Watch Yourself Go By

by Al. G. Field

"Land sakes! Have a little patience. You climb trees, run through thickets, till you're rags and tatters, and I hope when we get these clothes done you'll settle down and save them to wear when you go anywhar."

The women decided, or rather endeavored, to make the suit after the cut of the uniforms worn by the soldiers. Lacy insisted that a blouse would not look well on Alfred and it was decided to make him a jacket at the bottom "close fittin'" as Lacy expressed it.

Nothing like this suit was ever seen before or after the war. Angles and folds were, where should have been smoothness; too short at the bottom, too high at the top, too tight where they should have been loose and vice versa. The jacket was short in the waist and high in the neck. Lacy remarked as they basted the thing that there seemed too much cloth in some parts but she thought it would take up in the sewing. The surplus cloth in the west side of the pants hung to the boy's calves, covering the limbs that far down. Therefore, it was difficult to decide at a distance where the jacket ended and the pants began. In fact, the boy, from a backside view at a little distance, seemed to be wearing a long-tailed coat.

Going from you, Alfred looked like a grown man; coming towards you he looked more natural. Wherever there appeared a bunch or angle that seemed out of place, Lacy endeavored to modify the over abundance by tacking on one of the ornaments taken from the old uniform of which a great number were used. The shoulders of the jacket seemed to fit to suit Lacy, therefore she used the epaulets from the shoulders of the old soldier's uniform elsewhere. The seat of the pants hanging so low, Lacy said looked too bare, whereupon she tacked the epaulets on that part of the pants, with the yellow and red fringe hanging down.

There was a very large lump resembling "Richard the Third's" hump; on this Lacy perched a brass eagle with wings spread as if about to fly off with the coat. Red and yellow stripes ran up and down the outside seam of the pants.

Lacy said they "looked so purty it was a shame the folds of the cloth kivered so much of the stripe"; she "allowed it was too bad that more of the folds had not found their way into the seat of the pants cos it wa'n't noticed there, the epaulets hid it."

Lacy had such a great quantity of this yellow and red material, she insisted on running a double row around the cuffs of the coat and around the bottom of the pants. Aunt Betsy gently dissented but Lacy seemed the moving spirit in the project and the elder woman deferred to her. The aunt said the only fear she had was that folks might think the suit too gaudy. Aunt Betsy said she feared they had not sewed the braid on straight or the pants wouldn't pucker so at the knees.

All the ornaments, space could not be found for elsewhere, were tacked on the cap. The vizor or brim was the only disappointment to the women. No stiff leather procurable, they used cardboard and blackened it with shoe polish. This soon broke and crumpled. Lacy remarked:

"The blame rim spiles the whole outfit."

It dangled in Alfred's eyes all the time, hence he generally wore the vizor behind.