From the mountains of New England
To the California shore.”
Sam had a rich, full voice, with a note of pathos in it, which made one forget its slightly nasal twang, and not only Jack but the ladies in the adjoining room listened breathlessly until the song was ended.
“That’s tip-top,” Jack said. “Made me forget what I am trying to remember. Give us another. ‘Three cheers for General Lee and the Southern Army, oh.’ Know it?”
Sam nodded and began again, singing this time with so much feeling that either because of the music, or because it awakened in his misty brain a regret for the Lost Cause the tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down Jack’s cheeks.
“I don’t know why I am crying,” he said apologetically, “unless it’s for what I can’t remember, or for the boys dead on so many battlefields, and we went into it so bravely and hopefully, like Sennacherib’s army.”
“Who’s he? I never heard of that general, and I thought I knew ’em all,” Sam asked, and Jack replied, “Have you never heard of the one hundred and eighty-five thousand able-bodied men who encamped for the night and got up in the morning all dead corpses?”
“Jerusalem! You don’t say! That beats all. It must have happened when I was in Libby. How could they get up if they was dead corpses. I can’t b’lieve it. That’s one of your rebel yarns,” Sam said.
“Bible truth,” Jack rejoined, with a twinkle in his eyes as if he were enjoying Sam’s discomfiture. “Now give us something jolly, like Dixie,” he continued, “or that one about John Brown’s body. I used to hear you fellows sing it nights when our lines were near each other. Know it?”
“I’d laugh if I didn’t. I know the whole caboodle, both sides,” Sam said, and for an hour or more the house rang with the old war melodies,—“Dixie,” “Marching through Georgia,” “My Maryland,” and “John Brown’s Body,” which last Sam sang with great gusto, especially the part relating to the apple tree.