When Johnnie comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade
of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the “Decoration
Day Parade,” as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
procession.
“Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again,” he
finished, with a musing chuckle.
“Did you, Grandpa?” the boy asked.
“Did I what?”
“Did you all feel gay when the army got home?”
“It didn't get home all at once, precisely,” the grandfather explained.
“When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
else.”
“You didn't feel so gay when the war _was_, though, I guess!” the boy
ventured.
“I guess we didn't.”
“Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?”
“No. We weren't ever afraid of that.”
“Not any at all?”
“No. Not any at all.”
“Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were
in a battle.”
“Oh, yes; _then_ I was.” The old man laughed. “Scared plenty!”
“I don't see why,” the boy said promptly. “I wouldn't be scared in a
battle.”
“Wouldn't you?”
“'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
Wouldn't they let you?”
“I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in
the legs and too blind.”
“I wouldn't care,” said the boy. “I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let
me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa!
Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa.”
He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand
marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the
band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which
had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the
detachment of veterans.
“Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!” he vociferated, as the
drums--and then as the bugles: “Ta, ta, ra, tara!” He addressed his
restive legs: “_Whoa_, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!” Then,
waving an imaginary sword: “Col-lumn right! Farwud _March!_ Halt! Carry
_harms!_” He “carried arms.” “Show-dler _harms!_” He “shouldered arms,”
and returned to his seat.
“That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do.” And as the grandfather
nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
mind of the composite procession and he asked:
“Well, _why_ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions,
Grandpa?”
“Oh, we knew they couldn't.”
“I guess so.” The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
satisfactorily answered. “I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?”
“Oh, yes, they did!”
“What?” The boy was astounded. “Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
cowards, Grandpa?”
“No,” said the grandfather. “They were pretty fine soldiers.”
“They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
didn't they?”
“Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away.”
“What for?”
“To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured.”
“But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?”
“No.”
The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
shadows, produced by a struggle to think. “Well, but--” he began,
slowly. “Listen, Grandpa, listen here!”
“Well?”
“Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
were goin' to win.”
“They did win pretty often,” said the grandfather. “They won a good many
battles.”
“I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war.”
“No, we were never afraid of that.”
“Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you
_help_ bein' scared they'd win the war?”
The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. “Why, we _knew_ they
couldn't, Ramsey.”
At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. “Well, _they_ didn't know
they couldn't, did they?” he argued. “They thought they were goin' to
win, didn't they?”
“Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
did. But you see they were wrong.”
“Well, but--” Ramsey struggled. “Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
anyway, if they never got scared _we'd_ win, and nobody got scared
_they'd_ win--well, I don't see--”
“You don't see what?”
But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its
more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
south side of the yard. “Oh, nothin' much,” he murmured.
“I see.” And his grandfather laughed again. “You mean: If the Rebels
felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles
why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?
That's it, isn't it?”
“I guess so, Grandpa.”
“Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
right.”
“I see,” said Ramsey. “The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
Devil.” But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
before, and Ramsey looked hurt. “Well, you can laugh if you want to!” he
objected in an aggrieved voice. “Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always--”
“I dare say, I dare say,” the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
“But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get
into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
our side, you see.”
“Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever.”
“Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
Lincoln did.”
“Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!”
“No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!”
Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary
half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
sound in the boy's ears.
“Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and
never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that
all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up
just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that
fought for what they considered their rights.
“We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a little
like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in
April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is
the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
light, and so we--”
“Boom--” The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of
the company.
“You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!” he bellowed. “You gimme
that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I
did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let
you b'long to it at all!”
The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
sternly vociferous. “In-tention, company! Farwud _march_! Col-lumn
_right_! Right-showdler _harms_! Halt! Far-wud _march_. Carry harms--”
The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of
orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood
not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
“forgotten” all of it--yet not only were there many, many times in the
boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that
semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came
recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though
the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
how he had learned it.