the last book I ever read (Nicholson Baker's Traveling Sprinkler, excerpt three)

from Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker:

Now your poem is in trouble. You’ve got wasps in the hose reel, you’ve got the sprinkler twirling at the end of the hose, and you’ve got Debussy’s cathedral sunk under the waves. You’ve got fish, you’ve got tomatoes. You’re starting to get strange purple interference patterns, fringe moiré patterns, at the edges of each metaphor, where it overlaps its neighbor. Photographers call this “purple fringing,” and it’s a flaw. This is the moment when your creative writing teacher may say: “You’ve got an awful lot going on here, Paul. Maybe you need to pare this poem down and pick a controlling image.”

the last book I ever read (Nicholson Baker's Traveling Sprinkler, excerpt two)

from Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker:

I drove home and worked through the first few guitar lessons in GarageBand. I practiced chords until the tips of my fingers hurt terribly. You have no idea how sharp guitar strings are. I looked at my fingers and saw deep red grooves. Fortunately the string just missed the numb skin graft on my index finger, where I once cut it slicing bread.

I wanted to play minor chords immediately, but the cheerful, well-groomed instructor from GarageBand was sitting on his stool telling me how to play major chords. They always start you off with major keys even though minor is where you generally end up.

the last book I ever read (Nicholson Baker's Traveling Sprinkler, excerpt one)

from Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker:

Thirty-five years ago, when I was twenty, I sold my Heckel bassoon. And that was that. Now I’m supposed to be writing a new book of poetry, which I’m calling Misery Hat. I don’t want to work on it. Today, to get inspired, I dipped into an extremely long poem by Samuel Rodgers called Human Life, because I liked the title. It didn’t do much for me, but I remembered that Samuel Rogers was friends with Tennyson and Coleridge, and that made me haul out my old edition of Tennyson and look at his extremely long poem Maud, narrated by an insane person who rambles. Tennyson was very ill if not clinically insane when he wrote parts of Maud, and a lot of it is unreadable. But there is one very nice soaring patch that everyone remembers. It begins, “Come into the garden, Maud,/For the black bat, night, has flown.” There Tennyson has us. Night itself is a black bat. How thrilling and un-Victorian is that? In the same passage there’s a mention of an unusual chamber group that’s apparently been serenading the roses all night long—a flute, a violin, and a bassoon. It’s a bassoon not because Tennyson knew anything about the bassoon, but because he needed an evocative word to rhyme with “tune” and “moon.” And also because he may have been remembering another poetical bassoon passage, from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner:

    The Wedding-Guest beat his breast,
    For he heard the loud bassoon.

Coleridge didn’t know much about the bassoon either, or he wouldn’t have said it was loud. The bassoon’s liability as an orchestral instrument is that it is quite soft, much softer in volume that its size would suggest. At a wedding reception in 1797, when Coleridge was working on his pem, it might have been used to double the bassline played by the spinet or the cello. But bassoonists the world over are grateful to Coleridge for including them in his stanza.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt seventeen)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

These words were written in a letter to Carl Schurz, a young German emigrant whom the Republican central committee had sent to Illinois four years ago to speak in Lincoln’s behalf during the senatorial race against Douglas. Grateful for this and later, more successful work, Lincoln appointed him Minister to Spain in 1861, and when Schurz resigned to come home and fight, the President made him a brigadier under Frémont in the Alleghenies. After the fall election returns were in, he wrote Lincoln his belief that they were “a most serious reproof to the Administration” for placing the nation’s armies in “the hands of its enemies,” meaning Democrats. “What Republican has ever had a fair chance in this war?” Schurz asked, apparently leaving his own case out of account, and urged: “Let us be commanded by generals whose heart is in the war.” Lincoln thought this over and replied: “I have just received and read your letter of [November] 20th. The purport of it is that we lost the late elections and the Administration is failing because the war is unsuccessful, and that I must not flatter myself that I am not justly to blame for it. I certainly know that if the war fails, the Administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.” Having thus disposed of the matter of blame, he passed on to the matter of hearts. “I understand you now to be willing to accept the help of men who are not Republicans, provided they have ‘heart in it.’ Agreed. I want no others. But who is to be the judge of hearts, or of ‘heart in it’? If I must discard my own judgment and take yours, I must also take that of others; and by the time I should reject all I should be advised to reject, I should have none left, Republicans or others—not even yourself. For be assured, my dear sir, there are men who have ‘heart in it’ that think you are performing your part as poorly as you think I am performing mine . . . . I wish to disparage no one, certainly not those who sympathize with me; but I must say I need success more than I need sympathy, and that I have not seen the so much greater evidence of getting success from my sympathizers than from those who are denounced as the contrary.”

He closed with a suggestion that the citizen soldier come to see him soon at the White House: which Schurz did, arriving early one morning, and was taken at once to an upstairs room where he found the President sitting before an open fire, his feet in large Morocco slippers. Told to pull up a chair, he did so: whereupon Lincoln brought his hand down with a slap on Schurz’s knee. “Now tell me, young man, whether you really think that I am as poor a fellow as you have made me out in your letter.” He was smiling, but Schurz could not keep from stammering as he tried to apologize. This made the tall man laugh aloud, and again he slapped his visitor’s knee. “Didn’t I give it to you hard in my letter? Didn’t I? But it didn’t hurt, did it? I did not mean to, and therefore I wanted you to come so quickly.” Still laughing, he added: “Well, I guess we understand one another now, and it’s all right.” They talked for the better part of an hour, and as Schurz rose to leave he asked whether he should keep on writing letters to the President. “Why, certainly,” Lincoln told him. “Write me whenever the spirit moves you.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt sixteen)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

As the cheering subsided, the men on the ridge became aware of a new sound: the rumble and boom of cannon, swelling from the direction of Cross Keys. It was Frémont, responding to Shields’ request that he “thunder down.” Going forward, however, he struck not Jackson’s rear but Ewell’s front. The first contact, after a preliminary bombardment, was on the Confederate right, where Ewell had posted a Virginia brigade along a low ridge overlooking some fields of early grain. Frémont came on with unaccustomed vigor, a regiment of New Yorkers in the lead, their boots crunching the young stalks of buckwheat. As they started up the slope there was a sudden crash of gunfire from the crest and the air was full of bullets. A second volley thinned the ranks of the survivors as they tried to reform their shattered line. They fell back, what was left of them. Frémont, reverting to the form he had shown at Strasburg, settled down to long-range fighting with his artillery, which was skillfully handled. Out in the buckwheat the wounded New Yorkers lay under this fire, crying for water. Their cries decreased as the day wore on and Frémont continued his cannonade.

In essence that was all there was to the Battle of Cross Keys. Ewell, fretting because he could not get the Pathfinder to make another attack, at last pushed forward for more than a mile until he occupied the ground from which the Federals had advanced that morning. There he stopped, having been warned not to put too much space between the two wings of the army. Frémont, with 10,5000 infantry effectives, faded back before Ewell’s 5000. It was finished. The North had lost 684 men, nearly half of them lying dead of their wounds in the grainfields; the South had lost 288, only 41 of them killed. Jackson’s trust in Old Bald Head as confirmed. Except for a quick ride out, to see how things were going, he had let Ewell fight his own battle while he himself remained on the heights above Port Republic. Asked if he did not think there was some danger that Shields would advance to help Frémont, whose guns were within earshot, Stonewall gestured towards his batteries and said grimly: “No, sir; no; he cannot do it! I should tear him to pieces.” As he stood there, listening to the sound of Ewell’s battle, intoxicated as if by music, he remarked to his ministerial chief of staff: “Major, wouldn’t it be a blessed thing if God would give us a glorious victory today?” One who overheard him said that as he spoke he wore the expression “of a child hoping to receive some favor.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt fifteen)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

When the six men assembled at the specified hour it was evident that the general had chosen his supporters wisely. Longstreet had won considerable renown as a poker player, but had given it up three months ago, on the eve of his forty-first birthday, when his three children died of scarlet fever, all within a week. Grief had given him a stolid and ponderous dignity, augmented by a slight deafness which he could sit behind, when he chose, as behind a wall of soundproof glass. He chose to sit so now. A large, square-built, hairy man, a native of the Deep South—born in South Carolina, raised in Georgia, and appointed to West Point from Alabama—he left the talking to Smith, who was a year younger but had been trained for disputation as Street Commissioner of New York City. Like Mansfield Lovell, his New York deputy, Smith had joined the Confederacy late, after waiting to see what his native Kentucky would do. Two months after Manassas he made his choice, which Davis applauded by making him a major general and giving him a division under Johnston, who admired him; the two were “Joe” and “G.W.” to each other. A big-framed man with a large nose and firm-set lips, a West Pointer and a Mexico veteran, a former assistant professor of engineering at the Academy, Smith had been a civilian for the past eight years and was quite accustomed to attending such high-level councils as this. With Davis’ and Johnston’s permission, he said, he would like to submit a memorandum he had prepared. Johnston looked it over, then passed it to Davis, who read it aloud.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt fourteen)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

It was not going to be easy; it might even be impossible; but as a last chance Lee thought it worth a try. In any case, if the bombardment failed in its purpose, the infantry need not advance. Already they were taking punishment from the siege guns on the brow of the hill as they filed through the wooded and swampy lowlands to get in position for the jump-off. The heavy-caliber fire was deliberate and deadly: as Harvey Hill could testify. While his troops were forming under a rain of metal and splintered branches, the North Carolinian sat at a camp table on the exposed side of a large tree, drafting orders for the attack. When one of his officers urged him at least to put the trunk between him and the roaring guns: “Don’t worry about me,” Hill said. “Look after the men. I am not going to be killed until my time comes.” With that, a shell crashed into the earth alongside him, the concussion lifting the predestinarian from his chair and rolling him over and over on the ground. Hill got up, shook the dirt from his coat, the breast of which had been torn by a splinter of iron, and resumed his seat—on the far side of the tree. This and what followed were perhaps the basis for his later statement that, with Confederate infantry and Yankee artillery, he believed he could whip any army in the world.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt thirteen)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

It was well conceived, well thought out: McClellan took pride in the foresight and coolness which had enabled him to improvise the details under pressure. He did not consider the movement a retreat. It was a readjustment, a change of base required by a change in conditions. However, once the conference was over and the corps commanders had gone out into the night with their instructions for tomorrow, he began to consider the adverse reaction that might follow: not among his soldiers—they would understand—but among the members of the body politic, the public at large, and especially the molders of popular opinion: the editors, and later the historians. The record would speak for itself in time. He was confident that it would show how Lincoln and Stanton had thwarted him, diverting his troops when his back was turned and ignoring his pleas for reinforcements, in spite of documentary evidence that he was facing an army twice the size of his own. Meanwhile, though, he was not only in danger of being condemned and ridiculed; about to undertake one of the most difficult maneuvers in the art of war, the transfer of an army from one base to another across a fighting front, he was in danger of being physically destroyed. In that event, the record would indeed have to speak for itself, since he would not be there to supplement it before the bar of judgment. Therefore it had better be supplemented in advance, bolstered so as to present the strongest possible case in the strongest possible language. Shortly after midnight, before retiring to sleep for what he knew would be a grinding day tomorrow, he got off a wire to Stanton.

“I now know the full history of the day,” it began. After saying flatly, “I have lost this battle because my force was too small,” he got down to cases: “I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general who feels in his heart the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed today…. If, at this instant, I could dispose of 10,000 fresh men, I could gain a victory tomorrow. I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle from a defeat to a victory. As it is, the Government must not and cannot hold me responsible for the result.” The clincher came at the end: “I feel too earnestly tonight. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the Government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now the game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”

Having thus unburdened his troubled mind, and bolstered the record in the process, he took to his bed. “Of course they will never forgive me for that,” he subsequently told his wife. “I knew it when I wrote it; but as I thought it possible that it might be the last I ever wrote, it seemed better to have it exactly true.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt twelve)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

At 2 a.m. on the 12th he passed the word to his unit commanders Standing by: “Gentlemen, in ten minutes every man must be in the saddle.” Within that time they set, riding north of Richmond as if bound for the Shenandoah Valley. Only Stuart, who rode at the head of the column, knew their true destination. His high spirits were heightened by the knowledge that his opposite number, commanding McClellan’s cavalry, was Brigadier General Philip St George Cooke, his wife’s father, an old-line soldier who, to his son-in-law’s discomfort and chagrin, had stayed with the old flag. “He will regret it but once,” Jeb said, “and that will be continuously.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt eleven)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

In essence that was all there was to the Battle of Cross Keys. Ewell, fretting because he could not get the Pathfinder to make another attack, at last pushed forward for more than a mile until he occupied the ground from which the Federals had advanced that morning. There he stopped, having been warned not to put too much space between the two wings of the army. Frémont, with 10,500 infantry effectives, faded back before Ewell’s 5000. It was finished. The North had lost 684 men, nearly half of them lying dead of their wounds in the grainfields; the South had lost 288, only 41 of them killed. Jackson’s trust in Old Bald Head was confirmed. Except for a quick ride out, to see how things were going, he had let Ewell fight his own battle while he himself remained on the heights above Port Republic. Asked if he did not think there was some danger that Shields would advance to help Frémont, whose guns were within earshot, Stonewall gestured toward his batteries and said grimly: “No, sir; no; he cannot do it! I should tear him to pieces.” As he stood there, listening to the sound of Ewell’s battle, intoxicated as if by music, he remarked to his ministerial chief of staff: “Major, wouldn’t it be a blessed thing if God would give us a glorious victory today?” One who overheard him said that as he spoke he wore the expression “of a child hoping to receive some favor.”

But, childlike, having received it, he was by no means satisfied. He wanted more. That night he issued orders for Ewell to leave a reinforced brigade in front of Frémont and march the rest of his division through Port Republic to join the other wing for a combined assault on the Union troops beyond the river. Once Shields was properly broken up, they could both return and fall on Frémont, completing the destruction Ewell had begun today.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt ten)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

It was. Saturday, after an early start, Ewell’s division stopped just beyond the hamlet of Cross Keys, six miles from Harrisonburg, to stand in Frémont’s path when he came up. Jackson’s plodded another three miles and went into the position on the heights above the confluence of the rivers at Port Republic, overlooking the low-lying opposite bank of the South Fork, where the road wound southwest from Conrad’s Store; this would be Shields’ line of advance, and the guns on the heights would enfilade his column at close range. Neither of the Union forces was yet in sight, however, so the Valley soldiers had time for reading their mail, which had just been forwarded along with the latest newspapers. Elated by their victories, the editors had broken out their blackest type. The Charleston Mercury called Stonewall “a true general” and predicted that he would soon be “leading his unconquerable battalions through Maryland into Pennsylvania.” By way of contrast, gloomy reports from the northern press were reprinted in adjoining columns, and the Richmond Whig combined a mock protest with a backhand swipe at the Administration: “This man Jackson must be suppressed, or else he will change the humane and Christian policy of the war, and demoralize the Government.” The men, of course, enjoyed this flood of praise. Jackson, too, had an ache for fame—“an ambition boundless as Cromwell’s,” Taylor called it, “and as merciless”—but he considered this a spiritual infirmity, unbecoming in a Christian and a deacon of the Presbyterian Church. Also, he was pained that the glory was not ascribed to its true source: God Almighty. Members of his staff observed that from this time on he gave up reading the papers—perhaps for the same reason he had given up drinking whiskey: “Why, sir, because I like the taste of [it], and when I discovered that to be the case I made up my mind to do without [it] altogether.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt nine)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Attempting to regain control, the corps commanders divided the front into four sectors, Hardee and Polk on the left, Bragg and Breckinridge on the right. Coördination was lacking, however, and all the attacks were frontal. Besides, compliance with Johnston’s original instructions—“Every effort will be made to turn the left flank of the enemy, so as to cut off his line of retreat to the Tennessee River and throw him back on [Snake] Creek, where he will be forced to surrenderder”—was being frustrated by Prentiss, who stood fast along the sunken road. “It’s hornets’ nest in there!” the gray-clad soldiers cried, recoiling from charge after charge against the place. When Sherman and McClernand gave way, taking up successive rearward positions, the Confederate left outstripped the right, which was stalled in front of the Hornets Nest, and thus presented Johnston with the reverse of what he wanted. He rode toward the far right to correct this, carrying in his right hand a small tin cup which he had picked up in a captured camp. Seeing a lieutenant run out of one of the tents with an armload of Yankee souvenirs, Johnston told him sternly: “None of that, sir. We are not here for plunder.” Then, observing that he had hurt the young man’s feelings, which after all was a poor reward for the gallantry shown in the capture, by way of apology he leaned down without dismounting and took the tin cup off a table. “Let this be my share of the spoils today,” he said, and from then on he had used it instead of a sword to direct the battle. He used it so now, his index finger hooked through the loop of the handle, as he rode toward the right where his advance had stalled.

At the end of the battle line, on the far flank of the Hornets Nest, there was a ten-acre peach orchard in full bloom. Hurlbut had a heavy line of infantry posted among the trees, supported by guns whose smoke lazed and swirled up through the branches sheathed in pink, and a bright rain of petals fell fluttering like confetti in the sunlight as bullets clipped the blossoms overhead. Arriving just after one of Breckinridge’s brigades had recoiled from a charge against the orchard, Johnston saw that the officers were having trouble getting the troops in line to go forward again. “Men! They are stubborn; we must use the bayonet,” he told them. To emphasize his meaning he rode among them and touched the points of their bayonets with the tin cup. “These must do the work,” he said. When the line had formed, the soldiers were still hesitant to reenter the smoky uproar. So Johnston did what he had been doing all that morning, all along the line of battle. Riding front and center, he stood in the stirrups, removed his hat, and called back over his shoulder: “I will lead you!” As he touched his spurs to the flanks of his horse, the men surged forward, charging with him into the sheet of flame which blazed to meet them there among the blossoms letting fall their bright pink rain.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt eight)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a sixty-four-year-old Vermonter, West Point graduate and veteran of the Seminole and Mexican Wars, was surprised to receive from the War Department in mid-March a telegram summoning him to Washington. He had been retired from the army since 1855, and never would have entered it in the first place if his parents had not insisted that the grandson and namesake of the Hero of Ticonderoga was obliged to take up arms as a profession. Hitchcock’s principal interests were philosophy and mysticism; he considered himself “a scholar rather than a warrior,” and had written books on Swedenborg and alchemy and Jesus. His first reaction to the summons that plucked him from retirement was a violent nosebleed. He got aboard a train, however, suffering a second hemorrhage on the way and a third on arrival, each more violent than the one before. Checking into a Washington hotel, he took to the bed in a dazed, unhappy condition.

Presently the Secretary of War was at his bedside. While the old soldier lay too weak to rise and greet him, Stanton told him why he had been sent for. He and Lincoln needed him as a military adviser. The air was thick was treason! … Before Hitchcock could recover from his alarm at this, the Secretary put a question to him: Would he consider taking McClellan’s place as commander of the Army of the Potomac? Hitchcock scarcely knew what to make of this. Next thing he knew, Stanton had him out of bed and on the way to the White House, where Lincoln repeated the Secretary’s request. Badly confused, Hitchcock wrote in his diary when he got back to his room that night: “I want no command. I want no department. … I am uncomfortable.” Finally he agreed to accept an appointment as head of the Army Board, made up of War Department bureau chiefs. In effect, this amounted to being the right-hand man of Stanton, who terrified him daily by alternately bullying and cajoling him. He was perhaps the unhappiest man in Washington.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt seven)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Davis in Richmond knew nothing of this. Ever since Johnston’s departure he had been urging a delay in the retrograde movement. In fact, when Virginia officials came to him with a plan for mass recruitment to turn back the invaders, Davis took heart and urged the general to hold his ground while the army was brought up to strength for an offensive, which he now referred to as “first policy.” March 10, believing that Johnston and his army still held the Manassas intrenchments, he wired: “Further assurance given to me this day that you shall be promptly and adequately reënforced, so as to enable you to maintain your position and resume first policy when the roads will permit.”

Johnston was not there to receive it, nor were any of his men. The cavalry rear guard had pulled out that morning, following the southward trail of the army on its way to the Rappahannock, accompanied by its general—who was already contemplating another retreat, from there back to the Rapidan. The one in progress had not gone well. One division, in an advance position, had not been informed of the movement at all, but was left to find its way out as best it could. The heavy guns were left in their emplacements, some of them not even thrown from their carriages. Supplies and equipment, including the trunks the volunteers had brought, went up in smoke. The packing plant at Thoroughfare Gap was put to the torch, along with one million pounds of meat remaining after farmers in the neighborhood had been given all they could haul away. For twenty miles around, all down the greening slopes of Bull Run Mountain, there was a smell of burning bacon, an aroma which the natives would remember through the hungry months ahead.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt six)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

There was danger in delay. Fort Donelson was being reinforced; Johnston might concentrate and crush him. But Grant was never one to give much weight to such considerations, even when they occurred to him. Meanwhile, his army was growing, too. Intent on his chance for command of the West—for which he had already recommended himself in dispatches announcing the capture of Henry and the impending fall of Donelson—Halleck was sending, as he described it, “everything I can rake and scrape together from Missouri.” Within a few days Grant was able to add a brigade to each of his two divisions. On second thought, with 10,000 more reinforcements on the way in transports and Foote’s ironclads undergoing repairs at Cairo, he believed that he had more to gain from waiting than from haste. So he waited. All the same, in a letter written on the 9th he declared that he would “keep the ball moving as lively as possible.” Hearing that Pillow, whose measure he had taken at Belmont, was now in command of the fort, he added: “I hope to give him a tug before you receive this.”

By the 11th he was ready to do just that. Unit commanders received that morning a verbal message: “General Grant sends his compliments and requests to see you this afternoon on his boat.” That this headquarters boat was called the New Uncle Sam was something of a coincidence; “Uncle Sam” had been Grant’s Academy nickname, derived from his initials, which in turn were accidental. The congressional appointment had identified him as Ulysses Simpson Grant, when in fact his given name was Hiram Ulysses, but rather than try to untangle the yards of red tape that stood in the way of correction—besides the risk of being nicknamed “Hug”—he let his true name go and took the new one: U. S. Grant. There were accounts of his gallantry under fire in Mexico, and afterwards his colonel had pointed him out on the street with the remark, “There goes a man of fire.” However, even for those who had been alongside him at Belmont, these things were not easy to reconcile with the soft-spoken, rather seedy-looking thirty-nine-year-old general who received his brigade and division commanders aboard the steamboat.

Almost as hard to believe, despite the whiskey lines around his eyes, were the stories of his drinking. Eight years ago this spring, the gossip ran, he had had to resign from the army to avoid dismissal for drunkenness. So broke that he had to borrow travel money from his future Confederate opponent Simon Buckner, he had gone downhill after that. Successively trying hardscrabble farming outside St Louis and real-estate selling inside it, and failing at both, he went to Galena, Illinois, up in the northwest corner of the state, and was clerking in his father’s leather goods store—a confirmed failure, with a wife out of a Missouri slave-owning family and two small children—when the war came and gave him a second chance at an army career. He was made a colonel, and then a brigadier. “Be careful, Ulyss,” his father wrote when he heard the news of the fluke promotion; “you’re a general now; it’s a good job, don’t lose it.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt five)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

They came soon enough. In fact, they came immediately. Coincident with the return of the messenger, Johnston’s right caved in, the troops there scattering headlong, demoralized and crying like their foes the year before: “We are betrayed!”

Primarily, though, he lost that wing of his army not because of a Federal advance, as he had feared, but because of Zollicoffer’s rashness and military inexperience. After occupying Cumberland Gap, the Tennessean had been ordered to move seventy miles northwest to Mill Springs, on the south bank of the Cumberland River, from which position he could parry an enemy thrust either toward the Gap, where he had posted a guard, or toward Nashville, 150 miles southwest. However, when Crittenden reached Knoxville, assuming command of the region, he learned to his amazement that Zollicoffer had not been content to remain south of the river, but had crossed and set up a camp on the opposite bank. Here at Beech Grove, with a wide unfordable river to his rear, the Tennessean was defying a Union army twice his size and attempting to stir up the doubtfully loyal citizens with proclamations which boldly inquired, “How long will Kentuckians close their eyes to the contemplated ruin of their present structure of society?”

Despite this evidence of literary skill, Crittenden now began to doubt the former editor’s military judgment, and at once dispatched a courier, peremptorily ordering him to recross the river. But when he went forward on inspection in early January, to his even greater dismay he found the citizen-soldier’s army still on the north bank. Zollicoffer blandly explained that Beech Grove afforded a better campsite; he had stayed where he was, in hopes that they could talk it over when Crittenden arrived. Then too, he explained—to the West Pointer’s mounting horror—there were reports that the Yankees were advancing, which made falling back seem a cowardly or at any rate not a manly sort of action.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt four)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Everything was moiling confusion in the camps along the creekbed, guns booming north and south as men came out of their blankets in various stages of undress, tousle-haired, half asleep, and badly frightened. Under the stress of that first panic many fled. Some returned, rather shamefaced. Others ran, and kept on running, right out of the war. Yet those who stood were hard-core men from Arkansas and Louisiana, Texas and Missouri, wanting only to be told what to do. McCulloch and his aides soon established a line of resistance, and these men fell in eagerly. Price had yielded the command, but he was there, too, his white hair streaming in the wind as he rode up and down the line of his rallied Missourians, shouting encouragement. Under such leadership, the Southerners assembled in time to meet the attack from both directions. The battle that followed set the pattern for all such encounters in the West.

Few of the romantic preconceptions as to brilliant maneuver and individual gallantry were realized. Fighting at close quarters because of the short-range Confederate flintlocks and muzzle-loading fowling pieces, a regiment would walk up to the firing line, deliver a volley, then reload and deliver another, continuing this until it dissolved and was replaced by another regiment, which repeated the process, melting away in the heat of that furnace and being in turn replaced. No fighting anywhere ever required greater courage, yet individual gallantry seemed strangely out of place. A plume in a man’s hat, for example, accomplished nothing except to make him a more conspicuous target. Nor did the rebel yell ring out on the banks of Wilson’s Creek. There was little cheering on either side; for a cheer seemed as oddly out of place as a plume. The men went about their deadly business of firing and reloading and melting away in a grim silence broken only by the rattling crash of musketry and the deeper roar of guns, with the screams of the injured sometimes piercing the din. Far from resembling panoplied war, it was more like reciprocal murder.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt three)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Later in the week, while southern outpost riders once more gazed across the Potomac at the spires of Washington, the wounded were brought to Richmond to be cared for—-including Rob Wheat, who had put his case on record. The ladies turned out with an enthusiasm which sometimes tried the patience of the men. Asked if he wanted his face washed, one replied: “Well, ma’am, it’s been washed twenty times already. But go ahead, if you want to.” Prisoners came to Richmond, too, where a three-story tobacco warehouse had been hurriedly converted into a military prison. From the sidewalk, citizens tried to bribe the guards for a glimpse at a real live Yankee: especially New York Congressman Alfred Ely, who had strolled too near the scene of battle just as the lines gave way and was discovered trying to hide behind a tree. President Davis sent him two fine white wool blankets to keep him warm in the warehouse prison, and the people in general approved of such chivalry. They felt that they could afford to be magnanimous, now that the war was won.

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt two)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

Though he did not believe at the outset that it would necessarily ever reach an end-—indeed, he believed it would not; otherwise it could never have done for him what it did—-this five-year “retreat,” coming as it did between his fortieth and his forty-fifth years, 1849 to 1854, was his interlude of greatest growth. Like many, perhaps most, men of genius, Lincoln developed late.

It was a time for study, a time for self-improvement. He went back and drilled his way through the first six books of Euclid, as an exercise to discipline his mind. Not politics but the law was his main interest now. Riding the circuit he talked less and listened more. Together with a new understanding and a deeper reading of Shakespeare and the Bible, this brought him a profounder faith in people, including those who had rejected him and repudiated what he had to offer as a leader. Here, too, he was learning. This was the period in which he was reported to have said, “You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”

the last book I ever read (Shelby Foote's The Civil War, Volume One, excerpt one)

from The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume One: Fort Sumter to Perryville by Shelby Foote:

It was true that he had nothing to say at the time. He was waiting; he was drawing on one of his greatest virtues, patience. Though the Cotton South had gone out solid, the eight northernmost slave states remained loyal. Delaware and Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas were banked between the hotheads, north and south, a double buffer, and though Lincoln had not received a single electoral vote from this whole area, he counted on the common sense of the people there. What was more—-provided he did nothing to alienate the loyalty of the border states-—he counted on Union sentiment in the departed states to bring them back into the family.

He had had much practice in just this kind of waiting. One of these days, while he was sitting in his office with a visitor, his son Willie came clattering in to demand a quarter. “I can’t let you have a quarter,” Lincoln said; “I can only spare five cents.” He took five pennies from his pocket and stacked them on a corner of the desk. Willie had not asked for a nickel; he wanted a quarter. He sulked and went away, leaving the pennies on the desk. “He will be back after that in a few minutes,” Lincoln told the visitor. “As soon as he finds I will give him no more, he will come and get it.” They went on talking. Presently the boy returned, took the pennies from the desk, and quietly left. Patience had worked, where attempts at persuasion might have resulted in a flare-up. So with the departed states; self-interest and family ties might bring them back in time. Meanwhile Lincoln walked as softly as he could.

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt ten)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

Seeing my pistols, the little viscount asked me if we were going to fight a duel. I said:

“Yes; and what a duel!”

But, of course, I had no time to explain anything to him. The little viscount is a brave fellow, but he knew hardly anything about his adversary; and it was so much the better. My great fear was that he was already somewhere near us, preparing the Punjab lasso. No one knows better than he how to throw the Punjab lasso, for he is the king of stranglers even as he is the prince of conjurers. When he had finished making the little sultana laugh, at the time of the “rosy hours of Mazenderan,” she herself used to ask him to amuse her by giving her a thrill. It was then that he introduced the sport of the Punjab lasso.

He had lived in India and acquired an incredible skill in the art of strangulation. He would make them lock him into a court-yard to which they brought a warrior—usually, a man condemned to death—armed with a long pike and broadsword. Erik had only his lasso; and it was always just when the warrior thought he was going to fell Erik with a tremendous blow that we heard the lasso whistle through the air. With a turn of the wrist, Erik tightened the noose round his adversary’s neck and, in this fashion, dragged him before the little sultana and her women, who sat looking from a window and applauding. The little sultana herself learned to wield the Punjab lasso and killed several of her women and even of the friends who visited her. But I prefer to drop this terrible subject of the rosy hours of Mazenderan. I have mentioned it only to explain why, on arriving with the Vicomte de Chagny in the cellars of the Opera, I was bound to protect my companion against the ever-threatening danger of death by strangling. My pistols could serve no purpose, for Erik was not likely to show himself; but Erik could always strangle us. I had no time to explain all this to the viscount; besides, there was nothing to be gained by complicating the position. I simply told M. de Chagny to keep his hand at the level of his eyes, with the arm bent, as though waiting for the command to fire. With his victim in this attitude, it is impossible even for the most expert strangler to throw the lasso with advantage. It catches you not only round the neck, but also round the arm or hand. This enable you easily to unloose the lasso, which then becomes harmless.

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt nine)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

But M. le Commissaire de Police Mifroid would not have been quite so satisfied with himself if he had known that the rush of his rapid emissary was stopped at the entrance to the very first corridor. A tall figure block Raoul’s way.

“Where are you going so fast, M. de Chagny?” asked a voice.

Raoul impatiently raised his eyes and recognized the astrakhan cap of an hour ago. He stopped:

“It’s you!” he cried, in a feverish voice. “You, who know Erik’s secrets and don’t want me to speak of them. Who are you?”

“You know who I am! . . . I am the Persian!”

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt eight)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

Raoul went home, greatly perturbed at all that he had heard.

“If I don’t save her from the hands of that humbug,” he said, aloud, as he went to bed, “she is lost. But I shall save her.”

He put out his lamp and felt a need to insult Erik in the dark. Thrice over, he shouted:

“Humbug! . . . Humbug! . . . Humbug!”

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt seven)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

“I fell back against the wall and he came up to me, grinding his teeth, and as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, ‘Look! You want to see! See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik’s face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like! Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I’m a very good-looking fellow, eh? . . . When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me. She loves me for ever. I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!’ And drawing himself up to his full height, with his hand on his hip, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, ‘Look at me! I am Don Juan triumphant!’ And, when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew it to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair.”

“Enough! Enough!” cried Raoul. “I will kill him. In Heaven’s name, Christine, tell me where the dining-room on the lake is! I must kill him!”

“Oh, be quiet, Raoul, if you want to know!”

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt six)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

“My anger equalled my amazement. I rushed at the mask and tried to snatch it away, so as to see the face of the voice. The man said, ‘You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask.’ And, taking me gently by the wrists, he forced me into a chair and then went down on his knees before me and said nothing more! His humility gave me back some of my courage, and the light restored me to the realities of life. However extraordinary the adventure might be, I was now surrounded by mortal, visible, tangible things. The furniture, the hangings, the candles, the vases and the very flowers in their baskets, of which I could almost have told whence they came and what they cost, were bound to confine my imagination to the limits of a drawing-room quite as commonplace as any that, at least, had the excuse of not being in the cellars of the Opera. I had, no doubt, to do with a terrible, eccentric person, who, in some mysterious fashion, had succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the Opera house, five stories below the level of the ground. And the voice, the voice which I had recognized under the mask, was on its knees before me, was a man! And I began to cry. . . . The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, ‘It is true, Christine! . . . I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost . . . I am Erik!’”

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt five)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

Raoul at once threw himself on his knees before her. He swore to her that he would go and he entreated her never again to withhold a single hour of the ideal happiness which she had promised him. She let her tears flow. They kissed like a despairing brother and sister who have been smitten with a common loss and who meet to mourn a dead parent.

Suddenly, she snatched herself from the young man’s soft and timid embrace, seemed to listen to something, and, with a quick gesture, pointed to the door. When he was on the threshold, she said, in so low a voice that the viscount guessed rather than heard her words:

“To-morrow, my dear betrothed! And be happy, Raoul: I sang for you to-night!”

He returned the next day. But those two days of absence had broken the charm of their delightful make-believe. They looked at each other, in the dressing-room, with their sad eyes, without exchanging a word. Raoul had to restrain himself not to cry out:

“I am jealous! I am jealous! I am jealous!”

But she heard him all the same. Then she said:

“Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good.”

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt four)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

“Mademoiselle, I have the honor to ask for your hand.”

“Why, you have both of them already, my dear betrothed! . . . Oh, Raoul, how happy we shall be! . . . We must play at being engaged all day long.”

It was the prettiest game in the world and they enjoyed it like the children that they were. Oh, the wonderful speeches they made to each other and the eternal vows they exchanged! They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt three)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

Such simplicity baffled him. He did not know what to say in the presence of this candid and perfect faith in a genius who came down nightly from Heaven to haunt the dressing-rooms at the Opera.

He now realized the possible state of mind of a girl brought up between a superstitious fiddler and a visionary old lady and he shuddered when he thought of the consequences of it all.

“Is Christine still a good girl?” he asked suddenly, in spite of himself.

“I swear it, as I hope to be saved!” exclaimed the old woman, who, this time, seemed to be incensed. “And, if you doubt it, sir, I don’t know what you are here for!”

Raoul tore at his gloves.

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt two)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

“By the way,” said Moncharmin, “they seem to be greatly interested in that little Christine Daaé!”

“You know as well as I do that she has the reputation of being quite good,” said Richard.

“Reputations are easily obtained,” replied Moncharmin. “Haven’t I a reputation for knowing all about music? And I don’t know one key from another.”

“Don’t be afraid: you never had that reputation,” Richard declared.

the last book I ever read (Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, excerpt one)

from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux:

But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daaé, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opéra Comique after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trip in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it.

Daaé revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daaé had played a good Siebel to Carlotta’s rather too splendidly material Margerita. And it had needed Carlotta’s incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daaé, at a moment’s warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the program reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daaé, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practice alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery.

the last book I ever read (Gottland by Mariusz Szczygiel, excerpt six)

from Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia by Mariusz Szczygiel:

The funeral is a demonstration, and the grave in Prague’s Olšany cemetery is a site of pilgrimage.

A few years later, the authorities forces Palach’s mother and brother to sign an exhumation agreement; then they removed the remains at night, cremate them, and give the urn to the family.

They will keep it at home, because the cemetery in Palach’s native town of Všetaty refuses to accept it for a year.

In 1990, President Václav Havel will ceremonially return the urn from Všetaty to Olšany.