some smashes."

"I wouldn't gain anything even then," replied Langdon joyously. "I'll
have such a happy time before the smash comes that I can afford to pay
for it. I'm the kind that enjoys life. It's a pleasure to me just to
breathe."

"I believe it is," said Harry, looking at him with admiration. "I think
I'll call you Happy Tom."

"I take the name with pleasure," said Langdon. "It's a compliment to be
called Happy Tom. Happy I was born and happy I am. I'm so happy I must
sing:

"Ol Dan Tucker was a mighty fine man,
He washed his face in the frying pan,
He combed his hair with a wagon wheel
And died with a toothache in his heel."

"That's a great poem," said a long North Carolina youth named Ransome,
"but I've got something that beats it all holler. 'Ole Dan Tucker' is
nothing to 'Aunt Dinah's Tribberlations.'"

"How does it go?" asked St. Clair.

"It's powerful pathetic, telling a tale of disaster and pain. The first
verse will do, and here it is:

"Ole Aunt Dinah, she got drunk,
Felled in a fire and kicked up a chunk,
Red-hot coal popped in her shoe,
Lord a-mighty! how de water flew!"

"We've had French and Italian opera in Charleston," said St. Clair,
"and I've heard both in New Orleans, too, but nothing quite so moving
as the troubles of Ole Dan Tucker and Ole Aunt Dinah."

They sang other songs and the Guards, who filled two coaches of a train,
joined in a great swinging chorus which thundered above the rattle of
the engine and the cars, so noisy in those days. Often they sang negro
melodies with a plaintive lilt. The slave had given his music to his
master. Harry joined with all the zest of an enthusiastic nature.
The effect of Shepard's words and of the still, solemn face of
Jefferson Davis, framed in the open window, was wholly gone.

Spring was now advancing. All the land was green. The trees were in
fresh leaf, and when they stopped at the little stations in the woods,
they could hear the birds singing in the deep forest. And as they sped
across the open they heard the negroes singing, too, in their deep
mellow voices in the fields. Then came the delicate flavor of flowers
and Harry knew that they were approaching Charleston. In another hour
they were in the city which was, as yet, the heart and soul of the
Confederacy.

Charleston, with its steepled churches, its quaint houses, and its
masses of foliage, much of it in full flower, seem