ashion, in the dust, like the
unhappy (would-be) crew on the shores of the Styx, trying to appease
Charon. They never would be at rest till he ferried them over to the
shades of the world of death,--or (what to them seemed impossible) till
they were remanded back to life among the loved ones of their race. I
remember particularly one trifle of this momentous march, that
threatened towards night to gnaw into my very brain-tissues. Soldiers,
it is known, are not over-careful in their dress, when in daily action
in the field, nor have they time to grow fastidious during the fighting
summer months. They then, perforce, disregard tapes with a loftier
indifference to appearances than that which distinguishes the noble
cynic of the world. But officers generally use tapes about their ankles
(perhaps to keep some garment in place immediately upon the stocking);
and I have known them myself, for prudence' sake, to tie them in hard
knots. A poor limping lieutenant, a little to the left, and some ten
feet in advance of me, had not adopted this precaution, and now,
consequently, more as a punishment to me than to him, one of his nursery
ties had come undone, and was trailing after his foot in shadow-like
persistency. I had here a world of torture in a nutshell. When,
unluckily, my eyes fastened upon this appendage, I could not keep them
from it. It fascinated me with more than the juggler's success upon the
serpent. I fell to conjecturing how long the affair might be,--if four
inches or five; and pondered the allowance to be made in the calculation
by reason of the man's distance; merging this view of the matter in
another, as I watched his heel touch the ground, and noted the time
which elapsed between that and the jumping forward of the foot, with the
string, ever faithful, behind it. I conjectured how much dust the tape
took up at each step, and wondered, if, in a long march, merely by
accretion thereof, the end of it would not be a sort of dirt-coil,
perhaps a tenth of an inch in diameter,--soaring higher, too, in my
delirium of nervousness, till I could imagine the incalculable increase
in size which would be insured, should the lieutenant step into a
puddle, and get the thing all wet: he would wear a sand rope for
ankle-fetter, upon entering Richmond.

But the most provoking of all the phases to which my humor was reduced,
and which my dilapidated body had to submit to, by means of this tape,
was the almost irresistible desire