Captain Macklin

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[Illustration: "Go, Royal!" he cried, "and--God bless you!"]

CAPTAIN MACKLIN
HIS MEMOIRS

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Illustrated By
WALTER APPLETON CLARK

To MY MOTHER

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Go, Royal!" he cried, "and--God bless you!" FRONTISPIECE

He made our meeting something of a ceremony

We walked out to the woods

I was sure life in Sagua la Grande would always suit me

The moon rose over the camp ... but still we sat

And the next instant I fell sprawling inside the barrack yard

I sprang back against the cabin

I

UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT

It may seem presumptuous that so young a man as myself should propose
to write his life and memoirs, for, as a rule, one waits until he has
accomplished something in the world, or until he has reached old age,
before he ventures to tell of the times in which he has lived, and of
his part in them. But the profession to which I belong, which is that
of a soldier, and which is the noblest profession a man can follow, is
a hazardous one, and were I to delay until to-morrow to write down
what I have seen and done, these memoirs might never be written, for,
such being the fortune of war, to-morrow might not come.

So I propose to tell now of the little I have accomplished in the
first twenty-three years of my life, and, from month to month, to add
to these memoirs in order that, should I be suddenly taken off, my
debit and credit pages may be found carefully written up to date and
carried forward. On the other hand, should I live to be an old man,
this record of my career will furnish me with material for a more
complete autobiography, and will serve as a safeguard against a
failing memory.

In writing a personal narrative I take it that the most important
events to be chronicled in the life of a man are his choice of a wife
and his choice of a profession. As I am unmarried, the chief event in
my life is my choice of a profession, and as to that, as a matter of
fact, I was given no choice, but from my earliest childhood was
destined to be a soldier. My education and my daily environment each
pointed to that career, and even if I had shown a remarkable aptitude
for any other calling, which I did not, I doubt if I would have
pursued it. I am confident that had my education been directed in an
entirely different channel, I should have followed my destiny, and
come out a soldier in the end. For by inheritance as well as by
instinct I was foreordained to follow the fortunes of war, to delight
in the clash of arms and the smoke of battle; and I expect that when I
do hear the clash of arms and smell the smoke of battle, the last of
the Macklins will prove himself worthy of his ancestors.

I call myself the last of the Macklins for the reason that last year,
on my twenty-second birthday, I determined I should never marry. Women
I respect and admire, several of them, especially two of the young
ladies at Miss Butler's Academy I have deeply loved, but a soldier
cannot devote himself both to a woman and to his country. As one of
our young professors said, "The flag is a jealous mistress."

The one who, in my earliest childhood, arranged that I should follow
the profession of arms, was my mother's father, and my only surviving
grandparent. He was no less a personage than Major-General John M.
Hamilton. I am not a writer; my sword, I fear and hope, will always be
easier in my hand than my pen, but I wish for a brief moment I could
hold it with such skill, that I might tell of my grandfather properly
and gratefully, and describe him as the gentle and brave man he was. I
know he was gentle, for though I never had a woman to care for me as a
mother cares for a son, I never missed that care; and I know how brave
he was, for that is part of the history of my country. During many
years he was my only parent or friend or companion; he taught me my
lessons by day and my prayers by night, and, when I passed through all
the absurd ailments to which a child is heir, he sat beside my cot and
lulled me to sleep, or told me stories of the war. There was a
childlike and simple quality in his own nature, which made me reach
out to him and confide in him as I would have done to one of my own
age. Later, I scoffed at this virtue in him as something old-fashioned
and credulous. That was when I had reached the age when I was older, I
hope, than I shall ever be again. There is no such certainty of
knowledge on all subjects as one holds at eighteen and at eighty, and
at eighteen I found his care and solicitude irritating and irksome.
With the intolerance of youth, I could not see the love that was back
of his anxiety, and which should have softened it for me with a halo
and made me considerate and grateful. Now I see it--I see it now that
it is too late. But surely he understood, he knew how I looked up to
him, how I loved him, and how I tried to copy him, and, because I
could not, consoled myself inwardly by thinking that the reason I had
failed was because his way was the wrong one, and that my way was the
better. If he did not understand then, he understands now; I cannot
bear to think he does not understand and forgive me.

Those were the best days of my life, the days I spent with him as a
child in his own home on the Hudson. It stands at Dobbs Ferry, set in
a grove of pines, with a garden about it, and a box hedge that shuts
it from the road. The room I best remember is the one that overlooks
the Hudson and the Palisades. From its windows you can watch the great
vessels passing up and down the river, and the excursion steamers
flying many flags, and tiny pleasure-boats and great barges. There is
an open fireplace in this room, and in a corner formed by the book-
case, and next to the wood-box, was my favorite seat. My grandfather's
place was in a great leather chair beside the centre-table, and I used
to sit cross-legged on a cushion at his feet, with my back against his
knees and my face to the open hearth. I can still see the pages of
"Charles O'Malley" and "Midshipman Easy," as I read them by the
lifting light of that wood fire, and I can hear the wind roaring down
the chimney and among the trees outside, and the steamers signalling
to each other as they pushed through the ice and fog to the great city
that lay below us. I can feel the fire burning my face, and the cold
shivers that ran down my back, as my grandfather told me of the
Indians who had once hunted in the very woods back of our house, and
of those he had fought with on the plains. With the imagination of a
child, I could hear, mingled with the shrieks of the wind as it dashed
the branches against the roof, their hideous war-cries as they rushed
to some night attack, or the howling of the wolves in the snow. When I
think of myself as I was then I am very fond of that little boy who
sat shivering with excitement, and staring with open eyes at the
pictures he saw in the firelight, a little boy who had made no
enemies, no failures, who had harmed no one, and who knew nothing of
the world outside the walls that sheltered him, save the brave old
soldier who was his law and his example, his friend in trouble, and
his playmate.

I knew nothing then, and I know very little now, either of my father
or my mother. Whenever I asked my grandfather concerning them he
always answered vaguely that he would tell me some day, "when you are
of age," but whether he meant when I was twenty-one or of an age when
I was best fitted to hear the truth, I shall never know. But I guessed
the truth from what he let fall, and from what I have since heard from
others, although that is but little, for I could not ask strangers to
tell me of my own people. For some reason, soon after they were
married my mother and father separated and she brought me to live with
her father, and he entered the Southern army.

I like to think that I can remember my mother, and it seems I must,
for very dimly I recollect a young girl who used to sit by the window
looking out at the passing vessels. There is a daguerreotype of my
mother, and it may be that my recollection of her is builded upon that
portrait. She died soon after we came to live with my grandfather,
when I was only three years old, but I am sure I remember her, for no
other woman was ever in the house, and the figure of the young girl
looking out across at the Palisades is very clear to me.

My father was an Irish officer and gentleman, who came to the States
to better his fortunes. This was just before the war; and as soon as
it began, although he lived in the North, in New York City, he joined
the Southern army and was killed. I believe, from what little I have
learned of him, that he was both wild and reckless, but the few who
remember him all say that he had many noble qualities, and was much
loved by men, and, I am afraid, by women. I do not know more than
that, except the one story of him, which my grandfather often told me.

"Whatever a man may say of your father," he would tell me, "you need
not believe; for they may not have understood him, and all that you
need to remember, until when you are of age I shall tell you the whole
truth, is how he died." It is a brief story. My father was occupying a
trench which for some hours his company had held under a heavy fire.
When the Yankees charged with the bayonet he rose to meet them, but at
the same moment the bugle sounded the retreat, and half of his company
broke and ran. My father sprang to the top of the trench and called,
"Come back, boys, we'll give them one more volley." It may have been
that he had misunderstood the call of the bugle, and disobeyed through
ignorance, or it may have been that in his education the signal to
retreat had been omitted, for he did not heed it, and stood outlined
against the sky, looking back and waving his hand to his men. But they
did not come to him, and the advancing troop fired, and he fell upon
the trench with his body stretched along its length. The Union officer
was far in advance of his own company, and when he leaped upon the
trench he found that it was empty and that the Confederate troops were
in retreat. He turned, and shouted, laughing: "Come on! there's only
one man here--and he's dead!"

But my father reached up his hand, to where the officer stood above
him, and pulled at his scabbard.

"Not dead, but dying, Captain," my father said. "And that's better
than retreating, isn't it?"

"And that is the story," my grandfather used to say to me, "you must
remember of your father, and whatever else he did does not count."

At the age of ten my grandfather sent me to a military academy near
Dobbs Ferry, where boys were prepared for college and for West Point
and Annapolis. I was a very poor scholar, and, with the exception of
what I learned in the drill-hall and the gymnasium, the academy did me
very little good, and I certainly did not, at that time at least,
reflect any credit on the academy. Had I been able to take half the
interest in my studies my grandfather showed in them, I would have won
prizes in every branch; but even my desire to please him could not
make me understand the simplest problems in long division; and later
here at the Point, the higher branches of mathematics, combined with
other causes, have nearly deprived the United States Army of a gallant
officer. I believe I have it in me to take a piece of field artillery
by assault, but I know I shall never be able to work out the formula
necessary to adjust its elevation.

With the exception, perhaps, of Caesar's "Commentaries," I hated all
of my studies, not only on their own account, but because they cut me
out of the talks with which in the past my grandfather and I had been
wont to close each day. These talks, which were made up on my part of
demands for more stories, or for repetitions of those I already knew
by heart, did more than any other thing to inspire me with a desire
for military glory. My grandfather had served through the Mexican War,
in the Indian campaigns on the plains, and during the War of the
Rebellion, and his memory recalled the most wonderful and exciting of
adventures. He was singularly modest, which is a virtue I never could
consider as a high one, for I find that the world takes you at your
own valuation, and unless "the terrible trumpet of Fame" is sounded by
yourself no one else will blow your trumpet for you. Of that you may
be sure. But I can't recall ever having heard my grandfather relate to
people of his own age any of the adventures which he told me, and once
I even caught him recounting a personal experience which redounded
greatly to his credit as having happened to "a man in his regiment."
When with childish delight I at once accused him of this he was
visibly annoyed, and blushed like a girl, and afterward corrected me
for being so forward in the presence of my elders. His modesty went
even to the length of his keeping hidden in his bedroom the three
presentation swords which had been given him at different times for
distinguished action on the field. One came from the men of his
regiment, one from his townspeople after his return from the City of
Mexico, and one from the people of the State of New York; and nothing
I could say would induce him to bring them downstairs to our sitting
room, where visitors might see them. Personally, I cannot understand
what a presentation sword is for except to show to your friends; for,
as a rule, they are very badly balanced and of no use for fighting.

Had it not been for the colored prints of the different battles in
Mexico which hung in our sitting room, and some Indian war-bonnets and
bows and arrows, and a box of duelling pistols, no one would have
supposed that our house belonged to one of the most distinguished
generals of his day. You may be sure I always pointed these out to our
visitors, and one of my chief pleasures was to dress one of my
schoolmates in the Indian war bonnet, and then scalp him with a
carving knife. The duelling pistols were even a greater delight to me.
They were equipped with rifle barrels and hair triggers, and were
inlaid richly with silver, and more than once had been used on the
field of honor. Whenever my grandfather went out for a walk, or to
play whist at the house of a neighbor, I would get down these pistols
and fight duels with myself in front of the looking-glass. With my
left hand I would hold the handkerchief above my head, and with the
other clutch the pistol at my side, and then, at the word, and as the
handkerchief fluttered to the floor, I would take careful aim and pull
the trigger. Sometimes I died and made speeches before I expired, and
sometimes I killed my adversary and stood smiling down at him.

My grandfather was a member of the Aztec Club, which was organized
during the occupation of the City of Mexico by the American officers
who had stormed the capital; and on the occasion of one of its annual
meetings, which that year was held in Philadelphia, I was permitted to
accompany him to that city. It was the longest journey from home I had
ever taken, and each incident of it is still clearly fixed in my mind.
The event of the reunion was a dinner given at the house of General
Patterson, and on the morning before the dinner the members of the
club were invited to assemble in the garden which surrounded his
house. To this meeting my grandfather conducted me, and I found myself
surrounded by the very men of whom he had so often spoken. I was very
frightened, and I confess I was surprised and greatly disappointed
also to find that they were old and gray-haired men, and not the young
and dashing warriors he had described. General Patterson alone did not
disappoint me, for even at that late day he wore a blue coat with
brass buttons and a buff waistcoat and high black stock. He had a
strong, fine profile and was smooth shaven. I remember I found him
exactly my ideal of the Duke of Wellington; for though I was only then
ten or twelve years of age, I had my own ideas about every soldier
from Alexander and Von Moltke to our own Captain Custer.

It was in the garden behind the Patterson house that we met the
General, and he alarmed me very much by pulling my shoulders back and
asking me my age, and whether or not I expected to be as brave a
soldier as my grandfather, to which latter question I said, "Yes,
General," and then could have cried with mortification, for all of the
great soldiers laughed at me. One of them turned, and said to the only
one who was seated, "That is Hamilton's grandson." The man who was
seated did not impress me very much. He was younger than the others.
He wore a black suit and a black tie, and the three upper buttons of
his waistcoat were unfastened. His beard was close-cropped, like a
blacking-brush, and he was chewing on a cigar that had burned so far
down that I remember wondering why it did not scorch his mustache. And
then, as I stood staring up at him and he down at me, it came over me
who he was, and I can recall even now how my heart seemed to jump, and
I felt terribly frightened and as though I were going to cry. My
grandfather bowed to the younger man in the courteous, old-fashioned
manner he always observed, and said: "General, this is my grandchild,
Captain Macklin's boy. When he grows up I want him to be able to say
he has met you. I am going to send him to West Point."

The man in the chair nodded his head at my grandfather, and took his
cigar from his mouth and said, "When he's ready to enter, remind me,
let me know," and closed his lips again on his cigar, as though he had
missed it even during that short space if time. But had he made a long
oration neither my grandfather nor I could have been more deeply
moved. My grandfather said: "Thank you, General. It is very kind of
you," and led me away smiling so proudly that it was beautiful to see
him. When he had entered the house he stopped, and bending over me,
asked. "Do you know who that was, Roy?" But with the awe of the moment
still heavy upon me I could only nod and gasp at him.

"That was General Grant," my grandfather said.

"Yes, I know," I whispered.

I am not particularly proud of the years that preceded my entrance to
West Point, and of the years I have spent here I have still less
reason to be content. I was an active boy, and behaved as other young
cubs of that age, no better and no worse. Dobbs Ferry was not a place
where temptations beset one, and, though we were near New York, we
were not of it, and we seldom visited it. When we did, it was to go to
a matinee at some theatre, returning the same afternoon in time for
supper. My grandfather was very fond of the drama, and had been
acquainted since he was a young man with some of the most
distinguished actors. With him I saw Edwin Booth in "Macbeth," and
Lester Wallack in "Rosedale," and John McCullough in "Virginius," a
tragedy which was to me so real and moving that I wept all the way
home in the train. Sometimes I was allowed to visit the theatre alone,
and on these afternoons I selected performances of a lighter variety,
such as that given by Harrigan & Hart in their theatre on Broadway.
Every Thanksgiving Day I was allowed, after witnessing the annual
football match between the students from Princeton and Yale
universities, to remain in town all that night. On these great
occasions I used to visit Koster & Bial's on Twenty-third Street, a
long, low building, very dark and very smoky, and which on those
nights was blocked with excited mobs of students, wearing different
colored ribbons and shouting the cries of their different colleges. I
envied and admired these young gentlemen, and thought them very fine
fellows indeed. They wore in those days long green coats, which made
them look like coachmen, and high, bell-shaped hats, both of which, as
I now can see, were a queer survival of the fashions of 1830, and
which now for the second time have disappeared.

To me, with my country clothes and manners and scanty spending money,
the way these young collegians wagered their money at the football
match and drank from their silver flasks, and smoked and swaggered in
the hotel corridors, was something to be admired and copied. And
although I knew none of them, and would have been ashamed had they
seen me in company with any of my boy friends from Dobbs Ferry, I
followed them from one hotel to another, pretending I was with them,
and even penetrated at their heels into the cafe of Delmonico. I felt
then for a brief moment that I was "seeing life," the life of a great
metropolis, and in company with the young swells who made it the
rushing, delightful whirlpool it appeared to be.

It seemed to me, then, that to wear a green coachman's coat, to rush
the doorkeeper at the Haymarket dance-hall, and to eat supper at the
"Silver Grill" was to be "a man about town," and each year I returned
to our fireside at Dobbs Ferry with some discontent. The excursions
made me look restlessly forward to the day when I would return from my
Western post, a dashing young cavalry officer on leave, and would wake
up the cafes and clubs of New York, and throw my money about as
carelessly as these older boys were doing then.

My appointment to West Point did not, after all, come from General
Grant, but from President Arthur, who was in office when I reached my
nineteenth year. Had I depended upon my Congressman for the
appointment, and had it been made after a competitive examination of
candidates, I doubt if I would have been chosen.

Perhaps my grandfather feared this and had it in his mind when he
asked the President to appoint me. It was the first favor he had ever
asked of the Government he had served so well, and I felt more
grateful to him for having asked the favor, knowing what it cost him
to do so, than I did to the President for granting it.

I was accordingly entered upon the rolls of the Military Academy, and
my career as a soldier began. I wish I could say it began brilliantly,
but the records of the Academy would not bear me out. Had it not been
that I was forced to study books I would not have been a bad student;
for in everything but books, in everything that bore directly on the
training of a soldier and which depended upon myself, as, for example,
drill, riding, marksmanship, and a knowledge of the manual, I did as
well, or far better, than any of my classmates. But I could not, or
would not, study, and instead of passing high in my class at the end
of the plebe year, as my natural talents seemed to promise I would do,
I barely scraped through, and the outlook for the second year was not
encouraging. The campaign in Mexico had given my grandfather a
knowledge of Spanish, and as a boy he had drilled this language into
me, for it was a fixed belief of his, that if the United States ever
went to war, it would be with some of her Spanish-American neighbors,
with Mexico, or Central America, or with Spain on account of Cuba. In
consequence he considered it most essential that every United States
officer should speak Spanish. He also argued that a knowledge of
French was of even greater importance to an officer and a gentleman,
as it was, as I have since found it to be, the most widely spoken of
all languages. I was accordingly well drilled in these two tongues,
and I have never regretted time I spent on them, for my facility in
them has often served me well, has pulled me out of tight places, put
money into my pocket, and gained me friends when but for them I might
have remained and departed a stranger among strangers. My French
accordingly helped me much as a "yearling," and in camp I threw myself
so earnestly into the skirmish, artillery, and cavalry drills that in
spite of my low marks I still stood high in the opinion of the cadet
officers and of my instructors. With my classmates, for some reason,
although in all out-of-door exercises I was the superior of most of
them, I was not popular. I would not see this at first, for I try to
keep on friendly terms with those around me, and I want to be liked
even by people of whom I have no very high opinion and from whom I do
not want anything besides. But I was not popular. There was no
disguising that, and in the gymnasium or the riding-hall other men
would win applause for performing a feat of horsemanship or a
difficult trick on the parallel bars, which same feat, when I repeated
it immediately after them, and even a little better than they had done
it, would be received in silence. I could not see the reason for this,
and the fact itself hurt me much more than anyone guessed. Then as
they would not signify by their approbation that I was the best
athlete in the class, I took to telling them that I was, which did not
help matters. I find it is the same in the world as it is at the
Academy--that if one wants recognition, he must pretend not to see
that he deserves it. If he shows he does see it, everyone else will
grow blind, holding, I suppose, that a conceited man carries his own
comfort with him, and is his own reward. I soon saw that the cadet who
was modest received more praise than the cadet who was his superior,
but who, through repeated success, had acquired a self-confident, or,
as some people call it, a conceited manner; and so, for a time, I
pretended to be modest, too, and I never spoke of my athletic
successes. But I was never very good at pretending, and soon gave it
up. Then I grew morbid over my inability to make friends, and moped by
myself, having as little to do with my classmates as possible. In my
loneliness I began to think that I was a much misunderstood
individual. My solitary state bred in me a most unhealthy disgust for
myself, and, as it always is with those who are at times exuberantly
light-hearted and self-assertive, I had terrible fits of depression
and lack of self-confidence, during which spells I hated myself and
all of those about me. Once, during one of these moods, a First-Class
man, who had been a sneak in his plebe year and a bully ever since,
asked me, sneeringly, how "Napoleon on the Isle of St. Helena "was
feeling that morning, and I told him promptly to go to the devil, and
added that if he addressed me again, except in the line of his duty, I
would thrash him until he could not stand or see. Of course he sent me
his second, and one of my classmates acted for me. We went out that
same evening after supper behind Fort Clinton, and I thrashed him so
badly that he was laid up in the hospital for several days. After that
I took a much more cheerful view of life, and as it seemed hardly fair
to make one cadet bear the whole brunt of my displeasure toward the
entire battalion, I began picking quarrels with anyone who made
pretensions of being a fighter, and who chanced to be bigger than
myself.

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