Strong Hearts | Page 2

work to narrow down the
circumference of his life to limits within which he might hope to turn
some of its daily issues into good poetry. This is the main reason why I
tell of him first, and why the parts of my story--or the stories--do not
fall into chronological order. I break that order with impunity, and
adopt that which I believe to be best in the interest of Poetry and
themselves. Only do not think hard if I get more interested in the story,
or stories, than in the interpretation thereof.

II
The man of whom I am speaking was a tallish, slim young fellow,
shaped well enough, though a trifle limp for a Louisianian in the
Mississippi (Confederate) cavalry. Some camp wag had fastened on
him the nickname of "Crackedfiddle." Our acquaintance began more
than a year before Lee's surrender; but Gregory came out of the war
without any startling record, and the main thing I tell of him occurred
some years later.

I never saw him under arms or in uniform. I met him first at the house
of a planter, where I was making the most of a flesh-wound, and was,
myself, in uniform simply because I hadn't any other clothes. There
were pretty girls in the house, and as his friends and
fellow-visitors--except me-- wore the gilt bars of commissioned rank
on their gray collars, and he, as a private, had done nothing glorious,
his appearance was always in civilian's dress. Black he wore, from head
to foot, in the cut fashionable in New Orleans when the war brought
fashion to a stand: coat-waist high, skirt solemnly long; sleeves and
trousers small at the hands and feet, and puffed out--phew! in the
middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing, zou-zou; and when
he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose, languorous, slow to smile
and slower to speak, it was--confusing.
One sunset hour as I sat alone on the planter's veranda immersed in a
romance, I noticed, too late to offer any serviceable warning, this
impressive black suit and its ungenerously nicknamed contents coming
in at the gate unprotected. Dogs, in the South, in those times, were not
the caressed and harmless creatures now so common. A Mississippi
planter's watch-dogs were kept for their vigilant and ferocious hostility
to the negro of the quarters and to all strangers. One of these, a
powerful, notorious, bloodthirsty brute, long-bodied, deer-legged--you
may possibly know that big breed the planters called the "cur-dog" and
prized so highly -darted out of hiding and silently sprang at the visitor's
throat. Gregory swerved, and the brute's fangs, whirling by his face,
closed in the sleeve and rent it from shoulder to elbow. At the same
time another, one of the old "bear-dog" breed, was coming as fast as the
light block and chain he had to drag would allow him. Gregory neither
spoke, nor moved to attack or retreat. At my outcry the dogs slunk
away, and he asked me, diffidently, for a thing which was very precious
in those days--pins.
But he was quickly surrounded by pitying eyes and emotional voices,
and was coaxed into the house, where the young ladies took his coat
away to mend it. While he waited for it in my room I spoke of the
terror so many brave men had of these fierce home-guards. I knew one
such beast that was sired of a wolf. He heard me with downcast eyes, at

first with evident pleasure, but very soon quite gravely.
"They can afford to fear dogs," he replied, "when they've got no other
fear." And when I would have it that he had shown a stout heart he
smiled ruefully.
"I do everything through weakness," he soliloquized, and, taking my
book, opened it as if to dismiss our theme. But I bade him turn to the
preface, where heavily scored by the same feminine hand which had
written on the blank leaf opposite, "Richard Thorndyke Smith, from
C.O."--we read something like this:
The seed of heroism is in all of us. Else we should not forever relish, as
we do, stories of peril, temptation, and exploit. Their true zest is no
mere ticklement of our curiosity or wonder, but comradeship with souls
that have courage in danger, faithfulness under trial, or magnanimity in
triumph or defeat. We have, moreover, it went on to say, a care for
human excellence in general, by reason of which we want not alone our
son, or cousin, or sister, but man everywhere, the norm, man, to be
strong, sweet, and true; and reading stories of such, we feel this wish
rebound upon us as duty sweetened by a new hope, and have a new
yearning for its fulfilment in ourselves.
"In short," said I, closing the book, "those imaginative