The Metropolis | Page 3

of the tall,
handsome man before him, with his raven-black hair and grave features.
"You must give us a chance to try your mettle," he said; and then, as
others approached to meet him, and he was forced to pass on, he laid 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