Captain Jinks, Hero

To F. C.

I

A Bombshell

“Bless my soul! I nearly forgot,” exclaimed Colonel Jinks, as he came back into the store. “Tomorrow is Sam’s birthday and I promised Ma to bring him home something for a present. Have you got anything for a boy six years old?”

“Let me see,” answered the young woman behind the counter, turning round and looking at an upper shelf. “Why, yes; there’s just the thing. It’s a box of lead soldiers. I’ve never seen anything like them before”—and she reached up and pulled down a large cardboard box. “Just see,” she added as she opened it. “The officers have swords that come off, and the guns come off the men’s shoulders; and look at the—”

“Never mind,” interrupted the colonel. “I’m in a hurry. That’ll do very well. How much is it?”

And two minutes later he went out of the store with the box in his hand and got into his buggy, and was soon driving through the streets of Homeville on his way to his farm.

No one had ever asked Colonel Jinks where he had obtained his title. In fact, he had never put the question to himself. It was an integral part of his person, and as little open to challenge as his hand or his foot. There are favored regions of the world’s surface where colonels, like poets, are born, not made, and good fortune had placed the colonel’s birthplace in one of them. For the benefit of those of my readers who may be prejudiced against war, and in justice to the colonel, it should be stated that the only military thing about him was his title. He was a mild-mannered man with a long thin black beard and a slight stoop, and his experience with firearms was confined to the occasional shooting of depredatory crows, squirrels, and rats with an ancient fowling-piece. Still there is magic in a name. And who knows but that the subtle influence of the title of colonel may have unconsciously guided the searching eyes of the young saleswoman among the Noah’s arks and farmyards to the box of lead soldiers?

The lad for whom the present was intended was a happy farmer’s boy, an only child, for whom the farm was the whole world and who looked upon the horses and cows as his fellows. His little red head was constantly to be seen bobbing about in the barnyard among the sheep and calves, or almost under the horses’ feet. The chickens and sparrows and swallows were his playmates, and they seemed to have no fear of him. The black colt with its thick legs and ruffled mane ran behind its gray dam to hide from everyone else, but it let Sam pat it without flinching. The first new-hatched chicken which had been given to him for his very own turned out to be a rooster, and when he found that it had to be taken from him and beheaded he was quite inconsolable and refused absolutely to feast upon his former friend. But with this tenderness of disposition Sam had inherited another still stronger trait, and this was a deep respect for authority, and such elements of revolt as revealed themselves in his grief over his rooster were soon stifled in his little heart. He bowed submissively before the powers that be. From the time when he first lisped he had called his parents “Colonel Jinks” and “Mrs. Jinks.” His mother had succeeded with great difficulty in substituting the term “Ma” for herself, but she could not make him address his father as anything but “Colonel,” and after a time his father grew to like it. No one knew how Sam had acquired the habit; it was simply the expression of an inherently respectful nature. He reverenced his father and loved his father’s profession of farmer. His earliest pleasure was to hold the reins and drive “like Colonel Jinks,” and his earliest ambition was to become a teamster, that part of the farm work having peculiar attractions for him.

In the afternoon on which we were introduced to the Colonel, Sam was watching on the veranda for his father’s return, and was quick to spy the parcel under his arm, and many were the wild guesses he made as to its contents. The Colonel left it carelessly upon the hall table, and Sam could easily have peeped into it, but he would as soon have thought of cutting off his hand.

“What’s in that box in the hall, Colonel Jinks?” he asked in an embarrassed voice at supper, as he fingered the edge of the tablecloth and looked blushingly at his plate.

“Oh, that?” replied his father with a wink—“that’s a bombshell.” And a bombshell indeed it proved to be for the Jinks family.

The box was put upon a table in the room in which little Sam slept with his parents, and he was told that he could have it in the morning. He was a long time going to sleep that night, trying to imagine the contents of the mysterious box. Not until he had quite made up his mind that it was a farmyard did he finally drop off. At the first break of day Sam was out of bed. With bare feet he walked on tiptoe across the cold bare floor and seized the precious box. He lifted the lid at one corner and put in his hand and felt what was there, and tried to guess what it could be. Perhaps it was a Noah’s Ark; but no, if those were people there were too many of them. He would have to give it up. He took off the cover and looked in. It was not a farmyard, at any rate, and the corners of his mouth became tremulous from disappointment. No, they were soldiers. But what did he want of soldiers? He had heard of such things, but they had never been anything in his life. He had never seen a real soldier nor heard of a toy-soldier before, and he did not quite know what they were for. He crept back to bed crestfallen, his present in his arms. Sitting up in bed he began to investigate the contents of the box. It was a complete infantry battalion, and beautiful soldiers they were. Their coats were red, their trousers blue, and they wore white helmets and carried muskets with bayonets fixed. Sam began to feel reconciled. He turned the box upside-down and emptied the soldiers upon the counterpane. Then he noticed that they were not all alike. There were some officers, who carried swords instead of rifles. He began to look for them and single them out, when his eye was caught by a magnificent white leaden plume issuing from the helmet of one of them. He picked up this soldier, and the sight of him filled him with delight. He was taller and broader than the rest, his air was more martial—there was something inspiring in the way in which he held his sword. His golden epaulets were a miracle of splendor, but it was the plume, the great white plume, that held the boy enthralled. A ray of light from the morning sun, reflected by the window of the stable, found its way through a chink in the blind and fell just upon this plume. The effect was electric. Sam was fascinated, and he continued to hold the lead soldier so that the dazzling light should fall on it, gazing upon it in an ecstasy.

Sam spent that entire day in the company of his new soldiers—nothing could drag him away from them. He made his father show him how they should march and form themselves and fight. He drew them up in hollow squares facing outward and in hollow squares facing inward, in column of fours and in line of battle, in double rank and single rank.

“What are the bayonets for, Colonel Jinks?”

“To stick into bad people, Sam.”

“And have the bad people bayonets, too?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Do they stick their bayonets into good people?”

“Oh, I suppose so. Do stop bothering me. If I’d known you’d ask so many questions, I’d never have got you the soldiers.”

His parents thought that a few days would exhaust the boy’s devotion to his new toys, but it was not so. He deserted the barnyard for the lead soldiers. They were placed on a chair by his bed at night, and he could not sleep unless his right hand grasped the white-plumed colonel. The smell of the fresh paint as it peeled off on his little fingers clung to his memory through life as the most delicious of odors. He would tease his father to play with the soldiers with him. He would divide the force in two, and one side would defend a fort of blocks and books while the other assaulted. In these games Sam always insisted in having the plumed colonel on his side. Once when Sam’s colonel had succeeded in capturing a particularly impregnable fortress on top of an unabridged dictionary his father remarked casually:

“He’s quite a hero, isn’t he, Sam?”

“A what?” said Sam.

“A hero.”

“What is a hero, Colonel Jinks?” And his father explained to him what a hero was, giving several examples from history and fiction. The word took the boy’s fancy at once. From that day forward the officer was colonel no longer, he was a “hero,” or rather, “the hero.” Sam now began to save his pennies for other soldiers, and to beg for more and more as successive birthdays and Christmases came round. He played at soldiers himself, too, coaxing the less warlike children of the neighborhood to join him. But his enthusiasm always left them behind, and they tired much sooner than he did of the sport. He persuaded his mother to make him a uniform something like that of the lead soldiers, and the stores of Homeville were ransacked for drums, swords, and belts and toy-guns. He would stand on guard for hours at the barnyard gate, saluting in the most solemn manner whoever passed, even if it was only a sparrow. The only interest in animals which survived his change of heart was that which he now took in horses as chargers. He would ride the farm-horses bareback to the trough, holding the halter in one hand and a tin sword in the other with the air of a field-marshal. When strangers tapped him on the cheek and asked him—as is the wont of strangers—“What are you going to be, my boy, when you grow up?” he answered no longer, as he used to do, “A driver, sir,” but now invariably, “A hero.”

It so happened some two or three years after Sam’s mind had begun to follow the paths of warfare that his father and mother took him one day to an anniversary celebration of the Methodist Church at Homeville, and a special parade of the newly organized “John Wesley Boys’ Brigade” of the church was one of the features of the occasion. If Mrs. Jinks had anticipated this, she would doubtless have left Sam at home, for she knew that he was already quite sufficiently inclined toward things military; but even she could not help enjoying the boy’s unmeasured delight at this, his first experience of militarism in the flesh. The parade was indeed a pretty sight. There were perhaps fifty boys in line, ranging from six to eighteen years of age. Their gray uniforms were quite new and the gilt letters “J.W.B.B.” on their caps shone brightly. They marched along with their miniature muskets and fixed bayonets, their chubby, kissable faces all a-smile, as they sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” with words adapted by their pastor:

“Onward, Christian soldiers,
’Gainst the heathen crew!
In the name of Jesus
Let us run them through.”

By a curious coincidence their captain had a white feather in his cap, suggesting at a considerable distance the plume of the leaden “hero.” Sam was overcome with joy. He pulled the “hero” from his pocket (he always carried it about with him) and compared the two warriors. The “hero” was still unique, incomparable, but Sam realized that he was an ideal which might be lived up to, not an impossible dream, not the denizen of an inaccessible heaven. From that day he bent his little energies to the task of removing his family to Homeville.

It is not so much strength as perseverance which moves the world. Colonel Jinks had laid up a competence and had always intended to retire, when he could afford it, to the market town. Among other things, the school facilities would be much better in town than in the country. Mrs. Jinks in a moment of folly took the side of the boy, and, whatever may have been the controlling and predominating cause, the fact is that, when Sam had attained the age of twelve, the Colonel sold the farm and bought one of the best houses in Homeville. Sam at once became a member of the John Wesley Brigade and showed an aptitude for soldiering truly amazing. Before he was fourteen he was captain, and wore, himself, the coveted white feather, and his military duties became the absorbing interest of his life. He thought and spoke of nothing else, and he was universally known in the town as “Captain Jinks,” which was often abbreviated to “Cap.” No one ever passed boyhood and youth in such congenial surroundings and with such complete satisfaction as “Cap” Jinks of the John Wesley Boys’ Brigade.

II

East Point

But our relation to our environments will change, however much pleased we may be with them, and “Cap” Jinks found himself gradually growing too old for his brigade. The younger boys and their parents began to complain that he was unreasonably standing in the way of their promotion, and a fiery mustache gave signs to the world that he was now something more than a boy. Still he could not bring himself to relinquish the uniform and the white plume. A life without military trimmings was not to be thought of, and there was no militia at Homeville. Consequently he remained in the Boys’ Brigade as long as he could. When at last he saw that he must resign—he was now two-and-twenty—he felt that there was only one course open to him, and that was to join the army; and he broached this plan to his parents. His mother did not like the idea of giving up her only son to such a profession, but Colonel Jinks took kindly to the suggestion. It would bring a little real militarism into the family and give a kind of ex post facto justification to his ancient title. “Sam, my boy,” said he, “you’re a chip of the old block. You’ll keep up the family tradition and be a colonel like me. I will write to your Uncle George about it tomorrow. He’ll get you an appointment to East Point without any trouble. Sam, I’m proud of you.”

Uncle George Jinks, the only brother of the Colonel, was a member of Congress from a distant district, who had a good deal of influence with the Administration. The Colonel wrote to him asking for the cadetship and rehearsing at length the young captain’s unusual qualifications and his military enthusiasm. A week later he received the answer. His brother informed him that the request could not have come at a more opportune moment, as he had a vacancy to fill and had been on the point of calling a public examination of young men in his district for the purpose of selecting a candidate; but in view of the evident fitness of his nephew, he would alter his plans and offer him the place without further ceremony. He wished only that Sam would do credit to the name of Jinks.

It was on a beautiful day in June that “Cap” Jinks bade farewell to Homeville. The family came out in front of the house, keeping back their tears as best they could at this the first parting; but Sam, though he loved them well, had no room in his heart for regret. There was a vision of glory beckoning him on which obliterated all other feelings. The Boys’ Brigade was drawn up at the side of the road and presented arms as he drove by, and he saw in this the promise of greater things. As he sat on the back seat of the wagon by himself behind the driver, he took from his pocket the old original “hero,” the lead officer of his boyhood, and gazed at it smiling. “Now I am to be a real hero,” he thought, “and all the world will repeat the name of Sam Jinks and read about his exploits.” He put the toy carefully back in his breast pocket. It had become the talisman of his life and the symbol of his ambitions.