Every remembrance of my boyhood seems permeated with the Civil War. It is hard for me to remember when it began or when it ended. We were always having holidays at school, either for a victory or for a defeat. The flag was constantly up or at half mast at the town pump, giving us the idea of “goin’ fishin’ or somethin’.” There comes before my mind a ghastly figure (bearded) in a box in the church. A dead man! The first I had ever seen! He had been shot in the South. One day under the red dogwood bush in the Southeast corner of our place, I found the cap and jacket of a conscript. After escaping, he had evidently changed there. I pictured him “shot at dawn” if caught, so I never told. I have heard that the Old Manse was an underground station for slaves, but I never saw any evidence of it myself. I remember that Frank Sanborn stayed at our house for awhile when he escaped from the Southern people, who tried to carry him away out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. If there were negroes there, I should have known as much about it as I did about childbirth—always being sent away on the latter occasions. In fact, I had never seen but one negro in my life. He was an escaped slave, very old, who took care of our garden, cow, etc. He limped badly from rheumatism, and my uncle Charles had given him some liniment. One day I heard my uncle ask: “John, did you really try that liniment?” “Oh, yes sah!” said John. “Did it do you any good?” John assured him that it did, but uncle Charles was not quite convinced that he was telling the truth, so he persisted: “Did it turn your knee black, John?” “No blackah dan it was befo’, sah.” Suddenly, I realized that John’s legs were the same color as his face! It seemed to me that every day after school I was nailed by my grandmother and a bunch of old women and made to sing war songs. I can see them now, sitting round in a circle, pulling lint and crying (for invariably some one they cared for had just died) and listening to me bellow: Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa wif de muschaf on his face Go long de road sometime dis mornin’ like he gwine to leab de place? He seen de smoke way up de ribber whar de Lincum gunboats lay An’ he took his hat an’ lef’ very sudden, like he gwine t’ run away. “Oh, de massa run, ha! ha! De darkies stay, ho! ho! For it mus’ be now de Kingdom’s comin’; It’s de year ob jubilo!” I tried to enlist at the age of ten as a drummer boy. I was told I would be taken when I had learned to beat a tattoo on a drum. Delighted, I ran home to tell the news, only to find that the orderly had been sent up the back street to tell my mother, and instead of being received as a hero I was severely reprimanded. This only increased my disgust with the war.