_ OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN X
The procession of two regiments of veterans through our streets a few days ago must have set a good many of us retired veterans who were not in the line, to thinking. It did me. It set me to thinking, not of war, not of peace, not of reunions, but of how time has changed us all in twenty years. In a neighboring city where I volunteered, the old company, with the old name and the old uniform, is still kept up by our young successors. I saw it lately on parade, and as I saw the trim looking young fellows of from nineteen to twenty-five, clad in the same bright uniform of twenty years ago, and stepping out with all the brisk and cheery step of youth, it looked as if there had been a resurrection of the old days. Could we old gray heads ever have looked like these! Could that gay young spark mounted on the leading caisson horse and furtively chaffing No. 13 be Hilleary and Hutchins come to life again? Could that serious, slender boy, all attention to the word of command, be the grave and clerical Hale Houston of this day gone back to youth again. Can that sturdy No. 4 at the gun, be old Boss Lumpkin? Could we all have looked as fresh and full of youth, and as full of engaging humor and good temper as these young fellows? I suppose we did, though it is hard to be believed, even by ourselves. I can tell you of a reunion that, if promised, would bring more of the old boys together than all the patriotism than can ever fill the American heart. Just promise them that for that day they shall be young again! Bless my heart, what a crowd you could have! Young again, mark you, both in mind and body. I don't know one of the old fellows who, if he had the option, wouldn't take back the youth he had twenty-three years ago with the war, famine and hardships that followed. What a deal of difference it does make to a man whether the world is behind or in front of him.
Do you know--of course this is confidential--that I am glad the schools have gone for the summer. Education has been a thorn in our family for some time past, indeed since the younger member got into the higher branches. Until lately it has been the impression of Mrs. Boyzy and myself that we spoke the English language with facility and much correctness, and as for facility I will put Mrs. B. against any picked nine that may be brought. But recently we have been greatly humiliated by our eldest girl, who comes back daily from school with a new pronunciation. Incredulity on our part is met by lugging the dictionary into the conflict and we are defeated at once. So victorious has the little one become that we tremble when we hear, "Mamma, how do you pronounce so and so," and prepare for another humiliation. My wife's plaintive, "It was pronounced so when I was a girl," is very touching to me, but when did the young ever have mercy on the old? The last conflict had--I hope it will be the last--was over the word "Squalor." The young one, after setting the usual trap of demanding how we pronounced it, announced that it was spoken "squaylor." At this my wife, astonished into resistance, made her last flight, and said with much dignity, that that pronunciation was silly and there must be a mistake. In a moment more she was prostrated by the well directed dictionary. In the evening after the children had gone upstairs, Mrs. B. locked up her sewing and remarked that a good deal of what is taught children in these days is nonsense. I did not reply. Had I, I should have been forced to remind her that she and I put our parents through the same mill in which the educational gods are now grinding us so sharply. I take it that pronunciation, I mean that of ordinary refinement and education, varies pretty much as bonnets do in style and, like them, is a matter that taste has a good deal to do with; and locality as well. Forty years ago in the jungles of East Virginia I spoke glahss, fahst, ahnser; I never heard of papa and mamma, but of father and mother, and I find they are teaching the children of this day to say that, too. I was taught to say g-yarden, c-yar, s-yuit, and, I suppose, that will also be resurrected after a while. Pronunciation, I take it, is a matter of provincial taste. Reading Chaucer, I have often wondered what standard of that sparsely educated day fixed the standard by which he could be read aloud. And by the bye who, of this more cultivated day, is authority for fixing the standard? Not the Dictionaries, for they differ. I dare say that after all we must fall back on taste. In the national metropolis of America, I have noticed a half-dozen different pronunciations among educated people, so distinct as to be readily noticed. But the best opportunity to be had is in an army gathered from all quarters of the country, or even from all quarters of a section, as the Confederate army was. I noticed a dozen different pronunciations, the two from North Carolina and Georgia being the most distinctly marked. I have heard it said hastily, that all educated people pronounce alike, but I think, with more deliberation and more opportunity for judging, it would be safer to say that all uneducated people pronounce alike.
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I am not one of the old men who take delight in "lecturing" the young. I hate the very word, for I shall never travel far enough from my youth to forget how I disliked both the lecture and the lecturer. But sometimes I have an indescribable yearning to go and say a word to them. I feel pretty much like one who, having found a circus to be of no account and leaving the performance, finds another man at the ticket-wagon eagerly putting down his money for a ticket. It looks like a pity and I want to tell him so. I saw a lot of nice-looking young fellows the other day--I was told they were boys from one of the Universities,--standing on a corner badly flushed with liquor and swearing at a high rate. They were evidently out for "a time." I should have liked to say something like this: "Now, boys, just let this thing drop there. Really, there is nothing in it. No young man with a sound body can need liquor, and no one with a sound reason can need the excitement of cards. We old fellows have been all along there, and there is nothing in it. I am the chief secretary of the Ancient Order of Old Boys, and my opportunities of acquiring knowledge have been exceptional. I don't wish to hold up any raw head and bloody bones of premature death and disgrace, and all that sort of thing, but I would like to say this much to you: If you want to take a drink, take it and go about your business, but don't associate together for the purpose of drinking, whether for a night or for an hour. You will read, before the long life that is before you ends, a hundred ways of accounting for drunkards--heredity, inclination, regular drinking, grief, disappointed love, and all that sort of thing, but all put together they do not begin to approximate the cause I tell you of,--"associating together." It is the associating together of boys, the late nights, the early morning drinks, taken more frequently later on, and lastly the appetite. It is the associating together for the purpose of drinking that causes that selvage of bad company to adhere to the good company you started out with earlier in the evening, and it is the selvage of low company that will give every self-respecting man a good deal of disagreeable reflection when he comes to look back at it. Don't buy that sort of a ticket, my boy; the show won't pay you."
Speaking of veterans reminds me of something I would like to say right here. Do you know there is nothing more awkward to a man--that is nothing more awkward to me, and like all egotists I judge all by myself--than meeting a familiar friend whom I have not seen for twenty years. We expect each other to be the old heart-to-heart friends of long ago, but how to go about re-establishing the relation is the puzzle. We have all had new friends, new histories, new lives since twenty years ago, and while we make an unsatisfactory attempt to be the same "old boys" to each other, each feels the dismal failure. Memory is faithful, but while we remember with affection that we were Tom and Dick to each other then (twenty years ago) we cannot, out of that slender material, build up a hearty fraternal conversation of to-day. And with advancing years we find that the old subjects that we spent hours of mirth over, a life-time ago, are not amusing to-day, if indeed our defective memories can recall them. Ah! how little it took to furnish youth with mirth, that common standing ground upon which all so easily form acquaintance and friendship. I trust I may be forgiven, seeing that I meant well, but I declare to you that I have practiced outrageous deceit in affecting to remember incidents that some of these old boys recall, and in trying to be agreeable by so doing. But doubtless you have also. Perhaps we all have. After all I take it that separation, like time, tries everything--love, friendship, even acquaintance, and those of the three which survive the test are like the ruins of ancient cities, of great value as curiosities, but worth little for aught else. Mrs. Boyzy remarks that this is a heartless view of it. But I silence that estimable woman by the observation that philosophers do not take the heart into account; the heart is the field of young lovers, physicians' fees and patent medicines. This observation which she does not understand, and, I may admit to you I am not so clear about myself, convinces her that I am not only a philosopher, but a profound one. Ah! to a man of profound observation, how many better ways of securing the respect of the female sex there are than the primitive one of clubbing them. _