Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1890 — FIGHTIN’ TOMMY. [ARTICLE]

FIGHTIN’ TOMMY.

[ A Story of Decoration Day, Dedicated to Democratic Union Soldiers.] The little city of B. is a boonrng county town out West. The early sunrise on the 30th of IM ay, .1885, found her streets thioneed with people in gala dress, all life and animation, making preparations to celebiate Decoration day. Long lines of country people, on foot, in vehicles and loaded down with a profusion of flowers, came pouring in to join the city people in the sweet task of doing honor to the nation’s dead. Even old mossback democrats who had been charged by their stalwart, stay-at-home political opponents with having opposed the war for the Union, lent a cheerful helping hand, and shelled out money to defray expenses. But now came a “hitch.” At the last moment the committee od arrangements received a telegram from the Hon. Mr. Talkwell that he could not keep his promise to deliver the oration. What is Dec oration day without an oration? “Let us invite Judge Tilton, suggested committeeman No. 3. “U hat! Judge Peg-Leg with an pye out?” demurred No. 1; “the crabbed old brute wouldn’t hear to it.” “See what a time we had getting money out of him to pay expenses,’ put in No. 2, “and he’s worth over a hundred thousand dollars, the miser.” “We had no trouble in getting money from the judge,” denied No. 3 ;“he gave us his check for 150 without a word. It was when we commenced slobbering our thanks over him that he snapped out like a savage, ‘l’m busy, gentlemen,’ and turned his back on us. The treatment Judge Tilton has been receiving from, many prominent people in this . city is enough to make him sour and crabbed. At Ft. Donelson h A lost an eye and got that gash plowed across his cheek. At Chicamauga he lost a leg. While he was thus spilling his blood for his country his pars ents were murdered and scalped by the Indians in western Minnesota. Yet, for all that, when he ran for judge last fall on the democratic ticket certain newspapers of this town and a lot of guttersnipe patriots denounced him as a •butternut,’ a ‘copperhead,’ as being a greater traitor to his country than the re cels themselves.— He was charged by those wh> knew better with having once been the president of a swindling insurance company. Even a number of our prominent ministers stood up in their pulpits and, having Judge Tilton in their minds, warned tht ir congregations against the uanger of electing to office men whose garments were dripping with treason and corruption, One might well believe that the judge had been a major-general in the Confederate army instead of a br. ye private on the side of the Union. Nor is he mean i i money matters. When comrade Farley died the judge paid the funeral expense himself. There’s Mrs. Ellis, when she was left a widow with a house full of - children and not a penny sbove a beggarly pension, he moved her in one of his best cottages and gives it to her rent free for her lifetime. I co’d S've you a dozen such instances.— we’ll Jgo to Judge Tilton and tell him plump that he must deliver the oration, he’ll do it, and What’s more, when he lets himself loose on aspeech, that old airpump Talkwell can’t hold a candle to him. Come on, there’s no time to log©.’* “Boys,” said Judge Tilton to ihe half dozen clerks scribbling at desks in his law office, “let’s kno.k off and go out and help decorate. Bam,” speaking to his black coach** man, “hitch the bay trotters to the carriage and bring it round to the front.” The judge was a large, well built man. Nature had given him a good figure and a handsome face.

The ravages of war had changed all this. One eye was shot out; the deep staring cavity was concealed by no artificial glass arrangement The judge was not only free from shams, but, like many brave soldiers he was also proud of his wounds and took no pains to tone down or hide the hideous repulsive appearance they gave him. From the nose round to the ear a musket ball had ripped the left cheek to the bone. In sewing up this wound the surgeon had bungled his wort, for the face was left puckered and drawn out of all semblance of its former handsome appearance. There was not the least attempt to veil the disfigure D ment by some trick of the 10. g beard that adorned the lower part oi the face. But could it be called a disfigurement, ihe monstrous scar that stamped the features with the imprint of heroism 9 An ordinary peg, whittled out with a drawing-knife? took thn place of the shapely leg he had sacrificed to his country. Be. ides there were here and there on his body brown scars made by fragments of a’n exploded shell. Look at this man; consider him. How black the heart that would or could question his honesty, his patriotism. If Judge Tilton made no pretense of obscuring the ghastliness of his wounds he made up for it by fastidiousness in dress. His clothes were of the latest style, a perfect fit, and made of the best materia . The set of a hat, the tie of a cr.ivat, the swing of a watch-chain, the fit of hjs single shoe, every little detail was carefully attended to. He would say, with a laugh, ‘What there is left of me shall have the best.’

He came out of the army illiterate; he educated himself. Ha was poor; he won wealth by plodding industry and shradd but honest business methods. *»He Was unknown; he compelled the world to recognize and acknowledge his ability. He had one bad fault that was a great virtue; he never forgave those that questioned his love of country, m this he was right. He was not an old man, hardly forty. He had once been heard to say in tones of sadness: “Mutilated as I am, how impossible that any good woman could ever love me as a wif ? should love her her husband. I shall nevhr marry. Yet how much happier, how less lonely I should feel if there was one human being to take an interest in me, to love me.” ****** Much to their surprise the committee the judge in a capital good humor. “Certainly, gentlemen,” he ans swered cordially, when the committed made known its predicament and stated its request “I am always glad to do my old comrades a good turn. Ah! there’s my carriage at the door. I’ll be pleased to have you ride out to the cemetery with me. I like plenty of company when I take a hoar day.” In good time the grand procession was ready to begin its march to the “silent city of the dead.” — It only waited the arrival of the passenger train from the «ast which was to bring a r umber of distinguished visitors. Promptly the train came bowling and puffing up to the station. The military fired a salute, the crowd cheered and the band played. But the citizens of B. were doomed toan« other disappointment. The expo jted visitors did not “show up.” There was but one passenger for B. —a little withered oldjwoman. She was a stranger. Her raiment, tho’ neat, indicated a person wretchedly poor. Her hair was snow white; her leathery face was wrinkled and sunburnt. Her restless, coak black eyes pierced like daggers. There was in her intelligent sea > tures a sad, weary look of mingled hope and despair, a hope of finding something shs was searching for, despair at rot finding it. Her step was quicK and lithe for one so oln, and she seemed used to much walking. She gave a quick, inquiring

glance at the crowd on the platform, then walked straight down to where the G. A. R. post stood drawn up in the procession. “Howdy, comrades,” she said, shaking hands with them as if she had known them always. “I’ve come to help you deo’rate; you must call me mother; that’s what all the comrades call me wherever 1 go; I like it because it makes me feel at home among you. You see, I’ve bin huntin’ for nigh twenty years for my Tommy’s grave. I’ve bin through all the cenrt’r.es down South and ’bout all of ’em in the North an’ can’t find it.’ “He must be buried ’mong the unbeknowns,” suggested a sympathizing comrade. ‘O, no,’she answered confidently ‘When Tommy was a little shaver he was always fightin’ the other boys, so he got nick-named ‘Fightin’ Timmy He was mighty proud cf this now name, so what does he do but let an ole sailor print ‘Fightin’ Tommy,’ in big blue letters, on on his arm; an’ the letters would never wash out, but took root in the skin. Now, then, what ought to know, say if his real name weren’t known then the name on his arm would be put on his tombstone, an’ by that I would know for sure if it was my bey’s grave. Then, I have a feelin’ he mayn’t be dead. Sometimes the papers is mistaken.” Ab she said this she walked up and down the line peering wistfully into each comrade’s face.

‘You see,’ she went on, ‘he wo’d be a big man now, an’ maybe look old and gray like all old soldiers.’ ‘What regiment did he belong to?* ‘That’s what I don’t know. It was this way. We was movin’ West in a wigin, when one day we come to a big town where a lot of soldiers was gettin’ on the cars to go right down where they was fightin’, they said, an’ Tommy he up an’ jine ’em right there an’ left us. I was agin it, but pa he said ‘Let him go an’ git his fill o’ fightin*.* ‘What was his full name?’ inquired a comrade. ‘Thomas ’ Just then Judge Tilton’s car. riage, with himself end the committee inside, flew past. The band struck up; the proeession moved forward. ‘You’ll let me march with you, won’t you?’ she said, with tirhid persuasiveness, to the post boys. ‘Yes, mother, God bless you, come right alon«j with us; but if you prefer it we’ll find a way for you to ride.' ‘Oh, no, no,’ she protested, ‘I always march with the comrades. I love to step time to the music, see,’ and she r gulated her pace with the precision of a veteran. These rough soldiers were not ashamed of the bars that filled their eyes at the sight of this patient, resolute mother making such a hopeless search for her missing soldier boy.

Again the musketry fired salutes, the cannons boomed and the audience, led by the G. A. R. post, sang patriotic songs as the procession entered the cemetery and gathered around the grand stand. There was a prayer followed by more singing; then the orator of the day was introduced. He was greeted by rounds of loud applause. Judge Tilton held a high place m the warm hearts of the people that he himself little dreamed of. Tne orator did not bore his hearers with a dry, tedious oration. — He first paid a touching tribute to the memory of the dead Union soldier a»d then spent a brief half hour telling ludicrous anecdotes of the warthat made the people laugh till their sides ached and relating pathetic incidents that melted them to tears.

What is the subtle, marvelous quality that but one orator in ten thousand posesses and which enables him to make his audience weep at the sad side of life and ihe next instant roar with mirth at the grotesque features of existence? When the judge began speakiag

the strange woman was gliding bout and stooping among the rows of dead soldiers’ graves. When sha o«ne to the resting place of an ‘unknown’ she would sit down, put her arm around the tombstone, kiss it tenderly and pat the grass? mound affectionately with her hand, like a mother hushing her baby to sleep. ‘You see,’ she wo’d say, ‘I used to always tuck the co /- ers about Tommy at bedtime and kiss him good night. If ever come to his grave ne will know it, an’ if I listen I shall hear him sav night mamma.’ What is the grave but a bed where we lie down t > sleep an’ forget all) our troubles forever?’ The poor lonely soul glanced around with a weary, tired, faraway lo' k as if she longed, herself, to be laid away to her eternal rest. Hark! something startles her; she ”ises to her feet; she listens—listens as if some far-away, fadtd, indistinct memory was being re« vived in her clouded brain. She cresses un close to the platform. Now she is gazing, eagerly, intently int < the speaker’s face. A shadow of disappointment settles in her features; the mingled look of hope and despair is intensified. She remains motionless and listens .

/ ‘Good people and comrades,’ went on the orator, ‘I thank God for the cour age that sustained me in ihe battle-front in the darkest £of my country’s need. I Him greater thanks for that er courage that has enabled me, through life’s hard struggles, to bear with cheerful fortitude these wounds and ghastly scars that make of me a frightful object from which innocent children and timid women turn in horror. I love to think that I inherited what little I have of courage from my brave-hearted mother. She trainc ed me from the cradle to stan < up in my own defense and to take the part of the w°ak against the strong. I did not quite understand my mother’s advice, and the result was I was continually getting into fights with other boys. My play - mates gave me a nick-name suited to my pugnacious nature. I was so proud of this nt?w name that I paid an old sailor to tattoo it, in large letters, on the inside of my left foreaim.' Here the speaker stopped for a moment to unfasten his sleeve and roll it up. But see that strange woman; see her face beaming with the light of heaven; see, as she leans forward, how profoundly she quivers with expe tation, with joy. Her dilating eyes devour the speaker. Can she wait—will she wait? Yes, for many sore disappointm nts make her doubtful even now.

The judge held aloft his bare white arm before the people.— There was a boyish, humorous defiance in his attitude as he said, laughing through his tears, ‘There is the name I inherited from mv Roman mother. See it. Road it. ‘Fighting Tommy.” ‘Tommy! my son! my darling.’ She had thrown herself on his breast She had put her thin hands and little arms about his neck and pulled his face cown against her own She was presso mg kisses against his poor bullettorn cheek. A flood of tears from a well-spring of joy poured over her transfigured face. ‘My son! my darling! I knew I should find you at last The judge was white and trembling with emotion. He ,took her he id between his hands and pressed it gently back One glance into those well-remembered eyes was enough. He folded her in his arms; he fell back into his seat; he pressed the worn, weary body against his breast and wept aloud, ‘Mother! mother! Thank God! Thank God!’

ALBERT THAYER.