“He looks so much like me—General Palmer told my brother he’d have known his hide in a tan-yard—”
“He’s been gone—let’s see—it was a year some time last April—”
“He was counting on a furlough the first of this month. I suppose nobody got one as things turned out—‘’
“He said, ‘No; it ain’t my style. I’ll fight as much as you like, but I won’t be nigger-waiter for no man, captain or no captain ‘—”
Thus I heard the scattered murmurs among the grown-up heads above me, as we pushed into the outskirts of the throng, and stood there, waiting for the rest. There was no sentence without a “he” in it. A stranger might have fancied that they were all talking of one man. I knew better. They were the fathers and mothers, the sisters, brothers, wives of the men whose regiments had been in that horrible three days’ fight at Gettysburg. Each was thinking and speaking of his own, and took it for granted the others would understand. For that matter, they all did understand. The town knew the name and family of every one of the twelve-score sons she had in this battle.
It is not very clear to me now why people all went to the post-office to wait for the evening papers that came in from the nearest big city. Nowadays they would be brought in bulk and sold on the street before the mail-bags had reached the post-office. Apparently that had not yet been thought of in our slow old town.
The band across the square had started up afresh with “Annie Lisle”—the sweet old refrain of “Wave willows, murmur waters,” comes back to me now after a quarter-century of forgetfulness—when all at once there was a sharp forward movement of the crowd. The doors had been thrown open, and the hallway was on the instant filled with a swarming multitude. The band had stopped as suddenly as it began, and no more cheering was heard. We could see whole troops of dark forms scudding toward us from the other side of the square.
“Run in for me—that’s a good boy—ask for Dr. Stratford’s mail,” the teacher whispered, bending over me.
It seemed an age before I finally got back to her, with the paper in its postmarked wrapper buttoned up inside my jacket. I had never been in so fierce and determined a crowd before, and I emerged from it at last, confused in wits and panting for breath.
I was still looking about through the gloom in a foolish way for Miss Stratford, when I felt her hand laid sharply on my shoulder.