3d Sol. Humph. I wish it had been,—the bridge, I mean.
1st Sol. But, I say, don't you see how every thing, little and great, goes one way, and that, against us? Chance has no currents like this! It's a bad side that Providence frowns on. I think when Heaven deserts a cause, it's time for us poor mortals to begin to think about it.
3d Sol. Now, if you are going to do so mean a thing as that, don't talk about Heaven—prythee don't.
[They pass on.
(Two other soldiers enter.)
4th Sol. (singing.)
Yankee doodle is the tune
Americans delight in,
'Twill do to whistle, sing, or play,
And just the thing for fighting.
Yankee doodle, boys, huzza—
(Breaking off abruptly.) I do not like the looks of it, Will.
5th Sol. Of what?
4th Sol. Of the morning that begins to glimmer in the east there.
5th Sol. No? Why, I was thinking just now I never saw a handsomer summer's dawning. That first faint light on the woods and meadows, there is nothing I like better. See, it has reached the river now.
4th Sol. But the mornings we saw two years ago looked on us with another sort of eye than this,—it is not the glimmer of the long, pleasant harvest day that we see there.