Quite So

Quite So, by Thomas Bailey
Aldrich

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Title: Quite So
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23359]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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Produced by David Widger

QUITE SO
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

I.
Of course that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is
still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or
Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy "Quite
So." It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck
to him with such bur-like tenacity, and is so inseparable from my
memory of him, that I do not think I could write definitely of John
Bladburn if I were to call him anything but "Quite So."
It was one night shortly after the first battle of Bull Run. The Army of
the Potomac, shattered, stunned, and forlorn, was back in its old
quarters behind the earthworks. The melancholy line of ambulances
bearing our wounded to Washington was not done creeping over Long
Bridge; the blue smocks and the gray still lay in windrows on the field
of Manassas; and the gloom that weighed down our hearts was like the
fog that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and enfolded the
valley of the Shenandoah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and,
growing bolder with the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the
tent--the tent of Mess 6, Company A, --th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers.
Our mess, consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four.
Little Billy, as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to
remain at Manassas; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax
Court-House, shot through the hip; Hunter and Suydam we had said
good-by to that afternoon. "Tell Johnny Reb," says Hunter, lifting up
the leather side-piece of the ambulance, "that I 'll be back again as soon
as I get a new leg." But Suydam said nothing; he only unclosed his eyes
languidly and smiled farewell to us.
The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that shameful July day
sat gloomily smoking our brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and
listening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the
occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp
for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of

rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell
upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong
described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane fits
when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no one
in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to the result
of his cogitations, observed that "it was considerable of a fizzle."
"The 'on to Richmond' business?"
"Yes."
"I wonder what they 'll do about it over yonder," said Curtis, pointing
over his right shoulder. By "over yonder" he meant the North in general
and Massachusetts especially. Curtis was a Boston boy, and his sense
of locality was so strong that, during all his wanderings in Virginia, I
do not believe there was a moment, day or night, when he could not
have made a bee-line for Faneuil Hall.
"Do about it?" cried Strong. "They 'll make about two hundred
thousand blue flannel trousers and send them along, each pair with a
man in it--all the short men in the long trousers, and all the tall men in
the short ones," he added, ruefully contemplating his own leg-gear,
which scarcely reached to his ankles.
"That's so," said Blakely. "Just now, when I was tackling the
commissary for an extra candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing
blankets."
"I say there, drop that!" cried Strong. "All right, sir, didn't know it was
you," he added hastily, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had
thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and rain that
threatened the most serious bronchial consequences to our discontented
tallow dip.
"You 're to bunk in here," said the lieutenant, speaking to some one
outside. The some one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the darkness.
When Strong had succeeded in restoring