. The recollections of a drummer-boy . our late change of front with music and dancing until the small hours ofthe morning. Down through the streets of Baltimore we march the next day,with our blackened and tattered flags a-flying, mustering only onehundred and eighty men out of the one thousand who marchedthrough those same streets nearly three years before. We find a trainof cars awaiting us, which we gladly enter, making no complaint thatwe are stowed away in box or cattle cars, instead of passenger coaches,for we understand that Uncle Sam cannot afford any luxuries for hisboys, and we have
. The recollections of a drummer-boy . our late change of front with music and dancing until the small hours ofthe morning. Down through the streets of Baltimore we march the next day,with our blackened and tattered flags a-flying, mustering only onehundred and eighty men out of the one thousand who marchedthrough those same streets nearly three years before. We find a trainof cars awaiting us, which we gladly enter, making no complaint thatwe are stowed away in box or cattle cars, instead of passenger coaches,for we understand that Uncle Sam cannot afford any luxuries for hisboys, and we have been used to roughing it. Nor do we complain,either, that we have no fire, although we have just come out of a warmclimate, and the snow is a foot deep at Baltimore, and is gettingdeeper every hour as we steam away northward. Toward evening wepass Harrisburg, giving three cheers for Andy Curtin, as the StateCapitol comes in sight. Night draws on, and the boys one by onebegin to bunk down on the floor, wrapped in their greatcoats and. JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME. 247 blankets. But I cannot lie down or sleep until we have passed acertain way station, from winch it is but two miles across the hills tomy home. I stand at the door of the car, shivering and chilled to thebone, patiently waiting and watching as village after village rushes byin the bright moonlight, until at long last we reach the well-knownlittle station at the hour of midnight. And then, as I look across thesnowclad moonlit hills, toward the old red farmhouse where fatherand mother and sisters are all sleeping soundly, with never a thoughtof my being so near, I fall to thinking, and wondering, and wishingwith a bounding heart, as the train dashes on between the mountainand the river, and bears me again farther and farther away from rolling myself up in my blanket, and drawing the cape of myovercoat about my head, I lie down on the car floor beside Andy, andam soon sound asleep. The following evening we lan
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookpublisherbosto, bookyear1889
