"You did lead off splendid. We've done a grand thing, now, I tell you.
All the folks say we've got to keep it up every year. Everybody had to
have a talk about it as I went home. They say they had no idea we
should make such a show. Lord! I wish we'd begun while there was more
of us!"
"That han'some flag was the great feature," said Asa Brown generously.
"I want to pay my part for hirin' it. An' then folks was glad to see
poor old Martin made o' some consequence."
"There was half a dozen said to me that another year they was goin' to
have flags out, and trim up their places somehow or 'nother. Folks has
feelin' enough, but you've got to rouse it," said Merrill.
"I have thought o' joinin' the Grand Army over to Alton time an'
again, but it's a good ways to go, an' then the expense has been o'
some consideration," Asa continued. "I don't know but two or three
over there. You know, most o' the Alton men nat'rally went out in the
rigiments t' other side o' the State line, an' they was in other
battles, an' never camped nowheres nigh us. Seems to me we ought to
have home feelin' enough to do what we can right here."
"The minister says to me this afternoon that he was goin' to arrange
an' have some talks in the meetin'-house next winter, an' have some of
us tell where we was in the South; an' one night 'twill be about camp
life, an' one about the long marches, an' then about the
battles,--that would take some time,--an' tell all we could about the
boys that was killed, an' their record, so they wouldn't be forgot.
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