To be sure, he enjoyed
the conversation of idlers, and his wife had a complaining way that
was the same as begging, especially since her boys began to grow up
and be of some use; and there were one or two near neighbors who never
let them really want; so other people, who had cares enough of their
own, could excuse themselves for forgetting him the year round, and
even call him shiftless. But there were none to look askance at Martin
Tighe on Decoration Day, as he sat in the wagon, with his bleached
face like a captive's, and his thin, afflicted body. He stretched out
his whole hand impartially to those who had remembered and those who
had forgotten both his courage at Fredericksburg and his sorry need in
Barlow.
Henry Merrill had secured the engine company's large flag in Alton,
and now carried it proudly. There were eight men in line, two by two,
and marching a good bit apart, to make their line the longer. The fife
and drum struck up gallantly together, and the little procession moved
away slowly along the country road. It gave an unwonted touch of color
to the landscape,--the scarlet, the blue, between the new-ploughed
fields and budding roadside thickets, between the wide dim ranges of
the mountains, under the great white clouds of the spring sky. Such
processions grow more pathetic year by year; it will not be so long
now before wondering children will have seen the last. The aging faces
of the men, the renewed comradeship, the quick beat of the hearts that
remember, the tenderness of those who think upon old sorrows,--all
these make the day a lovelier and a sadder festival.
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