Blessed is the nation whose annals are uneventful--America is safe with fifteen million children in the public schools and three thousand citizens to one soldier. Happy is the bride whom the sun shines on whether matriculated at Ognotz or merely captivated at Topeka. Joyous to the weary mechanic the picnic of his labor holiday, with its lemonade, its orations, and its other things that lull to peaceful slumber. Halcyon to the Army Mule are monotonous days in camp, when they bring surcease of torment as well as toil; red-lettered if therewithal be brought, by rare concatenation, such plethora of long forage as drowns vicissitude in bright beatitude. In that case he rounds out radiantly and within the cycle of a very few days develops beyond recognition. His protrusions disappear like the vanishing lines of a mineral lode. His rumps accumulate fat and his girth expands with a facility that is amazing. His eye takes on a new gleam and his bray acquires a fresh intonation.
Moreover, he is speedily transformed into a bold aristocrat. He cultivates style and assumes airs of conscious superiority equal to the contemptuous sniff of a Fifth avenue dog who has smelled some chance passer-by two or three grades below par. His future may be uncertain as a Spaniard's veracity or a Frenchman's paternity; but he lives in the glad and glowing present, with the nonchalance of a Russian official hunting for fragments of the czar by torchlight, after a popular demonstration.
Of the Mule in battle, lean is the record's exploitation. There is little danger that his renown in that line will ever be subversive of our liberties and other luxuries. Right is forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the make, as of old. But the placid, benevolent Mule never takes up arms against either party--our quartermaster's returns of uncounted thousands "lost in action" to the contrary notwithstanding. It even seems difficult to secure credit for such service as he actually rendered. His occasional sporadic work in artillery teams is wholly forgotten. His frequent spurts to the flaming front with ammunition wagons is entirely ignored.
A common, peaceful explosion of powder magazines at home not only shatters all the windows in the neighborhood, but also shatters the faith of people for miles around in the doctrine of resurrection of the body. So the peaceful nature of the Mule is fatal to any accumulation of reputation bubbles, where bayonets bristle and saltpeter burns. Were he ten times the tin-clad child of havoc that he is, the florid, hare-lipped arbiter of his destinies would see to it carefully that, barring accidents, his opportunities for responding to long rolls should be few.