He made me no protestation of gratitude,--such protestations are usually humbug,--but I saw his gladness in his face.
The little wife sat squeezing her fingers for joy.
Before a month had passed, St. John had a large class in German, and bade adieu to fiddling. He proved an excellent teacher. Long before I left Chicago to resume my residence in this city, he had got nicely out from under his cloud, and was living in a snug house in the West Division.
There was a little baby playing on the floor at his house last summer when I called to see him, on my way to Lake Superior. That baby bears my name, I am proud to say.
"HEAD-QUARTERS. DEP'T AND ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE. "_East Point, Georgia, September 22, 1864._
"XI Having tendered his resignation, the following-named officer is honorably discharged from the military service of the United States, with condition that he shall receive no final payments until he satisfies the Pay Department that he is not indebted to the Government.
"1st Lieut. ---- ----, Ills. Vol. Inf'try. "By order of Maj. Gen'l O. O. Howard. "(Signed) W. T. CLARK, _Ass't Adj't Gen'l._"
Think of that! After forty-one months of hard-tack and hard marching, interspersed with enough fighting to satisfy the stomach of an ordinary man; after so long an experience of the beautiful uncertainty of army life; after polluting, with the invading heel of my brogan, the sacred soil of several of our erring sister States; after passing many breezy and rainy nights under the dubious shelter of shelter-tents; after sitting through long and weary days in the furnace-heat of narrow and dirty trenches;--after all this, I am at last permitted to bid farewell to "the front," to go home and doff the honorable blue for the more sober garb of the "cit," and drop into my wonted insignificance. That little "extract" has a sweeter perfume for me than any triple extract for the handkerchief ever elaborated by the renowned M. Lubin. It is fragrant with thoughts of home and loved ones far away in the Northland, of starry nights and starry eyes, of fluttering fans and floating drapery, of morning naps unbroken by the strident _ra-tata-ta-ta_ of the bugle. I grow quite sentimental over it, notwithstanding the unpleasant condition with which it is qualified, and which involves such a fearful amount of writing and figuring on mysterious close-ruled blanks, and so much affidavit-making and other swearing,--especially at the blundering clerks in the departments at Washington.