Crittenden

How often he lived through that last proud little drama of his soldier

life! There was his Captain wounded, and there was the old Sergeant--the

"Governor"--with chevrons and a flag.

"You're a Sergeant, Crittenden," said the Captain.

He, Crittenden, in blood and sympathy the spirit of secession--bearer

now of the Stars and Stripes! How his heart thumped, and how his head

reeled when he caught the staff and looked dumbly up to the folds; and

in spite of all his self-control, the tears came, as they came again and

again in his delirium.

Right at that moment there was a great bustle in camp. And still holding

that flag, Crittenden marched with his company up to the trenches. There

was the army drawn up at parade, in a great ten-mile half-circle and

facing Santiago. There were the red roofs of the town, and the

batteries, which were to thunder word when the red and yellow flag of

defeat went down and the victorious Stars and Stripes rose up. There

were little men in straw hats and blue clothes coming from Santiago, and

swinging hammocks and tethering horses in an open field, while more

little men in Panama hats were advancing on the American trenches,

saluting courteously. And there were American officers jumping across

the trenches to meet them, and while they were shaking hands, on the

very stroke of twelve, there came thunder--the thunder of two-score and

one salutes. And the cheers--the cheers! From the right rose those

cheers, gathering volume as they came, swinging through the centre far

to the left, and swinging through the centre back again, until they

broke in a wild storm against the big, green hills. A storm that ran

down the foothills to the rear, was mingled with the surf at Siboney and

swung by the rocking transports out to sea. Under the sea, too, it sang,

along the cables, to ring on through the white corridors of the great

capitol and spread like a hurricane throughout all the waiting land at

home! Then he could hear bands playing--playing the "Star-Spangled

Banner"--and the soldiers cheering and cheering again. Suddenly there

was quiet; the bands were playing hymns--old, old hymns that the soldier

had heard with bowed head at his mother's knee, or in some little old

country church at home--and what hardships, privations, wounds, death of

comrades had rarely done, those old hymns did now--they brought tears.

Then some thoughtful soldier pulled a box of hardtack across the

trenches and the little Spanish soldiers fell upon it like schoolboys

and scrambled like pickaninnies for a penny.