Who Fought and Suffered Not for Self-Interest or Glory,
but for Love of His Country."
This hung in his shop until the day of his death. Then his brother came
from his native village to attend to his burial. The brother stared at the
picture, inquired as to the meaning of the inscription, and then laughed
vociferously.
In the old soldier's trunk was found a faded newspaper that had been
published in his village in 1865. It contained an account of an accident
by which a grocer's clerk had lost his arm in a thrashing-machine. The
grocer's clerk and the old soldier were one person.
He had never seen a battle, but so often had he told his war stories that
in his last days he believed them.
X
A VAGRANT
On a July evening at dusk, two boys sat near the crest of a grass-grown
embankment by the railroad at the western side of a Pennsylvania town. They
talked in low tones of the sky's glow above where the sun had set beyond
the low hills across the river, and also of the stars, and of the moon,
which was over the housetop behind them. Then there was noise of insects
chirping in the grass and of steam escaping from the locomotive boilers in
the engine shed.
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