The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862 - Various 7 стр.

It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs, the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms, woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permission through the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the true beauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombre leaves or gray lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, in lilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!

Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at her freed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or to hope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and work and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows vague and incomplete, like an unguessed riddle. I have no key to solve it with,no right to solve it. Let me lay the pen abruptly down.

My story is coarse, unended, a mere groping hint? It has no conduit of Gods justice running through it, awarding good and ill? It lacks determined concord, and a certain yea and nay? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor faithful old Knowles will tell you that it is a dark day: that now, as eighteen hundred years ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks, even now, an unrendered justice. Does he utter all the problem of To-Day? I think, not all: yet let it be. Other hands are strong to show you how, in the very instant peril of this hour, is lifted clearer into view the eternal, hopeful prophecy; may tell you that the slumbering heaven and the unquiet earth are instinct with it; that the unanswered prayer of your own life should teach it to you; that in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of America we find the quiet surety that the To-Morrow of the world is near at hand.

For me, I have no prophetic insight, as I said before: the homely things of every day wear their old faces. This moment, the evening air thrills with a purple of which no painter has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; not a face passes me in the street on which some human voice has not the charm to call out love or power: the Helper yet waits amongst us; surely, this Old Year you despise holds beauty, work, content yet unmastered. Child-souls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy: we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their angels only do always behold the face of my Father in the New Year.

MOUNTAIN PICTURES

I.

FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET

THE USE OF THE RIFLE

In no branch of manufacture has human ingenuity been taxed more vigorously, for the attainment of the highest possible point of perfection, than in that of rifled guns for the use of the troops, on whose capacity for the destruction of their opponents the throne of the tyrant or the liberty of the people may be dependent. Nations, companies, and individuals have expended years of time and millions of money in testing every conceivable contrivance which offered a hope of improvement in precision, force, facility of loading or firing, or any of the minute details which contribute to render the weapon more serviceable.

And yet, at this day, not only are the troops of different nations armed with rifles differing in size, weight, calibre, and degree of twist, requiring different instruction in their use, and shooting projectiles of widely different pattern, but scarcely any two gun-makers will be found to agree in all the details requisite to the construction of the most serviceable weapon. The reason for this diversity lies in the fact, that perfection in any one of its requirements can be attained only by the sacrifice of some portion at least of its other elements, and the point at which the balance should be fixed is a sliding scale covering as wide a range as that of the mental and physical differences of the men on whom the decision rests.

The objects to be attained are, precision and force at long ranges, facility of loading and firing, and such simplicity and strength in the general construction as to allow the least possible chance of derangement or mistake in the management, at the moment when such error might cost the owner his life. And in addition to these points it is required that the weight shall not exceed the amount which a man of the average strength needed for a soldier can manipulate and carry on the march without over-fatigue.

It will be seen that we have awarded the first place on the list of requisites to precision and force at long ranges; and we presume it is unnecessary to enter into any explanation of the obvious primary necessity for the attainment of those qualities. We find, however, that our progress towards perfection in this direction cannot proceed beyond a certain point, except at the cost of other qualities, which cannot be sacrificed with impunity.

Regarding it as a settled point that any recoil of the gun is just so much taken from the initial velocity of the ball, (and if any one doubts it, let him try the experiment of throwing a stone, and stepping backwards at the moment of propulsion,) it is obvious, that, for the attainment of the longest range, such a preponderance of weight in the gun over that of the projectile is necessary as to secure the least possible recoil, and this point seems to have been fixed by our best gun-makers at the ratio of five hundred to one, which would require a gun weighing nearly sixteen pounds to carry a half-ounce ball or shot. We use the word ball from habit, meaning, merely, the projectile, which will probably never again resume its spherical shape in actual service. We conceive the perfection of precision and range in rifle-practice to have been attained in the American target-ride, carrying a slug or cone of one ounce weight,the gun itself weighing not less than thirty pounds,and provided with a telescope-sight, and Clarks patent muzzle. At three-quarters of a mile this weapon may be said to be entirely trustworthy for an object of the size of a man, and to have force enough at that distance to disable three men. But it is obvious that such weight and such equipments as are required for it must render it utterly useless for ordinary field-service. It becomes, in fact, a species of light artillery, and as such we are firm in the conviction that it is destined to establish for itself a reputation which will render it henceforth a necessity in the composition of an army.

For troops of the line the weight of the gun should not exceed ten pounds. Now, if we reduce the rifle to that weight, and preserve the ratio of 1-500 as that of the ball, we reduce its range; for the momentum being, as every school-boy knows, in proportion to weight as well as velocity, a projectile which may be perfectly sure for two or three hundred yards flies wide of the mark at six hundred, and can hardly be found at a thousand. Here begins the operation of the sliding scale, in the necessity of sacrificing some degree of precision, in order to procure a weapon fulfilling other indispensable requisites for the soldiers use. In the English and our own service, the Enfield and Springfield rifled muskets have been fixed upon as presenting the nearest attainable approach to perfection in all the desirable elements of a military rifle.

It is out of the question to look for any such nice work with these tools as our best amateur riflemen are constantly in the habit of performing with the heavy thick-barrelled American rifle. The short Enfield is found to shoot better than the long, owing to the increased spring of the long, thin barrel of the latter; and the English themselves are becoming aware that they have carried the point of reducing the weight too far, and their best gun-makers are now insisting upon the fact which General Jacobs told them years ago,that a heavy conical ball cannot be used effectively from a long, thin barrel like that of the Enfield rifle, which is liable to great vibration.

The Enfield rifle, however, is a long step in advance of the old smooth-bored musket, concerning which a veteran British officer has declared his opinion that a man might sit at his ease in an armchair all day long while another at two hundred yards distance was blazing away at him with a brown Bess, on the sole condition that he should, on his honor, aim exactly at him at every shot. Per contra to this, may be stated the fact, mentioned by Lord Raglan in his despatches, that at Balaklava a Russian battery of two guns was silenced by the skill in rifle-shooting of a single officer, (Lieutenant Godfrey,) who, approaching under cover of a ravine within six hundred yards, and having his men hand him their Enfield rifles in turn, actually picked off the artillerymen, one after another, till there were not enough left to serve the guns, and this in spite of the storm of shot and shell which they poured around him in reply, he being under no necessity of exposing a larger target than his head and shoulders for them to aim at.

A trustworthy breech-loading rifle has long been a desideratum with military men; but nothing has yet been produced which offers sufficient advantages, or seems sufficiently free from objections, to authorize its introduction as anything more than an experiment. In fact, the special object of a breech-loading gunthat of enabling its owner to deliver his fire with greater rapidityis found in actual service to be an objection: the soldier being tempted, in the excitement of battle, to load and fire as rapidly as possible, and thus to waste the greater portion of his shots, whereas the primary object at such a time is to induce the deliberation which alone can insure efficiency. It must be obvious to any one who reflects upon the matter, that in reality the whole question of efficiency in battle must hinge upon the one point of precision of fire. It is well known that in actual service not more than one shot in six hundred takes effect, and, except for the moral effect of the roar of the musketry and the whistling of the balls, the remaining five hundred and ninety-nine might better have been kept in the cartridge-boxes. Upon raw troops, for the most part, this moral effect is sufficient to decide the question, with the addition of a comparatively small number of killed and wounded. But veteran troops are not disturbed by it. They know that a ball which misses by a quarter of an inch is as harmless as if it had never been shot, and they very soon learn to disregard the whistling. When they encounter such a fire, however, as the English met at Bunkers Hill and at New Orleans,when the shots which miss are the exceptions, and those which hit, the rule, no amount of discipline or courage can avail. Disciplined soldiers are no more willing to be shot than raw levies; but having learned by experience that the danger in an ordinary action is very trifling in comparison with its appearance to the imagination of a recruit, they face it with a determination which to him is inconceivable. Make the apparent danger real, as in the cases we have cited, and veterans become as powerless as the merest tyros. With the stimulus of the present demand, it is probable that Yankee ingenuity will erelong produce some kind of rifle so far superior to anything yet known as to supersede all others; and indeed we have little doubt that such would already have been the case, but for the fact that comparatively few of our most ingenious mechanics are also expert riflemen, and none but a first-rate shot can thoroughly appreciate all the requirements of the weapon.

Since the Crimean War, the Governments of Europe seem to have become awakened to the fact, that, however important and desirable it may be to secure the best possible implements for the soldiers use, it is infinitely more so that he should know how to use them. In the hands of a marksman the rifle is an efficient weapon at half a miles distance; but to expect on that account that it will do any more execution in the hands of one who is not familiar with it than a smooth-bored musket is as idle as it would be to hope that a person unacquainted with the violin could give us better music from a Cremona than he could from a corn-stalk fiddle.

For years past the European powers have been training men to the use of the rifle. Hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen are at this moment as familiar with the practical application of its powers as if their subsistence had been dependent upon its use. Government and people have perceived that the improvements in small-arms have wrought such a revolution in the art of war as to revive the necessity which existed in the days of archery, of making every man a marksman, and in England the old archery sports of prize-shooting and unremitting private practice have been renewed, with the substitution of the rifle for the bow; and besides the regular standing army, England is now guarded by two hundred thousand volunteers, every one of whom is a good rifleman, and who have all been subjected to such an amount of drilling as would enable them speedily to accomplish themselves in the art of united action. The inciting cause of this great national movement was the apprehension of a French invasion. Whether there was any ground for such apprehension, or whether the preparations which were made in consequence have served to avert the danger, are questions which are irrelevant to our present object, which lies nearer home.

It needs no argument at this moment to prove the possibility that we may become engaged in a foreign war, before we have done with the one we have on our hands at home; but without troubling ourselves with apprehensions of possible contingencies, have we not sufficient motive in the condition of affairs at home to render it an imperative duty to strengthen ourselves by every available means?

We have been so long unused to anything like warlike preparations that we find it difficult to arouse ourselves to a realization of the fact that every able-bodied man is liable to be called upon to render active service for his country; and when a war is raging within our borders, of whose termination the only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that it can be reached only through fearful suffering and destruction of life and property, is it not incumbent on every man to prepare himself by whatever means are within his reach to render his services efficient? That the affirmative would be the popular answer is sufficiently proved by a recurrence to the zeal with which we organized drill-clubs and practised military tactics in the early stages of the war. It was not long before the zeal died away. It soon proved a bore to people who could not help perceiving, that, however perfect they might become in the manual exercise, their efficiency as soldiers could hardly amount to much, when most of them had never fired a gun in their lives. And so the drill-room was quietly abandoned,the conduct of the war was left to the Government and the army, while we looked on as mere spectators,and the future was left to take care of itself.