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 for 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 schoolteacher. 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 shinplasters 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."