Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
As the last mounted veterans came by, I remembered that I had not seen
“No. 4”; but as I looked up, he was just coming along. In his hand,
with staff resting on his toe, he carried an old standard so torn and
tattered and stained that it was scarcely recognizable as a flag. I
did not for a moment take in that it was he, for he was not in the gray
jacket which I had expected to see. He was busy looking down at the
throng on the sidewalk, apparently searching for some one whom he
expected to find there. He was in some perplexity, and pulled in his
horse, which began to rear. Suddenly the applause from the portico above
arrested his attention, and he looked toward it and bowed. As he did so
his eye caught that of the old lady seated there. His face lighted up,
and, wheeling his prancing horse half around, he dipped the tattered
standard, and gave the royal salute as though saluting a queen. The
old lady pressed her wrinkled hand over the knot of faded ribbon on her
breast, and made a gesture to him, and he rode on. He had suddenly grown
handsome. I looked at her again; her eyes were closed, her hands were
clasped, and her lips were moving. I saw the likeness: she was his
mother. As he passed me I caught his eye. He saw my perplexity about
the jacket, glanced up at the torn colors, and pointed to a figure just
beyond him dressed in a short, faded jacket. “No. 4” had been selected,
as the highest honor, to carry the old colors which he had once saved;
and not to bear off all the honors from his friend, he had with true
comradeship made Binford Terrell wear his cherished jacket. He made a
brave figure as he rode away, and my cheer died on my lips as I thought
of the sad, old mother in her faded knot, and of the dashing young
soldier who had saved the colors in that unnamed fight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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