THE DRUMMER-BOY.
A scene very similar to those we so often witnessed during the sad days of our war, occurred one sweet June morning, about sixty years ago, in a quaint little village in Switzerland, on the borders of France. A company of recruits were about departing to join a regiment in a neighboring town, from whence they were to march to Italy, where Napoleon, then First Consul, was conducting one of his great campaigns. Around these recruits, all of them young, gathered their friends and relatives, with tears and embraces and touching words of farewell.
About a young drummer-boy, named Leopold Koerner, gathered a little group on whose grief few could look without tears. First, around the lad's neck clung his pretty blue-eyed sister, Madeline; then his younger brother Heinrich, ever till this day a merry, light-hearted little fellow. Then came their sturdy old grandmother, trying to put a brave face on the matter, and winking vigorously to keep back the tears. Leopold's father had been killed in the great French Revolution,—his widow had died soon after, "of a decline," it was said; but doubtless sorrow helped her on toward the great, sweet rest. The children were left to the sole care of their grandmother. She was poor and old, but she had a stout, faithful heart,—she was devout and determined, and battled with want and poverty like a true soldier of the Lord. She kept the children together, and brought them up "in the way they should go."
It was for the sake of relieving this noble old friend of some of her heavy care, more than from any love of a soldier's life, that Leopold, at the age of fourteen, enlisted as a drummer.
At parting with her darling, the good woman said little, but to charge him to remember his father's honesty and bravery, his mother's goodness, and the love of the true hearts left behind him. "Make all thy noise with thy drum, lad; neither boast nor swear, and remember, the better man the better soldier."
"Keep up good heart, brother," said Heinrich, with a quivering lip, "thou wilt come back to us some day, safe and sound, a grand officer,—the General of all the drummers."
"Adieu, dear Leopold," sobbed Madeline; "O, what can I do without thee? I pray the holy saints and angels to turn the bullets away from thee. Take with thee our mother's prayer-book. The Forget-me-nots pressed in it are from her grave. I shall cry my prayers now; but they will all be for thee. Adieu! adieu!"
Just then came the command, "Forward, march!" Leopold hastily thrust his sister's gift into his bosom, kissed her for the last time, and with a sad wave of the hand to his old friends, moved on in his place, sturdily beating his drum, a tear-drop falling at every stroke.
Leopold first saw real hard fighting in Italy, at the great battle of Marengo. In the early part of the engagement, as his regiment was marching past a little hill, on which were a group of mounted officers, Leopold's boyish eye was caught by the figure of a tall, handsome young general, mounted on a magnificent white horse. He was very singularly and splendidly dressed, in a rich Eastern-looking uniform, of scarlet, azure, and gold. At his side hung a diamond-hilted sword, suspended by a girdle of gold brocade. On his head he wore a three-cornered chapeau, from which rose a long, white ostrich plume, and a superb heron feather. The band that held these was clasped with brilliants of great value.
"Ah, there is the great General Bonaparte!" cried Leopold, to a comrade. "I knew him at a glance."