I was the proudest boy in the Brimmer district at the opening of school the next winter. I fairly “paralyzed” the teacher, George Powell, and all the scholars, when I marched in wearing Nat's cavalry jacket and forage cap. He had made me a present of them. I was the lion of the day. The jacket fitted me like a sentry-box, but the girls voted the rig “perfectly lovely.” Half a dozen big boys threatened to punch my eyes out if I did not “leave that ugly old jacket at home.” I enjoyed the notoriety, and continued to wear the jacket. But one day Jim Duffy, a boy who worked for Tom Jones, came into the school with an artillery jacket on. It was of the same pattern as the jacket I wore, but had red trimmings in place of yellow. The girls decided that Jim's jacket was the prettier. I made up my mind to challenge Jim at the afternoon recess, but my anger moderated as I heard one of the small girls remark: “But Jim ain't got no sojer cap, so he ain't no real sojer--he's only a make-b'lief.” “Sure enough!” chorused the girls. Then I expected Duffy to challenge me, but he did not, and there was no fight. That same winter Thomas Torrey of Williamstown came to our house visiting. Tom was one of the first to respond to the call for volunteers to put down the rebellion. He was in the Western army, and fought under Grant at Shiloh. He received a wound in the second day's fight, May 7, 1862, that crippled him for life. He had his right arm extended to ram home a cartridge, when a rebel bullet struck him in the wrist. The ball shattered the bone of the forearm and sped on into the shoulder, which it disabled. Tom's good right arm was useless forever after. Tom was a better singer than Bass, and as we claimed him as our cousin, it seemed as if our family had already shed blood to put down the rebellion. While the wounded soldier remained at our house and told war stories and sang the patriotic songs of the day, my enthusiasm was kept at one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. I made up my mind that I would go to war or “bust a blood vessel.” I assisted in dressing Tom's shattered arm once or twice, but even that did not quench the patriotic fire that had been kindled in my breast by Bass's war stories and fanned almost into a conflagration by Tom's recital of his experiences in actual combat. I discarded Nat's “Lally boo” and transferred my allegiance to a stirring song sung by Tom: “At Pittsburg Landing Our troops fought very hard; They killed old Johnston And conquered Beauregard.” Chorus: “Hoist up the flag; Long may it wave Over the Union boys, So noble and so brave.” I laid awake nights and studied up plans to go to Pittsburg Landing and run a bayonet through the rebel who shot “Cousin Tom.”