The Tupelo journal., 1904-11-04
THEN AND NOW.
Civil War Veteran Discusses Anniver-
sary Of San Juan Hill.

THEN AND NOW.
Civil War Veteran Discusses Anniver-
sary Of San Juan Hill.
II was at the breakfast table that
Mr.. Scott Lindsay, q veteran Of the
real war, read something about the. an
niversary Of the battle of San Juan
and began to breathe heavily through
his nose.
Great grief, mother!" he exclaimed,
looking across the table at his wife.
Here's somethin' that'd make old
General Sherman urn ove in his
grave. They're going to celebrate the
anniversary of the battle Of San
Jewan. Thunderation! The battle of
San Jewan! Battle! Gosh, all fish
hooks! Battle! Say, if the old boys
that 'uz with the Army O. the Tennes-
see ever started in to celebrate the
anniversary Of every burned little
popgun skirmish like that battle O.
San Jewan we wouldn't do nothin' but
celebrate, day in and day out, from
one years end to another. Wed have
to get up in the night and annyver-
serate. Battle! Battle nothin'! Wy,
around Vicksburg there we used TO
roll out in the mornin' an fight three
or four O. them battles just to whet
our appetites. We didn't call 'em bat
ties, though. We knew the difference
between a battle and a strawberry fes-
tival. / went out rabbit shOotin' sew
eral times last winter, you may rickol-
lect. Well, / didn't never come back
and say I'd been in any battle, did II
"Oh, well, father, you must make
some allowances" said Mrs. Lindsay.
These boys don't remember the 9TH
er war"
81 guess they DON'T just good an
guess they don't. II they did they
wouldn't be spoutin' so much about
bein' heroes an all that. There's a
blamed sight O. difference between
chasin' some rum of a dagO with a
white feather in each hand, and chas-
in a six-foot Johnny Reb that jest
raises up on his everlastin' hind legs
an comes at you like a runaway horse,
breathin' smoke out of his S an
ears, " Cory, an yellin' like an lnjun.
It's easy enough to chase anything
that runs the other way, but this hero
jobs got its drawbacks when the other
Teller gets it into his head that he
wants to do the chasin' an swoops out
O. the woods like an Ioway cyclone,
by gosh, pumpin' lead into you till you
git too heavy to run. Battle! When
we had EN- stacked up till we couldn't
see over 'em an every regiment 'uz
whitfield down to a company, an our
flags 'uz blown into carpet rags an
the blood got SO deep it wet the am
munition in the wagons, we used to be-
gin to suspect that we'd had a battle.
Somethin' a little less argymentative
than that we called a skirmish. Any
thing the size O. this San Jewan bas-
ket-meetin' we didn't keep no tally OF
at all. That kind O comes under the
head O. target practice"
81 wouldn't be too hard on 'em, faith
er. They say these boys fought real
well down there in Cuby."
"Well, to see EN- struttin' around
town here in their cowboy hats an
gassin' in front of every store you'd
think, by cracky, that every n o
them had chawed up a thousand o
them Spanish generals, whiskers an
all. You take some old codger that
crawled through them swamps for four
years, dodgin' minnie balls, and moth
in to keep him alive but bareback an
hot slough water, an he amt in it no
more with one o. these cussed little
whipper-snappers, by ginger, that
well you ought to heard old Cap Mes
bit the other night after post meetin'.
He made a few remarks about these
kid soldiers that wouldn't pass mus
ter in a crowd o. women, but they 'uz
satisfyin' to me-"
Il don't see why Cap Nesbit wants
to pick onto these boys. | think they
deserve a lot O. credit for enlistin' an
goin' down there in that hot country
to fight"
"Enlistin's all right an fightin's all
right, if you do it. | don't begrudge
no man the credit of goin' out an
fightin' for his country. These boys
done well as far as they went, but l
don't want no kid to tell me what war
is until he's been thru n These
young fellers got a sniff O blood, and
now they think they've been thru the
slaughter house. There's old Dan Bal
ley that got shot so often he didn't
mind it at all towards the last, laid in
Andersonville till he was a rack of
bones, come home here lookin' like a
corpse and amt seen a well day since,
and he amt as big a man in this town
today as that grandson o. his'n that
went down there to Porty Rico last
winter an laid in a hammock for six
months smokin' cigarettes. He's what
they call a hero now-had an ice
cream reception for him when he
came home, didn't they? don't reck-
ullect that anybody had an ice cream
reception for old Dan when he come
home. Heroes wuzn't quite SO gosh
DANCED scarce about that time. No
body paid any attention to EN-. They
used to ship 'em here by the carload,
and most of 'em went right on thru
town an out to the graveyard. WuZn't
it you, mother, wuz readin' the other
day about some regiment that wouldn't
git on a train becuz they wuzn't no
sleepers? Great JehOshophat! I'd
like to seen somebody ask old Col.
Griggs for a sleepin' car. I'd like to
heard what he'd say. Sleepin' cars!
We wuz tickled to death to git box
cars, cattle cars-anything on wheels.
We didn't need nc porter to brush our
cloze, for the darned good reason that
we DIDN'T have no cloze to brush.
Then there's all this talk about en-
BANNED beef. We'd a. been mighty
glad to git it-embammed, petrified.
mouldy, or any other way. We
thought we wuz lucky if we could git
a little hunk o. salt pork to drop in
with the beans now and then. We
wuzn't out on nc moonlight excur.
sions. by gosh. playin' tag with a lot
O. tambourine players. We wuz out