Harper's Round Table, April 21, 1896

THE BATTLE OF BRICK CHURCH.

BY L. A. TEREBEL.

What the Lincoln Cadets called their "armory" was a large low hall in the basement of the Brick Church. Here they drilled three times a week during the winter and spring; and here they kept their brightly polished guns in racks ranged along the wall; and here their drums and bugles were stacked in a pyramid in one corner; and old Tom, the janitor, was their "armorer." On the walls, in polished oak frames, hung photographs of groups of officers that had commanded the cadets in years past, and one picture of the entire battalion of sixty boys drawn up in parade formation in the park; and over the door, in a gold frame, was a fine steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln that had been presented to the corps by Mr. Dunworthy, the president of the Board of Trustees of the Brick Church, and the chief patron of the cadets. Opposite the door, at the other end of the room, was a closet with glass doors, in which the battalion's colors and the stars and stripes and the markers' flags were kept securely locked at all times when not in use.

The first sergeants had not yet called upon their men to fall in, and the cadets were standing about the hall in groups, pulling on their white gloves and arranging their belts, for they intended to make a brave show that night because Mr. Dunworthy was coming in later to review the battalion. It was early, however, and Mr. Dunworthy need not be expected until after the meeting of the Trustees, which was being held in the vestry-room upstairs.

"Perhaps he won't come, anyway," said Captain Tom Taylor, who commanded Company A.

"Why not?" asked Adjutant Dale, as he struggled with his gold aigulets.

"His men have been on strike for pretty near a week now, and Mr. Dunworthy has been obliged to stay at the mills until all hours," continued Taylor.

"And I saw in the papers to-day the men were beginning to get ugly," put in a diminutive Lieutenant in short trousers. "The police had to be called to clear the yard in front of the mills."

"I wish those Poles would stay in Poland," remarked the Adjutant; but just then there was a blast from the bugle, and a great stamping of feet and scattering of groups put an end to further discussion of the strike at Roland and Dunworthy's mills.

For those who are not so well informed as the cadets, however, it may be well to state that the trouble at the iron-mills was wholly restricted to the Polish element among the workmen. Most of these fellows were hard characters, employed at the furnaces and in the puddling shops. In all, they numbered about one hundred and fifty. Few of them could speak English, all were ignorant, and a majority had seen the inside of the town jail. But as they were the only class of men that the mill-owners could obtain to do that class of work, they had to be employed. The difficulty which had resulted in the present strike was of long standing. The men had made certain demands, and these demands, after a brief delay, had been granted. And the Poles, thinking then that any request of theirs should be acceded to, immediately asked for further benefits, and when these were refused they left their work. Some of the worst threw stones, and one of the stones hit the superintendent. Three men were arrested and locked up in the jail. This seemed to make the Poles very angry, and they became so demonstrative that, as the Lieutenant had said, the police had to be called in to drive them out of the yard in front of Mr. Dunworthy's office.

All these occurrences made it necessary for Mr. Dunworthy to remain late at the mills, and consequently he was forced to send a note to the church saying that he would be unable to be present at the trustees' meeting that evening. Old Tom, the janitor, was sent down stairs to inform the cadets. Old Tom had served in the cavalry during the war, and he wore a decoration on his breast for gallantry at Vicksburg. So when he entered the drill-room he stood very erect, and marched up to Major Jack Downing, a tall, good-looking young man, and saluted in proper military style, then waited for permission to speak. When he announced that Mr. Dunworthy was not coming, there was an audible hum of disappointment in the ranks.

"Never mind," said Major Downing, quickly; "we will go on with the parade just as if he were here."

Old Tom saluted and withdrew. He went up stairs and stood on the front steps of the church, looking up at the clear starlit April sky. Presently, however, his reveries were interrupted by the sound of many feet and a sort of distant humming noise, and looking down the avenue, he saw a crowd of men approaching. He thought at first it was a body of street-cleaners or some other gang of night-workmen; but as they came nearer he recognized them as Poles, iron-workers from the mills. There must have been a hundred or more, and half of them carried bludgeons. They did not pass by the church, as old Tom had thought they would, but, seeing him standing there, they paused, and one bearded fellow, who spoke English fairly well, asked, "Is this the Brick Church?"

"Yes," answered the janitor, curtly.

"Is Dunworthy inside?"

"Mr. Dunworthy is not here to-night," continued old Tom.

The crowd grumbled.

"Come off!" shouted another. "We know he's here; he's at a meeting.

"He is not," replied the janitor: and seeing that the men were gradually crowding in from the sidewalk through the iron gates, old Tom went down to them, and said:

"See here, you fellows, I tell you Mr. Dunworthy is not here, and you have got to get out. You are disturbing the meeting."

"Ah-h-h-h!" shouted the crowd, like an angry sea; and a piece of sod, torn up from the grass-plot in front of the church, knocked off the janitor's hat. This angered the old cavalryman, and he gave the men nearest to him a vigorous shove, and tried to close the gates. He was unwise in this, for the Poles seized him, and soon there was a general fight, in which old Tom was the target for every Polander's fist and foot.

Of course it is not to be expected that all this could have happened without attracting the attention of the gentlemen in the vestry room and of the boys in the armory. Several of the officers had run to the top of the stairs as soon as they heard the approach of the Poles, and when they reported to the Major, the latter at once ordered "Fix bayonets!" and drew his men up in column of twos facing the staircase. He had barely completed this formation, during which two of the trustees had urged the boys not to show themselves upstairs, when the Adjutant shouted from the doorway,

"Come on, fellows; they're killing old Tom!"

There was a swaying in the ranks, as if the impulse of all had been to rush; but Jack Downing shouted:

"Steady! Company A, forward, double time, march!"

Captain Taylor repeated the order sharply, and leaped in the van of his men, reaching the top of the staircase just in time to see half a dozen stones and bricks fly through the church doors.

He could hear Jack Downing below shouting orders to the other two companies. Taylor called to his men to form fours, and marched them straight down the steps toward the gateway. The other cadets followed close behind up the narrow staircase, and the Major sent one company to the left of Taylor's rear, and one to the right, so as to attack the strikers in three parallel columns.

The appearance of uniforms and bayonets from the church was a big surprise to the Polanders. They were so startled that they fell back to the middle of the street, leaving poor old Tom almost senseless on the sidewalk. Two non-commissioned officers of C Company helped him to his feet, and led him back into the vestry-room, where a corpulent old gentleman was telephoning madly for the police.

But in the mean time there were lively times in the street. The Poles, partly recovered from their surprise, snarled like animals, and spoke hard words in their own hard language, and many of them threw sticks and stones at the cadets. Jack Downing got his forces out into the street, where there was room to manoeuvre, and formed a sort of wedge of bayonets with which he charged straight into the centre of the crowd. The iron-workers fell back like sheep, and as soon as he had the mob divided the young strategist wheeled one company against one section, and another company against the other section, and kept Company A in front of the church as a sort of reserve.

The Poles only threw two volleys of stones, and were then apparently so surprised at the advance of the cadets that they did not notice these were merely boys and only half their number. But they did notice that their opponents were disciplined, and that they carried shining bayonets pointing straight out in front of them; and when they saw a phalanx of these coming down the street they turned about and ran.

The Lincoln Cadets did not pursue. They halted on the street corners and formed skirmish-lines. But even this was unnecessary, for as they did so they heard the gongs of the patrol wagons, and soon a score of policemen were in the neighborhood of the church--and not a Pole in sight!

The young Major drew his three companies up into battalion formation on the sidewalk then, and one of the trustees stood on the steps of the church and made what the Adjutant afterward characterized as a "regular spread-eagle, star-spangled-banner, Fourth-of-July speech." He ended by inviting the battalion to a near-by restaurant, where he ordered served for them just exactly the kind of an evening feast they would have ordered if they had had the doing of it themselves. Old Tom (with a black eye) sat at the head of the table, and after the cakes and the ice-cream had been slaughtered even worse than the Poles, he told stories of his own fighting days, and as he closed he said he had seen many battles, but none he cared more to remember than the "Battle of Brick Church."

A PLUCKY YOUNG TENDERFOOT.

BY PAUL HULL.

Harry Brown had the cowboy fever, and this is the way that the disease originated. During the early spring Harry's uncle had been a guest with the Brown family for several weeks, during which time the boy had been regaled with stories of wild Western life and adventure until his dreams suggested a panorama of prairie-land, cowboys, a whole menagerie of savage animals, and an endless procession of gayly bedecked and hideously painted Indians galloping furiously across the plains.

Uncle Joel had taken a great fancy to his sister's child, and having a boy of his own about the same age, he proposed to the somewhat startled parents to carry the lad away with him for the summer, and give him an outing on his ranch, where he would have the companionship of his sixteen-year-old cousin Frank, whom he had placed at school in Chicago for the winter, and for whom he intended to call when on his way back to Wyoming.

After considerable pleading and argument, Harry's mother at length allowed herself to be almost persuaded that if he went he would not be converted into a long-haired, swaggering, pistol-shooting citizen, and that hostile bands of redskins were not in the habit of lying in ambush around the ranch for the purpose of scalping its inmates several times a day; so at last she hesitatingly added her consent to that of her husband's.