Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
I forget now who the next volunteer was, but I think possibly it was
Sergeant Jimmy Bagby. Without waiting to analyse the emotions that
possessed him in the first instant of realisation, the sergeant went
hurrying into the road to fall in, and never thereafter had cause to rue
his impulse, his one regret being that he had no warning, else he would
have slipped on his old, grey uniform coat that he reserved for high
occasions. I know that Mr. Napoleon B. Crump, who was active in church
and charities, broke away from two ladies who were discussing parish
affairs with him upon the sidewalk in front of his wholesale grocery,
and with never a word of apology to them slipped into line, with Doctor
Lake for his file leader. A moment later, hearing footfalls at his back,
Mr. Crump looked over his shoulder. Beck Giltner, a man whom Mr. Crump
had twice tried to have driven out of town and whom he yet hoped to see
driven out of town, was following, two paces behind him.
I know that Mr. Joe Plumm came, shirtsleeved, out of his cooper shop and
sought a place with the others. I know that Major Fair-leigh, who
had been standing idly at the front window of his law office, emerged
therefrom in such haste he forgot to bring his hat with him. Almost
immediately the Major became aware that he was sandwiched in between
the fat chief of the paid fire department and worthless Tip Murphy, who
hadn't been out of the penitentiary a month. I know that old Peter J.
Galloway, the lame Irish blacksmith, wore his leather apron as he limped
along, bobbing up on his good leg and down on his short bent one.
I know that Mr. Herman Felsburg brought with him four of the clerks
of Felsburg Brothers' Oak Hall Clothing Emporium. One of them left a
customer behind, too, or possibly the customer also came. On second
thought, I believe he did. I know that some men stood along the
curbstones and stared and that other men, having first bared their
heads, broke away to tail in at the end of the doubled lines of marching
figures. And I know that of those who did this there were more than of
those who merely stood and stared. The padding of shoe soles upon the
gravel of the street became a steadily increasing, steadily rising
thump-thump-thump; the rhythm of it rose above the creak and the clatter
of the hearse wheels and the hoofs of the horses.
Lengthened and strengthened every few feet and every few yards by the
addition of new recruits, the procession kept on. It trailed past shops
and stores and jobbers' houses. It travelled by the Y. M. C. A. and by
Fraternity Hall. It threaded its way between rows of residences. It must
have been two hundred strong when the hearse horses came abreast of that
stately new edifice, with its fine memorial windows and its tall twin
spires, which the darkies called the Big Rock Church. They didn't
stop here though. Neither did they stop at the old ivy-covered' church
farther along nor at the little red-brick church in the middle of the
next block.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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