John used to fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoop that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms.The Indian always preceded murder by the war-whoop; and this was an advantage that the artillery had in the fight with the elderberry Indians.It was warned in time.If there was no war-whoop, the killing did n't count; the artillery man got up and killed the Indian.The Indian usually had the worst of it; he not only got killed by the regulars, but he got whipped by the home guard at night for staining himself and his clothes with the elderberry.
But once a year the company had a superlative parade.This was when the military company from the north part of the town joined the villagers in a general muster.This was an infantry company, and not to be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions.
There was a great and natural hatred between the north town boys and the center.I don't know why, but no contiguous African tribes could be more hostile.It was all right for one of either section to "lick" the other if he could, or for half a dozen to "lick" one of the enemy if they caught him alone.The notion of honor, as of mercy, comes into the boy only when he is pretty well grown; to some neither ever comes.And yet there was an artificial military courtesy (something like that existing in the feudal age, no doubt)which put the meeting of these two rival and mutually detested companies on a high plane of behavior.It was beautiful to see the seriousness of this lofty and studied condescension on both sides.
For the time everything was under martial law.The village company being the senior, its captain commanded the united battalion in the march, and this put John temporarily into the position of captain, with the right to march at the head and "holler;" a responsibility which realized all his hopes of glory.I suppose there has yet been discovered by man no gratification like that of marching at the head of a column in uniform on parade, unless, perhaps, it is marching at their head when they are leaving a field of battle.John experienced all the thrill of this conspicuous authority, and I daresay that nothing in his later life has so exalted him in his own esteem;certainly nothing has since happened that was so important as the events of that parade day seemed.He satiated himself with all the delights of war.
XVIII
COUNTRY SCENES
It is impossible to say at what age a New England country-boy becomes conscious that his trousers-legs are too short, and is anxious about the part of his hair and the fit of his woman-made roundabout.These harrowing thoughts come to him later than to the city lad.At least, a generation ago he served a long apprenticeship with nature only for a master, absolutely unconscious of the artificialities of life.
But I do not think his early education was neglected.And yet it is easy to underestimate the influences that, unconsciously to him, were expanding his mind and nursing in him heroic purposes.There was the lovely but narrow valley, with its rapid mountain stream; there were the great hills which he climbed, only to see other hills stretching away to a broken and tempting horizon; there were the rocky pastures, and the wide sweeps of forest through which the winter tempests howled, upon which hung the haze of summer heat, over which the great shadows of summer clouds traveled; there were the clouds themselves, shouldering up above the peaks, hurrying across the narrow sky,--the clouds out of which the wind came, and the lightning and the sudden dashes of rain; and there were days when the sky was ineffably blue and distant, a fathomless vault of heaven where the hen-hawk and the eagle poised on outstretched wings and watched for their prey.Can you say how these things fed the imagination of the boy, who had few books and no contact with the great world? Do you think any city lad could have written "Thanatopsis" at eighteen?
If you had seen John, in his short and roomy trousers and ill-used straw hat, picking his barefooted way over the rocks along the river-bank of a cool morning to see if an eel had "got on," you would not have fancied that he lived in an ideal world.Nor did he consciously.So far as he knew, he had no more sentiment than a jack-knife.Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing.She was, after all, only a single and a very undefined item in his general ideal world, and there was no harm in letting his imagination play about her illumined head.Since Cynthia had "got religion" and John had got nothing, his love was tempered with a little awe and a feeling of distance.He was not fickle, and yet I cannot say that he was not ready to construct a new romance, in which Cynthia should be eliminated.