(Twice flogged for stealing a sheep,We hear the fife shrill through the lively air!) “No! No, Colonel!” Mr. Ward would cry. “We won't march yet; give us half an hour more!” And
Thrice flogged for desartion!
If ever I go for a soldier again,
The devil may be my portion!
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Annie tells of opening the window in Julia's room and of all the poetical ideas flying out and away.
Emily, her brother's wife, describes Mr. Ward sighing, “Where is my beauty?”
as he sits at the table; and the letter closes with a lively picture of the books in the library “heaving their dusty sides in sorrow for her absence.”
In describing life at “The corner,” we must not forget the evenings at No. 23, Colonel Henry Ward's house.
Uncle Henry and his namesake son (the boy who was to “see death approaching with joy” !) were musical.
When Mr. Ward permitted (in his later and more lenient days) an informal dance at “The corner,” the three girls sent for Uncle Henry as naturally as they sent for the hair-dressing and salad-making emigres; and the stately, handsome gentleman came, and played waltzes and polkas with cheerful patience all the evening.
On Sunday the whole family from “The corner” took tea with Uncle Henry, and music was the order of the evening.
Mr. Ward delighted in these occasions, and was never ready to go home.
When Uncle Henry thought it was bedtime, he would go to the piano and play the “Rogue's March.”
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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