“From behind the hedges and the ditches.
And every tree and stump.
We would see the sons of ——
And infernal Yankees jump.”
I also remember, vaguely, something of another Revolutionary camp song which depicted the grief of the soldiers of Burgoyne’s army. The refrain was like this:
“We have got too far from Canada,
Run, boys, run.”
When we had exhausted the Revolution, it was time for an afternoon start. For more than an hour Rover had manifested his impatience by numerous waggings and by pawing vigorously at the legs of my trousers whenever I looked his way, and from the barn there came sounds of hoof-poundings and impatient whinnerings—loud and plain calls for a move. So, after many protests against the going, a move to go was made.
Before the advance upon the barn was fairly under way the youngster, who had been an attentive listener, decided upon a search for information, and, commanding a halt, informed me that “Old Jim Noyes, who lived over in the Snow neighborhood, has two boys in Boston; the oldest was up here in June and told us there was a steeple down in Boston as high as that old ‘Jackson Hill’ of ours, but I didn’t b’leve a word of it. Hosea Doten, the biggest man at figgers and surveying in this part of Vermont, told mother last year that Old Jack was 1,200 feet above the sea and more than five hundred above where we are standing; now, there ain’t no such steeple in Boston nor anywhere else. What do folks want such a high steeple for, anyway? And if meetin’ houses must have steeples, why won’t fifty feet do as well as five hundred? Some folks say that bells are hung up in steeples so God can hear them ring for folks to go to meetin’ Sunday mornin’. What odds would two or three hundred feet make to God? He can hear a bell just as well in a fifty-foot steeple as in one five hundred feet high. Meetin’ folks could save a lot of money by building low steeples. And besides, they ain’t no use; nobody could live in ’em five hundred feet up, and it would be too high to hang a thermometer on unless you had a spy-glass to look at it with. I don’t b’leve in such high steeples; they cost lots of money and ain’t of no use.”
I assured the young philosopher of my approval of his ideas about the uselessness of high steeples, and told him that Boston was not the owner of one five hundred feet high. This information was a source of immense satisfaction. “I was right all the time,” he added, “and knew that Jim Noyes was giving us lies just as fast as his tongue could work ’em out. Do all Vermont boys that go to Boston learn to talk like him? There’s a lot gone down there from about here. Some of ’em are up on a visit every once in a while, and spend the most of their spare time in telling such silly stories. I guess they think they can stuff us country folks just like Thanksgiving turkeys. What makes ’em lie so? The boys round here, if they talked like they do, would get licked a dozen times a week and no decent folks would have anything to do with ’em. I suppose it’s all right. Boys, when they git to Boston, have got to lie to keep their places and git a living. Grandfather don’t take it to heart so much as the rest of us. He says lying is the biggest part of the show, and the longer we live the more on’t we’ll see.”