ed and published "The
Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works of Watts McHurdie, together
with Notes and a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F. Culpepper."
One of the earlier chapters, which tells of the enlistment of the
volunteer soldiers for the Civil War in '61, devotes some space to the
recruiting and enlistment in Sycamore Ridge. The chapter bears the
heading "The Large White Plumes," and in his "introductory remarks"
the biographer says, "To him who looks back to those golden days of
heroic deeds only the lines of Keats will paint the picture in his
soul:--

"'Lo, I must tell a tale of chivalry,
For large white plumes are dancing in mine eyes.'"

And so the "large white plumes" blinded his eyes to the fear and the
dread that were in the hearts of the people, and he tells his readers
nothing of the sadness that men felt who put in crops knowing that
their wives must cultivate and harvest them. He sees only the glory of
it; for we read: "Hail to the spirit of mighty Mars. When he strode
through our peaceful village, he awoke many a war song in our breasts.
As for our hero, Mars, the war god forged iron reeds for his lute, and
he breathed into it the spirit of the age, and all the valour, all the
chivalry of a golden day came pouring out of his impassioned reeds."
Such is the magic of those large white plumes on Martin Culpepper's
memory. Although John Barclay in that latter day bought a thousand
copies of the Biography and sent them to public libraries all over the
world, he smiled as he read that paragraph referring to Watts
McHurdie's accordion as the "impassioned reeds." When he read it, John
Barclay, grown to a man of fifty-three, sitting at a great mahogany
table, with a tablet of white paper on a green blotting pad before
him, and a gorgeous rose rising from a tall graceful green vase on the
shining table, looked out over a brown wilderness of roofs and
chimneys across a broad river into the hills that were green afar off,
and there, rising out of yesterday, he saw, not the bent little old
man in the harness shop with steel-rimmed spectacles and greasy cap,
whom you may see to-day; but instead, the boy in John Barclay's soul
looked through his eyes, and he saw another Watts McHurdie,--a dapper
little fellow under a wide slouch hat, with a rolling Byronic collar,
and fancy yellow waistcoat of the period, in exceedingly tight
trousers. And then, flash! the picture changed, and Barclay saw Watts
McHurdie