6
THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE
THE GOOD FIGHT
IN GRIGSBY CITY "Soldier's Roost"
was at once the forum of open discus
sion, and the court of public opinion.
The Roost also exercised legislative func
tion and the work of Congress often was
a mere supplementary proceedings. Be
tween times, history (particularly that chap
ter of it which fell in the interval from 1861
to 1865) was corrected and annotated.
Lemuel Vickers had his stock of dry
goods and groceries in the room in which
the "Old Boys" met to adjust the delicate
political and economic mechanism of gov
ernment. He also paid the rent of the build
ing. But his business was incidental to the
daily meetings of the veterans who gathered
there. The place was seldom, if ever, re
ferred to as Vickers' store. To everybody
in Grigsby City it was the "Roost." And
Lemuel, who had carried a musket through
three years of the trouble, regarded the title,
one which an irreverent younger generation
had given his place of business, as a compli
ment rather than as an affront.
Most of Lemuel's trade, which was
meager enough at best, came from the Old
Boys themselves. It could not be said that
he was averse to dealing with those who
had no personal connection with the putting
down of the Rebellion, but he did little to
encourage their custom. Unless Lemuel
and Uncle Giles Hostettler were again fight
ing the battle of Lookout Mountain, or ex
cept in the event that the daily engagement
along the Chickahominy had become gen
eral, the chance customer was waited upon
with reasonable promptness. But if the cus
tomer interrupted the advance of the serried
columns of Blue up the side of the Lookout,
or interfered in any way with "Old Grant's"
movements, he had to wait until the rebels
had been put to flight and the wounded
properly cared for. The Old Bovs, however,
were loyal to Lemuel as they had been to the
flag. On pension days they cashed and
spent their checks at the Roost and Lemuel,
in turn, carried many of them on his books
for "accommodations" he knew they never
could pay.
Lem Vicken Read the Report of the Twentieth' Progn
Few of those who gathered at the
Roost had worn the insignia of rank.
With two or three exceptions, they had
been plain privates or non-commissioned
officers. Even Colonel Bob Lipe's title
was honorary, his discharge papers in
dicating that he had been mustered out
a corporal. But Colonel Lipe, having
for thirty years after the close of the
war served his country faithfully as an
auctioneer, had be.n accorded a promo
tion. And yet, each man wore his
epaulet. In the memory of each there
lived some moment of valor, some dreary
day of suffering, or deprivation, which
ranked the gilt and tinselled braid a
Jovernment might have bestowed. Thus
udson Follansbee, who sat habitually
upon the cranberry barrel at the left of
the stove, was curiously malformed of
jaw, the result of the impact of a "minie"
ball and hasty or careless surgery at
Resaca; Pliny Tate had lain all day in
the rifle pits before Vicksburg with a
grapeshot through his lung; Uncle Giles
Hostettler, whose right to the empty
soap box at the end of the notion coun
ter was never challenged, had been with
those who tunneled out of Libby; Israel"
:Ui i j i
uiuumgs "gin ami lay oenina mm on
the field of Seven Pines ; Brice Watson,
a silent man, whose voice was heard but
seldom in discussion, had served four years,
eleven months and twenty-eight days, re
sponding to the first call for volunteers and
coming home only after Appomattox hid
passed into history.
Of all the men who loitered at the Roost,
only one, "Old Jimmy" Marrs, seemed to
have no definite place in the picture. Old
Jimmy was of the type of human derelict
which strands upon the beach of every small
town. He was an odd-looking chap with
scraggly white whiskers and faded blue eyes
that were permanently red and watery. His
face was that of one struggling through life
mentally agitated by doubt as to whether
he should plead for mercy or merelv apolo
gize. And his hands, chapped even in the
fairest weather and
discolored by the
shoemaker's wax
with which he
strove to staunch
the gaping cracks,
seemed always
upon the point of
bleeding.
Old Jimmy had
not carried a mus
ket in the great
struggle. He had
not even gone to
the front, but had
spent the years of
the conflict on an
Indiana farm. This
in itself was a
grave offense to
those who fre
quented the Roost.
He also was a
Democrat and an
atheist, the one a
misdemeanor and
the other a felony
in the jurisprud
ence of Grigsby
City. There was,
to be sure, aftr
the Populist upris-
Walked On Hit Lonely Way Home
ing of the early nineties, when the Populists
and Democrats effected a fusion which de
feated the Republican ticket, a disposition to
condone Old Jimmy's offense in the misde
meanor case. As was often pointed out, he
E(aj not only refused to "swallow" the ticket
norhinated by the fusion forces, but had ac
tually voted for the Republican candidates.
Those who were against clemency submitted,
however, the well known fact that he still was
a Free Trader and had never irrevocably ac
cepted the gold standard, and the sentiment
which sought to prevent either commutation
or parole prevailed.
The Old Boys showed no open hostility to
Old Jimmy. They only ignored him. But
their unspoken contempt was less kindly,
perhaps, than open hostility would have
been. Always a silent man, he ventured
toward the last so infrequently upon the
conversational sea that the few common
places which fell from his lips were often
swamped in utterance. He might have
found congenial company elsewhere. At
Jake Koehler's shoe-shop, where the few
men in Grigsby City who did not believe
the Bible congregated, he would have re
ceived a cordial welcome. The political In
surgents who met three times daily at
Marion TidwelPs grocery to lay bare the cor
ruption of the existing order would have ad
mitted him to full fellowship. But Old
Jimmy went to Koehler's only when his
shoes needed half soling and he bought no
groceries at Tidwell's, Lemuel Vickers re
ceiving such custom in that line as he had
to give.
And so, as the short years that mark the
time of those who have turned the brow of
the hill toward the twilight, came and went.
Old Jimmy continued to loiter at the Roost.
He often came before the morning sweep
ing and garnishing of Lemuel's emporium
had been completed. It was only rarely that
he missed an afternoon or evening meeting.
No one knew how he lived. . It was such an
insignificant incident in the. narrow life of
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