This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[202]
said quietly, but with the deepest feeling, that she expected to see him soon, for if anyone had ever left this earth who had gone straight to Heaven it was he.
This was almost too much, and I said to her, “Madam, who on earth are you and where did you come from?”
She said she was born in the Valley of Virginia and had been brought to this country when a girl.
I could not forbear kissing her hand as I departed, and told her I felt sure she would get There, and I hoped we would meet in that blessed country where there would be no more wars nor separations between God's dear children.
By this time the reader has doubtless learned that things were not likely to be dull when our old friend “Extra Billy” was about; that in fact there was apt to be “music in the air” whenever he was in charge.
On the occasion below described, the old Governor seemed to be rather specially concerned about the musical part of the performance.
We were about entering the beautiful Pennsylvania town of York, General Smith's brigade in the lead.
Under these conditions, feeling sure there was likely to be a breeze stirring about the head of the column, I rode forward so as to be near the General and not to miss the fun. As we approached the population seemed to be very generally in the streets, and I saw at a glance that the old Governor had blood in his eye. Turning to Fred, his aide,--who was also his son, and about the strongest marked case of second edition I ever saw,--he told him to “Go back and look up those tooting fellows,” as he called the brigade band, “and tell them first to be sure their drums and horns are all right, and then to come up here to the front and march into town tooting ‘Yankee Doodle’ in their very best style.”
Fred was off in a jiffy, and soon here came the band, their instruments looking bright and smart and glistening in the June sunlight-playing, however, not “Yankee Doodle,” but “Dixie,” the musicians appearing to think it important to be entirely impartial in rendering these national airs, and therefore giving us “Dixie” by way of prelude to “Yankee Doodle.”
When they got to the head of the column, and struck up “Yankee Doodle,” and the Governor, riding alone and bareheaded
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.