Suddenly, I realized that John’s legs were the same color as his face!
It seemed to me that every day after school I was nailed by my grandmother and a bunch of old women and made to sing war songs. I can see them now, sitting round in a circle, pulling lint and crying (for invariably some one they cared for had just died) and listening to me bellow:
Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa wif de muschaf on his face
Go long de road sometime dis mornin’ like he gwine to leab de place?
He seen de smoke way up de ribber whar de Lincum gunboats lay
An’ he took his hat an’ lef’ very sudden, like he gwine t’ run away.
“Oh, de massa run, ha! ha! De darkies stay, ho! ho!
For it mus’ be now de Kingdom’s comin’;
It’s de year ob jubilo!”
I tried to enlist at the age of ten as a drummer boy. I was told I would be taken when I had learned to beat a tattoo on a drum. Delighted, I ran home to tell the news, only to find that the orderly had been sent up the back street to tell my mother, and instead of being received as a hero I was severely reprimanded. This only increased my disgust with the war.