The cicada was singing, insects were humming in the air, crows were cawing in the tree-tops, the sunshine slept on the boughs or nestled in the beds of brown leaves on the ground,—all so pleasant and so pensive, I could have passed the day there. But John reminded me that night was approaching, and we returned to Gettysburg.
That evening I walked alone to Cemetery Hill to see the sun set behind the Blue Ridge. A quiet prevailed there still more profound than during the day. The stonecutters had finished their day's work and gone home. The katydids were singing, and the shrill, sad chirp of the crickets welcomed the cool shades. The sun went down, and the stars came out and shone upon the graves,—the same stars which were no doubt shining even then upon many a vacant home and mourning heart left lonely by the husbands, the fathers, the dear brothers and sons, who fell at Gettysburg.
The next morning, according to agreement, I went to call on the old hero. I found him living in the upper part of a little whitewashed two-story house, on the corner of two streets, west of the town. A flight of wooden steps outside took me to his door. He was there to welcome me. John Burns is a stoutish, slightly bent, hale old man, with a light blue eye, a long, aggressive nose, a firm-set mouth, expressive of determination of character, and a choleric temperament. His hair, originally dark brown, is considerably bleached with age; and his beard, once sandy, covers his face (shaved once or twice a week) with a fine crop of silver stubble. A short, massy kind of man; about five feet four or five inches in height, I should judge. He was never measured but once in his life. That was when he enlisted in the War of 1812. He was then nineteen years old, and stood five feet in his shoes. "But I've growed a heap since," said the old hero.
He introduced me to his wife, a slow, somewhat melancholy old lady, in ill health. "She has been poorly now for a good many years." They have no children.
At my request he told me his story. He is of Scotch parentage; and who knows but he may be akin to the ploughman-poet whose "arrowy songs still sing in our morning air"? He was born and bred in Burlington, New Jersey. A shoemaker by trade, he became a soldier by choice, and fought the British in what used to be the "last war." I am afraid he contracted bad habits in the army. For some years after the war he led a wandering and dissipated life. Forty years ago he chanced to find himself in Gettysburg, where he married and settled down. But his unfortunate habits still adhered to him, and he was long looked upon as a man of little worth. At last, however, when there seemed to be no hope of his ever being anything but a despised old man, he took a sudden resolution to reform. The fact that he kept that resolution, and still keeps it so strictly that it is impossible to prevail upon him to taste a drop of intoxicating liquor, attests a truly heroic will. He was afterwards a constable in Gettysburg, in which capacity he served some six years.
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.