At my request he told his story.
On the morning of the first day’s fight he sent his wife away, telling her that he would take care of the house. The firing was near by, over Seminary Ridge. Soon a wounded soldier came into the town and stopped at an old house on the opposite corner. Burns saw the poor fellow lay down his musket, and the inspiration to go into the battle seems then first to have seized him. He went over and demanded the gun.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked the soldier.
“I’m going to shoot some of the damned Rebels!” replied John.
He is not a swearing man, and the strong adjective is to be taken in a strictly literal, not a profane, sense.
Having obtained the gun, he pushed out on the Chambersburg Pike, and was soon in the thick of the skirmish.
“I wore a high-crowned hat and a long-tailed blue; and I was seventy year old.”
The sight of so old a man, in such costume, rushing fearlessly forward to get a shot in the very front of the battle, of course attracted attention. He fought with the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment; the Colonel of which ordered him back, and questioned him, and finally, seeing the old man’s patriotic determination, gave him a good rifle in place of the musket he had brought with him.
“Are you a good shot?”
“Tolerable good,” said John, who is an old fox-hunter.