In the Sixties

by Harold Frederic

Dwight was hail-fellow-well-met with more people within a radius of twenty miles or so, probably, than any other man in the district. He was a goodlooking young man, rather stocky in build and deeply sunburned. Through the decent months of the year he was always out of doors, either tramping over the country with a level over his shoulder, or improving the days with a shotgun or fishpole. At these seasons he was generally to be found of an evening at the barber’s shop, where he told more new stories than any one else. When winter came his chief work was in his office, drawing maps and plans. He let his beard grow then, and spent his leisure for the most part playing checkers at the Excelsior Hotel.

His habitual free-and-easy dress and amiable laxity of manners tended to obscure in the village mind the facts that he came from one of the best families of the section, that he had been through college, and that he had some means of his own. His mother and sisters were very respectable people indeed, and had one of the most expensive pews in the Episcopal church. It was not observed, however, that Dwight ever accompanied them thither or that he devoted much of his time to their society at home. It began to be remarked, here and there, that it was getting to be about time for Dwight Ransom to steady down, if he was ever going to. Although everybody liked him and was glad to see him about, an impression was gradually shaping itself that he never would amount to much.

All at once Dwight staggered the public consciousness by putting on his best clothes one Sunday and going with his folks to church. Those who saw him on the way there could not make it out at all, except on the hypothesis that there had been a death in the family. Those who encountered him upon his return from the sacred edifice, however, found a clue to the mystery ready made. He was walking home with Julia Parmalee.

There were others whose passionate desire it was to walk home with Julia. They had been enlivening Octavius with public displays of their rivalry for something like two months when Dwight appeared on the scene as a competitor. Easy-going as he was in ordinary matters, he revealed himself now to be a hustler in the Courts of love. It took him but a single day to drive the teller of the bank from the field. The Principal of the Seminary, a rising young lawyer, and the head bookkeeper at the freight-house, severally went by the board within a fortnight.

There remained old Dr. Conger’s son Emory, who was of a tougher fibre and gave Dwight several added weeks of combat. He enjoyed the advantage of having nothing whatever to do. He possessed, moreover, a remarkably varied wardrobe and white hands, and loomed unique among the males of our town in his ability to play on the piano. With such aids a young man may go far in a quiet neighborhood, and for a time Emory Conger certainly seemed to be holding his own, if not more. His discomfiture, when it came, was dramatic in its swift completeness. One forenoon we saw Dwight on the street in a new and resplendent officer’s uniform, and learned that he had been commissioned to raise a battery. That very evening the doctor’s son left town, and the news went round that Lieutenant Ransom was engaged to Miss Parmalee.

An impression prevailed that Dwight would not have objected to let the matter rest there. He had gained his point, and might well regard the battery and the war itself as things which had served their purpose and could now be dispensed with. No one would have blamed him much for feeling that way about it.

But this was not Julia’s view. She adopted the battery for her own while it was still little more than a name, and swept it forward with such a swirling rush of enthusiasm that the men were all enlisted, the organization settled, and the date of departure for the front sternly fastened, before anybody could lay a hand to the brakes. Her St. Mark’s Ladies’ Aid Society presented Dwight with a sword. Her branch of the Sanitary Commission voted to entertain the battery with a hot meal in the depot yard before it took the train. We have seen how she went and had herself photographed standing proudly behind the belted and martial Dwight. After these things it was impossible for Battery G to back out.

The artillerymen had a bright blue sky and a warm sunlit noontide for their departure. Even the most cynical of those who had come to see them off yielded toward the end to the genial influence of the weather and the impulse of good-fellowship, and joined in the handshaking at the car windows, and in the volley of cheers which were raised as the train drew slowly out of the yard.

At this moment the ladies of the Sanitary Commission had to bestir themselves to save the remnant of oranges and sandwiches on their tables from the swooping raid of the youth of Octavius, and, what with administering cuffs and shakings, and keeping their garments out of the way of coffee-cups overturned in the scramble, had no time to watch Julia Parmalee.

The men gathered in the yard kept her steadily in view, however, as she stood prominently in front of the throng, on the top of a baggage truck, and waved her handkerchief until the train had dwindled into nothingness down the valley. These observers had an eye also on three young men who had got as near this truck as possible. Interest in Dwight and his battery was already giving place to curiosity as to which of these three—the bank-teller, the freight-house clerk, or the rising young lawyer—would win the chance of helping Julia down off her perch.