Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1911 — FUNNY TALE FREES SOLDIER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FUNNY TALE FREES SOLDIER

Civit War Veteran Relates Unique Experience During War—Captors Laugh and He Runs. Amateur public speakers or persons who h‘ave difficulty in remembering “impromptu” remarks would do well to consult Capt. A. R. Palmer of Chicago, commander of Meade post, G. A. R., for an infallible cure for such forgetfulness. This would be his recipe: “Get yourself captured in war and entertain your captors with funny stories until you have them off their guard, so you can escape. Everything you say will be stamped indelibly on your mind.” The rule has held good for fifty years for Captain Palmer. Every word of a senseless jumble he repeated to amuse a couple of Confederates in 1861 while he racked his

brains for a plan of escape from them is with him still. Palmer, who was a born comedian, was also fleet of foot. One day on scout duty he was captured by two Confederate soldiers. When his captors started, one on each side of him, he recited every joke and comic verse he knew. The previous spring, when “secesh” talk was on every tongue, he had spoken at the usual school “exhibition,” giving a prepared lecture on the paramount topic In toe characteristic humor of that period. It was nothing but idiotic dribble that came to him as he trudged merrily toward the Confederate camp at Centerville, Va., bound for Libby or Andersonville, but it is still fresh in his mind. This is the speech he delivered: Ladies and Gentlemen: I have rlz to give you warnin’ and make somewhat of a speech. I say that a crisis has ariz and the wheels of government has stopped. . The machinery needs greasin’ and |he biler is busted, and we are like bob-tailed ganders floating down the stream of time. We have had our harmony disturbed and have been driven on the quicksands of the Potomac. We have threatened to dash everything into splinters, but we will eventually pick ourselves up before we are gone goslins. The attrapian knocks the adjacent joyous regions of violent voice and whispers in our ear for peace, but you give us no peace. The peace has gone flickering through the gloom of the other climate to aid the miser in his dungeon and the great Alexander, who fitted the battle of Hunker Bill, and who, with agony, despair and frantic shrieks, cried. ‘Oh. gravy!’ Peace is for the southern confederacy and I don’t care a darn, for she’s a whole horse and a time, sure.”

Palmer’s harangue, accompanied by sweeping gestures and heroic poses threw biq hearers into spasms of laughter. They didn’t know Just what he meant, but it was funny. The orator resumed: "Already I see you traveling In solid phalanx, with shouts that make the .earth ring while you come down upon your opponents like a thousand of brick on a rotten pumpkin. Blood baa got to be poured out of your opponents like soap suds out of a washtub. and every one of them that has a soul as big as the white of a nigger’s eye has got to fight, bleed and die for you. The north may don their rusty regimentals, grease the locks of their guns, put in new flint* grind their old scythes Into swords, mount iheir little airy horses, twelve abreast blast the little rocks and blow up all God’s creation, but still Jefferson Davis will remain.” This Is as far as young Palmer got In the muddle of nonsense. His auditors were frequently doubled up with laughter came to a fence on the edge of a wood, and the two southerners climbed over, confidently expecting their prisoner to follow. He. however, bung back and Instead of mounting the fence broke off his speech, jumped back suddenly and darted into the woods like a deer. A few Ineffectual bullets followed, but before night he was back in his owu camp.

“Ladies and Gentlemen.”