew over her fair shoulders and drooped upon the muslin-hid bosom, where long sighs struggled to lift the load that bora down upon her tender heart 1 approached her and took her hand. J never can : forget the yearning, the anguish that I looked out at me from her soul’s window [as she turned her face to me. It thrilled Ime almost with wonder, for 1 had never 'realized in Mary the truth—with which Iss ». principle i was familliar—that feeling has its deepest depths in joyous natures, and when once the iron enters the soul it plunges to these remotest depth*. Hard iron will float on molten iron; but the dagger dropped in the bright bubbling spring cleaves straight to the hot* tom. There were no tears in Mary's eyas! My brother William died in an inssne I asylum many years ego, and ! have made I insanity a studv. 1 knew Mary's dan* ger at once. Her doom was certain, unless tears could be brought to her eyes. But in vain 1 essayed to wake the sealed fountain. She would lay her bead wearily on Mrs. Curtis’ lap; she would ooms to me and take roy hand in both hers, end rest her cheek upon it; nnd ever and anon those shuddering sigba, panting from the furnace of agony within, told how fearfully the poor gir! suffered. Bhe neglected no duty. She mingled with her friends quite as of old, and often she smiled—but such a touching smile! It was more moving than tears. wtm» on rou«TH rang,

NO, .14