"
"It all looks a sight bigger to me now than it did then," said Henry
Merrill. "Our goin' to the war, I refer to. We didn't sense it no more
than other folks did. I used to be sick o' hearin' their stuff about
patriotism and lovin' your country, an' them pieces o' poetry women
folks wrote for the papers on the old flag, an' our fallen heroes, an'
them things; they didn't seem to strike me in the right place; but I
tell ye it kind o' starts me now every time I come on the flag
sudden,--it does so. A spell ago--'long in the fall, I guess it was--I
was over to Alton, an' there was a fire company paradin'. They'd got
the prize at a fair, an' had just come home on the cars, an' I heard
the band; so I stepped to the front o' the store where me an' my woman
was tradin', an' the company felt well, an' was comin' along the
street 'most as good as troops. I see the old flag a-comin', kind of
blowin' back, an' it went all over me. Somethin' worked round in my
throat; I vow I come near cryin'. I was glad nobody see me."
"I'd go to war again in a minute," declared Stover, after an
expressive pause; "but I expect we should know better what we was
about. I don' know but we've got too many rooted opinions now to make
us the best o' soldiers."
"Martin Tighe an' John Tighe was considerable older than the rest, and
they done well," answered Henry Merrill quickly. "We three was the
youngest of any, but we did think at the time we knew the most."
"Well, whatever you may say, that war give the country a great start,"
said Asa Brown.
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