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 But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired
for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun on the
top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat down in her
rocking-chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was high above
all the other buildings, and she could look across some low roofs
opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse
Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the
city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country girl,
and although she had lived for ten years in New York, she had never
grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt the languor of
the new season as well as the heaviness of physical exhaustion. She
was almost too tired to go to bed.
She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun
after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful
days in the country, when she taught school in the Massachusetts
village where she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights
that she had to bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of
the sweet green fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of
the long journey forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s
work, and she wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her
fare. Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more
agreeable things, or she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable
things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked at the
garden on top of the cornice.
A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a
cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular
and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw
that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment
was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece
of paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed
hand:

porter
pleas excuse the libberty And
drink it
 The seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She
remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had
seen him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent
person; but—he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a-
tremble. Then she reasoned with herself. The man was drunk, that
was all. He probably would not annoy her further. And if he did, she
had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr.
Mulvaney, who was a highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-
shop, would protect her. So, being a poor woman who had already had
occasion to excuse—and refuse—two or three “libberties” of like sort,
she made up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and
she did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see
in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint
bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.
The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she
hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had
come around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she
smiled at the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable
heart, “I’ve no doubt he’s awfully ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was
never tipsy before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in
here to be frightened.”
Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter
pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the
pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:

porter
good for the helth
it makes meet

This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang of
indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she
would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the
seven flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the
morning. Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it
had been drawn back the night before.
 The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to
complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble—and the janitor
might think—and—and—well, if the wretch did it again she would
speak to him herself, and that would settle it.
And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little
seamstress sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And
she had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair
which she had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter
pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.
This time the legend read:

Perhaps you are afrade i will

adress you
i am not that kind

The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But
she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her
window and addressed the twilight heaven.
“Mr.—Mr.—sir—I—will you please put your head out of the window
so that I can speak to you?”
The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress
drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another
attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.

when i Say a thing i

mene it
i have Sed i would not
Adress you and i
Will not

What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window
and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the
creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind. He
certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She
remembered the last time—and the first—that she had drunk porter. It
was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the
diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given
her back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing,
she lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip—two little
reminiscent sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She
blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down,
closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.
And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple
appeal:

Dont be afrade of it
drink it all

the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle,
and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium.
She poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the
pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her
hands.
“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty
and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as—as pusley!”
And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give
me a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might
have spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much
obliged to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with
him.
“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at
her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and
saw the faithful little pewter pot travelling slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too
much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:

porter is good for Flours

but better for Fokes
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her
cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and
presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.
On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a
bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and
wrote in a tremulous hand—she could write a very neat hand—

Thanks.

This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-
foot rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still,
enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have
permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the
unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere
heavy with the Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece
of paper lay under her eyes.

fine groing weather

Smith

it said.
Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of
conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that could
have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of
communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her
country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers in this
waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like herself, a
country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the upturned brown
mould of the country fields. She took up the paper, and wrote under
the first message:

Fine
 But that seemed curt; for she added: “for” what? She did not know.
At last in desperation she put down potatos. The piece of paper was
withdrawn and came back with an addition:

Too mist for potatos.

And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact
that m-i-s-t represented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,” she
laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was
seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a
half-sheet of notepaper, and wrote:

I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am

afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?

The answer came:

have ben most Every thing

farmed a Spel in Maine
Smith

As she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.
“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciled
Good Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few
minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the
cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said only good nite, and
after a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it
shelter.

* * * * *
After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot
appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr.
Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly
as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their
histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he
seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the sea,
he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine
woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and he
was prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go
home to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this
dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence, in
which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and
philosophical.
A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:

i was one trip to van demens

land

To which the seamstress replied:

It must have been very interesting.

But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:

it wornt

Further he vouchsafed:

i seen a Chinese cook in

hong kong could cook flap jacks
like your Mother
a mishnery that sells Rum
is the menest of Gods crechers
a bulfite is not what it is
cract up to Be
the dagos are wussen the
brutes
 i am 6 1¾
but my Father was 6 foot 4

The seamstress had taught school one Winter, and she could not
refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One
evening, in answer to this communication:

i killd a Bare in Maine 600

lbs waight

she wrote:

Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?

but she gave up the attempt when he responded:

a bare is a mene animle any

way you spel him

The Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening
drink and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each
day for the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep
each night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during
her stay in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little
“meet” for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an
hour of pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook
and eat her little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s
cheeks began to blossom with the June roses.
And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken,
though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations
and exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent
and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as
he set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was
her correspondent. They never met on the stairs, for their hours of
coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each
other in the street—but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a
foot over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-
looking man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick
brown beard. Most people would have called him plain.
Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer
evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded
money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to be
frightened, Mr. Smith appeared—whence, she knew not—scattered the
gang like chaff, and, collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them,
with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in
ineffable agony. When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and
thanked him warmly, looking very pretty now, with the color in her
cheeks. But Mr. Smith answered no word. He stared over her head,
grew red in the face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his
eyes fell on a rotund Teuton, passing by.
“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.
The German stood aghast.
“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him
in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.
And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted
silently from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by
the friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the
green of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went
on.
Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never
came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later,
asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a
sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam
for potting.
He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “maid”
himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish, that was somewhat
fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At first,
she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the wall.
 But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool
September evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:

Respected and Honored Madam:

Having long and vainly sought an opportunity to convey to you
the expression of my sentiments I now avail myself of the privilege
of epistolary communication to acquaint you with the fact that the
Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are those which
should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather than to simple
Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to approach you
with a Proposal, the acceptance of which will fill me with ecstatic
Gratitude, and enable me to extend to you those Protecting Cares,
which the Matrimonial Bond makes at once the Duty and the
Privilege of him, who would, at no distant date, lead to the
Hymeneal Altar one whose charms and virtues should suffice to
kindle its Flames, without extraneous Aid
I remain, Dear Madam,
Your Humble Servant and
Ardent Adorer, I. Smith

The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she
was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr.
Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of
his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something
else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.
But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown
nervous, for presently another communication came along the line
where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:

If not understood will you

mary me

The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:

 If I say Yes, will you speak to me?

Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window,
and their faces met.
 HAROLD FREDERIC
1856–1898

Harold Frederic was bred and schooled, at college and at journalism, in Central
New York. His fictions were almost all written in London during the later years of
his correspondence with the “New York Times.” The most popular of these, The
Damnation of Theron Ware, shows him stronger in the novel. His own fondness for
his short stories is due in part, doubtless, to their being closer to his native soil; but
the one reprinted below shows also a distinct appreciation of the form.
 THE EVE OF THE FOURTH
[From “In the Sixties,” copyright, 1893, 1894, 1897, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons, authorized publishers of Harold
Frederic’s works; reprinted here by special arrangement with
them]

IT was well on toward evening before this Third of July all at once
made itself gloriously different from other days in my mind.
There was a very long afternoon, I remember, hot and overcast,
with continual threats of rain, which never came to anything. The
other boys were too excited about the morrow to care for present
play. They sat instead along the edge of the broad platform-stoop in
front of Delos Ingersoll’s grocery-store, their brown feet swinging at
varying heights above the sidewalk, and bragged about the manner
in which they contemplated celebrating the anniversary of their
Independence. Most of the elder lads were very independent indeed;
they were already secure in the parental permission to stay up all
night, so that the Fourth might be ushered in with its full quota of
ceremonial. The smaller urchins pretended that they also had this
permission, or were sure of getting it. Little Denny Cregan attracted
admiring attention by vowing that he should remain out, even if his
father chased him with a policeman all around the ward, and he had
to go and live in a cave in the gulf until he was grown up.
My inferiority to these companions of mine depressed me. They
were allowed to go without shoes and stockings; they wore loose
and comfortable old clothes, and were under no responsibility to
keep them dry or clean or whole; they had their pockets literally
bulging now with all sorts of portentous engines of noise and racket
—huge brown “double-enders,” bound with waxed cord; long, slim,
vicious-looking “nigger-chasers;” big “Union torpedoes,” covered with
clay, which made a report like a horse-pistol, and were invaluable for
frightening farmers’ horses; and so on through an extended
catalogue of recondite and sinister explosives upon which I looked
with awe, as their owners from time to time exhibited them with the
proud simplicity of those accustomed to greatness. Several of these
boys also possessed toy cannons, which would be brought forth at
twilight. They spoke firmly of ramming them to the muzzle with grass,
to produce a greater noise—even if it burst them and killed
everybody.
By comparison, my lot was one of abasement. I was a solitary
child, and a victim to conventions. A blue necktie was daily pinned
under my Byron collar, and there were gilt buttons on my zouave
jacket. When we were away in the pasture playground near the gulf,
and I ventured to take off my foot-gear, every dry old thistle-point in
the whole territory seemed to arrange itself to be stepped upon by
my whitened and tender soles. I could not swim; so, while my lithe,
bold comrades dived out of sight under the deep water, and darted
about chasing one another far beyond their depth, I paddled ignobly
around the “baby-hole” close to the bank, in the warm and muddy
shallows.
Especially apparent was my state of humiliation on this July
afternoon. I had no “double-enders,” nor might hope for any. The
mere thought of a private cannon seemed monstrous and unnatural
to me. By some unknown process of reasoning my mother had years
before reached the theory that a good boy ought to have two ten-
cent packs of small fire-crackers on the Fourth of July. Four or five
succeeding anniversaries had hardened this theory into an orthodox
tenet of faith, with all its observances rigidly fixed. The fire-crackers
were bought for me overnight, and placed on the hall table. Beside
them lay a long rod of punk. When I hastened down and out in the
morning, with these ceremonial implements in my hands, the hired
girl would give me, in an old kettle, some embers from the wood-fire
in the summer kitchen. Thus furnished, I went into the front yard, and
in solemn solitude fired off these crackers one by one. Those which,
by reason of having lost their tails, were only fit for “fizzes,” I saved
till after breakfast. With the exhaustion of these, I fell reluctantly back
upon the public for entertainment. I could see the soldiers, hear the
band and the oration, and in the evening, if it didn’t rain, enjoy the
fireworks; but my own contribution to the patriotic noise was always
over before the breakfast dishes had been washed.
My mother scorned the little paper torpedoes as flippant and
wasteful things. You merely threw one of them, and it went off, she
said, and there you were. I don’t know that I ever grasped this
objection in its entirety, but it impressed my whole childhood with its
unanswerableness. Years and years afterward, when my own
children asked for torpedoes, I found myself unconsciously advising
against them on quite the maternal lines. Nor was it easy to budge
the good lady from her position on the great two-packs issue. I seem
to recall having successfully undermined it once or twice, but two
was the rule. When I called her attention to the fact that our
neighbor, Tom Hemingway, thought nothing of exploding a whole
pack at a time inside their wash-boiler, she was not dazzled, but only
replied: “Wilful waste makes woful want.”
Of course the idea of the Hemingways ever knowing what want
meant was absurd. They lived a dozen doors or so from us, in a big
white house with stately white columns rising from veranda to gable
across the whole front, and a large garden, flowers and shrubs in
front, fruit-trees and vegetables behind. Squire Hemingway was the
most important man in our part of the town. I know now that he was
never anything more than United States Commissioner of Deeds, but
in those days, when he walked down the street with his gold-headed
cane, his blanket-shawl folded over his arm, and his severe,
dignified, close-shaven face held well up in the air, I seemed to
behold a companion of Presidents.
This great man had two sons. The elder of them, De Witt
Hemingway, was a man grown, and was at the front. I had seen him
march away, over a year before, with a bright drawn sword, at the
side of his company. The other son, Tom, was my senior by only a
twelvemonth. He was by nature proud, but often consented to
consort with me when the selection of other available associates was
at low ebb.
 It was to this Tom that I listened with most envious eagerness, in
front of the grocery-store, on the afternoon of which I speak. He did
not sit on the stoop with the others—no one expected quite that
degree of condescension—but leaned nonchalantly against a post,
whittling out a new ramrod for his cannon. He said that this year he
was not going to have any ordinary fire-crackers at all; they, he
added with a meaning glance at me, were only fit for girls. He might
do a little in “double-enders,” but his real point would be in
“ringers”—an incredible giant variety of cracker, Turkey-red like the
other, but in size almost a rolling-pin. Some of these he would fire off
singly, between volleys from his cannon. But a good many he
intended to explode, in bunches say of six, inside the tin wash-boiler,
brought out into the middle of the road for that purpose. It would
doubtless blow the old thing sky-high, but that didn’t matter. They
could get a new one.
Even as he spoke, the big bell in the tower of the town-hall burst
forth in a loud clangor of swift-repeated strokes. It was half a mile
away, but the moist air brought the urgent, clamorous sounds to our
ears as if the belfry had stood close above us. We sprang off the
stoop and stood poised, waiting to hear the number of the ward
struck, and ready to scamper off on the instant if the fire was
anywhere in our part of the town. But the excited peal went on and
on, without a pause. It became obvious that this meant something
besides a fire. Perhaps some of us wondered vaguely what that
something might be, but as a body our interest had lapsed. Billy
Norris, who was the son of poor parents, but could whip even Tom
Hemingway, said he had been told that the German boys on the
other side of the gulf were coming over to “rush” us on the following
day, and that we ought all to collect nails to fire at them from our
cannon. This we pledged ourselves to do—the bell keeping up its
throbbing tumult ceaselessly.
Suddenly we saw the familiar figure of Johnson running up the
street toward us. What his first name was I never knew. To every
one, little or big, he was just Johnson. He and his family had moved
into our town after the war began; I fancy they moved away again
before it ended. I do not even know what he did for a living. But he
seemed always drunk, always turbulently good-natured, and always
shouting out the news at the top of his lungs. I cannot pretend to
guess how he found out everything as he did, or why, having found it
out, he straightway rushed homeward, scattering the intelligence as
he ran. Most probably Johnson was moulded by Nature as a town-
crier, but was born by accident some generations after the race of
bellmen had disappeared. Our neighborhood did not like him; our
mothers did not know Mrs. Johnson, and we boys behaved with
snobbish roughness to his children. He seemed not to mind this at
all, but came up unwearyingly to shout out the tidings of the day for
our benefit.
“Vicksburg’s fell! Vicksburg’s fell!” was what we heard him yelling
as he approached.
Delos Ingersoll and his hired boy ran out of the grocery. Doors
opened along the street and heads were thrust inquiringly out.
“Vicksburg’s fell!” he kept hoarsely proclaiming, his arms waving
in the air, as he staggered along at a dog-trot past us, and went into
the saloon next to the grocery.
I cannot say how definite an idea these tidings conveyed to our
boyish minds. I have a notion that at the time I assumed that
Vicksburg had something to do with Gettysburg, where I knew, from
the talk of my elders, that an awful fight had been proceeding since
the middle of the week. Doubtless this confusion was aided by the
fact that an hour or so later, on that same wonderful day, the wire
brought us word that this terrible battle on Pennsylvanian soil had at
last taken the form of a Union victory. It is difficult now to see how we
could have known both these things on the Third of July—that is to
say, before the people actually concerned seemed to have been
sure of them. Perhaps it was only inspired guesswork, but I know
that my town went wild over the news, and that the clouds overhead
cleared away as if by magic.
The sun did well to spread that summer sky at eventide with all
the pageantry of color the spectrum knows. It would have been
preposterous that such a day should slink off in dull, Quaker drabs.
Men were shouting in the streets now. The old cannon left over from
the Mexican war had been dragged out on to the rickety covered
river-bridge, and was frightening the fishes, and shaking the dry,
worm-eaten rafters, as fast as the swab and rammer could work. Our
town bandsmen were playing as they had never played before, down
in the square in front of the post-office. The management of the
Universe could not hurl enough wild fireworks into the exultant
sunset to fit our mood.
The very air was filled with the scent of triumph—the spirit of
conquest. It seemed only natural that I should march off to my
mother and quite collectedly tell her that I desired to stay out all night
with the other boys. I had never dreamed of daring to prefer such a
request in other years. Now I was scarcely conscious of surprise
when she gave her permission, adding with a smile that I would be
glad enough to come in and go to bed before half the night was over.
I steeled my heart after supper with the proud resolve that if the
night turned out to be as protracted as one of those Lapland winter
nights we read about in the geography, I still would not surrender.
The boys outside were not so excited over the tidings of my
unlooked-for victory as I had expected them to be. They received the
news, in fact, with a rather mortifying stoicism. Tom Hemingway,
however, took enough interest in the affair to suggest that, instead of
spending my twenty cents in paltry fire-crackers, I might go down
town and buy another can of powder for his cannon. By doing so, he
pointed out, I would be a part-proprietor, as it were, of the night’s
performance, and would be entitled to occasionally touch the cannon
off. This generosity affected me, and I hastened down the long hill-
street to show myself worthy of it, repeating the instruction of
“Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” over and over again to myself
as I went.
Half-way on my journey I overtook a person whom, even in the
gathering twilight, I recognized as Miss Stratford, the school-teacher.
She also was walking down the hill and rapidly. It did not need the
sight of a letter in her hand to tell me that she was going to the post-
office. In those cruel war-days everybody went to the post-office. I
myself went regularly to get our mail, and to exchange shin-plasters
for one-cent stamps with which to buy yeast and other commodities
that called for minute fractional currency.
Although I was very fond of Miss Stratford—I still recall her
gentle eyes, and pretty, rounded, dark face, in its frame of long,
black curls, with tender liking—I now coldly resolved to hurry past,
pretending not to know her. It was a mean thing to do; Miss Stratford
had always been good to me, shining in that respect in brilliant
contrast to my other teachers, whom I hated bitterly. Still, the
“Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” was too important a matter to
wait upon any mere female friendships, and I quickened my pace
into a trot, hoping to scurry by unrecognized.
“Oh, Andrew! is that you?” I heard her call out as I ran past. For
the instant I thought of rushing on, quite as if I had not heard. Then I
stopped and walked beside her.
“I am going to stay up all night: mother says I may; and I am
going to fire off Tom Hemingway’s big cannon every fourth time,
straight through till breakfast time,” I announced to her loftily.
“Dear me! I ought to be proud to be seen walking with such an
important citizen,” she answered, with kindly playfulness. She added
more gravely, after a moment’s pause: “Then Tom is out playing with
the other boys, is he?”
“Why, of course!” I responded. “He always lets us stand around
when he fires off his cannon. He’s got some ‘ringers’ this year too.”
I heard Miss Stratford murmur an impulsive “Thank God!” under
her breath.
Full as the day had been of surprises, I could not help wondering
that the fact of Tom’s ringers should stir up such profound emotions
in the teacher’s breast. Since the subject so interested her, I went on
with a long catalogue of Tom’s other pyrotechnic possessions, and
from that to an account of his almost supernatural collection of
postage-stamps. In a few minutes more I am sure I should have
revealed to her the great secret of my life, which was my
determination, in case I came to assume the victorious rôle and rank
of Napoleon, to immediately make Tom a Marshal of the Empire.
 But we had reached the post-office square. I had never before
seen it so full of people.
Even to my boyish eyes the tragic line of division which cleft this
crowd in twain was apparent. On one side, over by the Seminary, the
youngsters had lighted a bonfire, and were running about it—some
of the bolder ones jumping through it in frolicsome recklessness.
Close by stood the band, now valiantly thumping out “John Brown’s
Body” upon the noisy night air. It was quite dark by this time, but the
musicians knew the tune by heart. So did the throng about them, and
sang it with lusty fervor. The doors of the saloon toward the corner of
the square were flung wide open. Two black streams of men kept in
motion under the radiance of the big reflector-lamp over these doors
—one going in, one coming out. They slapped one another on the
back as they passed, with exultant screams and shouts. Every once
in a while, when movement was for the instant blocked, some voice
lifted above the others would begin a “Hip-hip-hip-hip—” and then
would come a roar that fairly drowned the music.
On the post-office side of the square there was no bonfire. No
one raised a cheer. A densely packed mass of men and women
stood in front of the big square stone building, with its closed doors,
and curtained windows upon which, from time to time, the shadow of
some passing clerk, bareheaded and hurried, would be momentarily
thrown. They waited in silence for the night mail to be sorted. If they
spoke to one another, it was in whispers—as if they had been
standing with uncovered heads at a funeral service in a graveyard.
The dim light reflected over from the bonfire, or down from the
shaded windows of the post-office, showed solemn, hard-lined,
anxious faces. Their lips scarcely moved when they muttered little
low-toned remarks to their neighbors. They spoke from the side of
the mouth, and only on one subject.
“He went all through Fredericksburg without a scratch—”
“He looks so much like me—General Palmer told my brother
he’d have known his hide in a tan-yard—”
“He’s been gone—let’s see—it was a year some time last
April—”