The Rebel Double Runner.
When I was a lad in a lonely New Hampshire village, in the memorable year of 1863, a great many fathers and uncles and older brothers were off at some fearful and dimly-comprehended distance, dressed in blue, and, as we reckoned it, fighting battles daily.
How brave they had looked one morning, as they left town, marching with fife and drum along the crazy sidewalk, and off down the “Depot Hill!”
After that, the games at school and after school took a decidedly warlike tinge. Wooden swords and muskets largely usurped the place of top and ball; and proud was the small boy whose grand-dad would lend him a real sword of 1812, or an ancient militia shako.
When the stern New Hampshire winter came on, with its sleighing and coasting and skating, military evolutions were somewhat curtailed—but not altogether. There were snow forts and snow battles; white-blocked Sumters that defied the assault of the enemy.
Patriotic feeling ran riot; and when one young school-fellow, named Tip, espoused the Southern cause for fun, and began to press our ramparts sore, gaining recruits every day by his sheer audacity, there came to be snow-balls slightly thawed and then left out over night to turn to ice—and, as a result, some dangerous casualties on the battle-field.