The Metropolis | Page 3

a caressing hand on Montague's arm, whispering, with a sly smile, "I mean it."
Montague felt his heart beat a little faster. He had not welcomed his brother's suggestion--there was nothing of the sycophant in him; but he meant to work and to succeed, and he knew what the favour of a man like Judge Ellis would mean to him. For the Judge was the idol of New York's business and political aristocracy, and the doorways of fortune yielded at his touch.
There were rows of chairs in one of the rooms, and here two or three hundred men were gathered. There were stands of battle-flags in the corners, each one of them a scroll of tragic history, to one like Montague, who understood. His eye roamed over them while the secretary was reading minutes of meetings and other routine announcements. Then he began to study the assemblage. There were men with one arm and men with one leg--one tottering old soldier ninety years of age, stone blind, and led about by his friends. The Loyal Legion was an officers' organization, and to that extent aristocratic; but worldly success counted for nothing in it--some of its members were struggling to exist on their pensions, and were as much thought of as a man like General Prentice, who was president ot one of the city's largest banks, and a rich man, even in New York's understanding of that term.
The presiding officer introduced "Colonel Robert gelden, who will read the paper of the evening: 'Recollections of Spottsylvania.'" Montague started at the name--for "Bob" Selden had been one of his father's messmates, and had fought all through the Peninsula Campaign at his side.
He was a tall, hawk-faced man with a grey imperial. The room was still as he arose, and after adjusting his glasses, he began to read his story. He recalled the situation of the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1846; for three years it had marched and fought, stumbling through defeat after defeat, a mighty weapon, lacking only a man who could wield it. Now at last the man had come--one who would put them into the battle and give them a chance to fight. So they had marched into the Wilderness, and there Lee struck them, and for three days they groped in a blind thicket, fighting hand to hand, amid suffocating smoke. The Colonel read in a quiet, unassuming voice; but one could see that he had hold of his hearers by the light that crossed their features when he told of the army's recoil from the shock, and of the wild joy that ran through the ranks when they took up their march to the left, and realized that this time they were not going back.--So they came to the twelve days' grapple of the Spottsylvania Campaign.
There was still the Wilderness thicket; the enemy's intrenchments, covering about eight miles, lay in the shape of a dome, and at the cupola of it were breastworks of heavy timbers banked with earth, and with a ditch and a tangle of trees in front. The place was the keystone of the Confederate arch, and the name of it was "the Angle"--"Bloody Angle!" Montague heard the man who sat next to him draw in his breath, as if a spasm of pain had shot through him.
At dawn two brigades had charged and captured the place. The enemy returned to the attack, and for twenty hours thereafter the two armies fought, hurling regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade into the trenches. There was a pouring rain, and the smoke hung black about them; they could only see the flashes of the guns, and the faces of the enemy, here and there.
The Colonel described the approach of his regiment. They lay down for a moment in a swamp, and the minie-balls sang like swarming bees, and split the blades of the grass above them. Then they charged, over ground that ran with human blood. In the trenches the bodies of dead and dying men lay three deep, and were trampled out of sight in the mud by the feet of those who fought. They would crouch behind the works, lifting their guns high over their heads, and firing into the throngs on the other side; again and again men sprang upon the breastworks and fired their muskets, and then fell dead. They dragged up cannon, one after another, and blew holes through the logs, and raked the' ground with charges of canister.
While the Colonel read, still in his calm, matter-of-fact voice, you might see men leaning forward in their chairs, hands clenched, teeth set. They knew! They knew! Had there ever before been a time in history when breastworks had been charged by artillery? Twenty-four men in the crew of one gun,