The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-24

! BOUT the middle of December 1884, | "A the four Richmond dailes, simul-
 taneously, announced that the l ladies of that city had decided to give | New Years dinner to Lees veterans on
 the first of the approaching January. 1 Each subsequent issue of those papers
 contained some reference to the magnif
 cent scale upon which the preparations
 were being conducted. Some times their
 references were couched in language as follows: Just to think of sitting a table | forty miles long! What an immense | number of careasses 1t will require to set
 a table forty miles long! The prepara-
 tions for this mammoth affair are under
 the supervision of the we'll known caterer Mir. - (name forgotten), and that is suf-
 iicient guarantee that the dinner will be | a success in every particular
 By such means, those papers succeeded
 in raising our expectations to the highest | pitch. We could think of nothing, talk
 of nothing, dream of nothing except our | New Years dinner.
 January 1. 1S65 was ushered in calm
 and beautiful We are astir, betmes
 Never were children more on the alert for their Santa Claus.
 | We watched old Poebus as he arises | from the couch of Aurora and begins his l upward journey athwart the heavens l bearing the lamp whose refugence ilum- | ines the world My! how slowly the old fellow travels, today. Would, just for | this once, that young Phaeton held the 1 reins! At length the old fogy reaches the zenith. Noon has arrived. That's the ] hour our dear mothers were accustomed | to spread New Years dinners for us in the good old ante-bellum days of Ala I bama. We admonished, however, that we are not now in the backwoods of Alabama; that this New Years din-
 ner is under the supervision of city folk | that city folk are proverbially slow in | their preparations for dinner. We try to | be patient to be reasonable, but we are | hungry.
 The sun is now passing along his west
 ern declivity. Two o'clock, as near as | we guess, has arrived. Surely it is
 now time for dinneri But we see none | of the hustle, the confusion, the racket,
 that always accompany preparations for | a big dinner Our dinner begins to seem like a phantom, ever alluring, ever elud- ing.
 Now, Tantalus, we can realize what l must have been your agony as breezes | kept swaying, to and fro, just out of
 your reach, the twig that was bearing the coveted fruit.
 Several hours have passed. The sun | is slowly hiding behind his western hori
 zon We haven't dined, yet, and there is
 not one breath of news" to keep our l hopes ahoat The stiffness is stifing-suf locating. For once Madam Rumor, with
 her fifty tongues, her hundred eyes and | as many ears, has abandoned her posi- | ton on the house top; for once she is l silent, has fallen asleep. Night comes | creeping down to add her shadows to the
 gloom that is already overwhelming us.
 In vain we dash from us the gnawings | of hunger.
 Joy upon top of joy! Pelion on Ossa!
 we hear the cry. Come up, Sixth Ala l bama and draw your New Years din- | ner." There is no mistake about the l genuineness of that call The voice is
 .the voice of our regmental commissary | and the summons comes straight from | headquarters.
 Our company commissary springs to his feet and starts for the objective point The rest of spring to our feet and have barely enough will power to re- | strain us from starting after him. We l strain our eyes trying to penetrate the darkness around headquarters. We are eager to get glimpse of one of the many carcasses we had been assured would | grace this occasion. In few moments W tracing his steps. Surely. he hasn't fn- l ished drawing our dinner! Ah we un- | derstand. He has found dinner "too many for one man and Is returning for | a detail to assist in bearing the bur | den. No! he is bringing something in l each hand-two half loves of bread. in | the one and a piece of turkey, the size | of your fist, in the other. "Is that all | of our New Years dinner?' comes from | eleven waiting mouths. Every crumb! l is the mournful response.
 | Just after Lee had started upon his l Pennsylvania campaign Lincoln commun,- l cated with Hooker, about as follows: 'I have information that the head of 1 Lees army is at Winchester. and that it's tall is at some point between Fred l ericksburg and Orange Court House. The | animal must be pretty thin somewhere. Can't you manage to break through?" | Our New Years animal was forty | miles long and very. very 'thin, some I where" and the somewhere had struck | us a broadside. Ordinarily we would have returned our dinner with our thanks. | This was no ordinary occasion. We were | In no condition for any display of haul | teur. | Wistfully we watch our commissary as l he patiently divides our dinner into l twelve equal portions. Ravenously each starving soldier clutches and gulps down his dainty morsel The taste of blood enra ges the famish- ing tiger The taste of turkey did not satiate, 1t whetted our appetite--it nearly | crazed us. Did you ever get hungry | that the mere mention of food in your l presence would almost throw. you into | convulsions? Food had not only been . mentioned to us repeatedly, but we had | actually been permitted to taste it. | The boys of Company l., as a whole, 1 were as sobersided a set as could be | found anywhere There were two or l three, however, who in an emergency. 1 could be depended "pon to do little | "cussng" They nt'r ts'c' 1t tha t | an emergency had a.sl ape them.