The Metropolis | Page 5

sing another song--Sing it with a
spirit that will start the world along--Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty
thousand strong,--While we were marching through Georgia!"
It was wonderful to witness the fervour with which they went through
this rollicking chant--whose spirit we miss because we hear it too often.
They were not skilled musicians--they could only sing loud; but the fire
leaped into their eyes, and they swayed with the rhythm, and sang!
Montague found himself watching the old blind soldier, who sat
beating his foot in time, upon his face the look of one who sees visions.
And then he noticed another man, a little, red-faced Irishman, one of
the drummers. The very spirit of the drum seemed to have entered into
him--into his hands and his feet, his eyes and his head, and his round
little body. He played a long roll between the verses, and it seemed as if
he must surely be swept away upon the wings of it. Catching
Montague's eye, he nodded and smiled; and after that, every once in a
while their eyes would meet and exchange a greeting. They sang "The
Loyal Legioner" and "The Army Bean" and "John Brown's Body" and
"Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching"; all the while the drum

rattled and thundered, and the little drummer laughed and sang, the
very incarnation of the care-free spirit of the soldier!
They stopped for a while, and the little man came over and was
introduced. Lieutenant O'Day was his name; and after he had left,
General Prentice leaned over to Montague and told him a story. "That
little man," he said, "began as a drummer-boy in my regiment, and
went all through the war in my brigade; and two years ago I met him on
the street one cold winter night, as thin as I am, and shivering in a
summer overcoat. I took him to dinner with me and watched him eat,
and I made up my mind there was something wrong. I made him take
me home, and do you know, the man was starving! He had a little
tobacco shop, and he'd got into trouble--the trust had taken away his
trade. And he had a sick wife, and a daughter clerking at six dollars a
week!"
The General went on to tell of his struggle to induce the little man to
accept his aid--to accept a loan of a few hundreds of dollars from
Prentice, the banker! "I never had anything hurt me so in all my life,"
he said. "Finally I took him into the bank--and now you can see he has
enough to eat!"
They began to sing again, and Montague sat and thought over the story.
It seemed to him typical of the thing that made this meeting beautiful to
him--of the spirit of brotherhood and service that reigned here.--They
sang "We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground"; they sang
"Benny Havens, Oh!" and "A Soldier No More"; they sang other songs
of tenderness and sorrow, and men felt a trembling in their voices and a
mist stealing over their eyes. Upon Montague a spell was falling.
Over these men and their story there hung a mystery--a presence of
wonder, that discloses itself but rarely to mortals, and only to those
who have dreamed and dared. They had not found it easy to do their
duty; they had had their wives and children, their homes and friends
and familiar places; and all these they had left to serve the Republic.
They had taught themselves a new way of life--they had forged
themselves into an iron sword of war. They had marched and fought in
dust and heat, in pouring rains and driving, icy blasts; they had become
men grim and terrible in spirit-men with limbs of steel, who could
march or ride for days and nights, who could lie down and sleep upon
the ground in rain-storms and winter snows, who were ready to leap at

a word and seize their muskets and rush into the cannon's mouth. They
had learned to stare into the face of death, to meet its fiery eyes; to
march and eat and sleep, to laugh and play and sing, in its presence--to
carry their life in their hands, and toss it about as a juggler tosses a ball.
And this for Freedom: for the star-crowned goddess with the flaming
eyes, who trod upon the mountain-tops and called to them in the shock
and fury of the battle; whose trailing robes they followed through the
dust and cannon-smoke; for a glimpse of whose shining face they had
kept the long night vigils and charged upon the guns in the morning;
for a touch of whose shimmering robe they had wasted in prison pens,
where famine