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- 11640
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- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
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- 11577
- text
- animation--‘Compared with this bit of old gold,’ tapping it with his
hand, ‘what is the insignia of the Knights of the Golden Fleece or the
Knights of the Spanish Order of the Holy Ghost? Gimcracks, sir! and the
last, in fact as in name, but a ghostly sort of vanity.’
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TO MAJOR JOHN GENTIAN, DEAN OF THE BURGUNDY CLUB
With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous
double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much
at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the
Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the
genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is,
even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it
or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones
equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their
preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up
framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy
cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou
polishest up and sportest on occasion; and--be it never omitted--thy
high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent
communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit
enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming
aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee--after him--belong all the
titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee!
Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote
thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may
serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted
one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has
undesignedly become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest
from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the
Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous
syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy
country.
Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou
declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the
spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner--whom, for
what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far
from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee
joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy
patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy
countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but
yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a
partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that
beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even
something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps,
art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners
abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of
latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind,
not excluding Americans, are sinners--miserable sinners, as even no few
Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.
However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in
significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein
thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though
involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one
national holiday.
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