h! Make ready! Take
aim! Fire!"

"NON TI SCORDAR DI ME?"

"Now Eddy.... Oh, yes, you go on! You aren't going to cheat us that way.
We want to know what happened when they stopped talking German! Hasn't
anything happened yet."

"Non ti--"

"Sh! Go on, Eddy boy, and tell us exactly what occurred."

Private Edwin Horsemanden had pluck as well as sentiment, and he went
on. Moreover he had his revenge, for at bottom the 65th was itself
tender-hearted, not to say sentimental. It believed in lost loves and
lost blossoms, muslin dresses, and golden chains, cypress shades and
jasmine flowers,

"And the one bird singing alone to his nest,
And the one star over the tower."

The 65th sighed and propped its chin on its hand. Presently the 65th
grew misty-eyed.

"Then I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower
She used to wear in her breast
It smelt so faint and it smelt so sweet.--"

The pipe dropped from the 65th's hand. It sat sorry and pleased. Private
Edwin Horsemanden went on without interruption and finished with eclat.
The chief musician cleared his throat. "The Glee Club of Company H will
now--"

The Glee Club of Company H was a large and popular organization. It took
the stage amid applause. The leader bowed. "Gentlemen, we thank you.
Gentlemen, you have just listened to a beautiful novelty--a pretty
little foreign song bird brought by the trade-wind, an English
nightingale singing in Virginian forests.--Gentlemen, the Glee Club of
Company H will give you what by now is devil a bit of a novelty--what
promises to be as old as the hills before we have done with it--what our
grandchildren's grandchildren may sing with pride--what to the end of
time will carry with it a breath of our armies. Gentlemen, the Glee Club
of Company H gives you the Marseillaise of the South. _Attention!_"

"Way down South in the land of cotton,
'Simmon seed and sandy bottom--"

The 65th rose to its feet. Its neighbour to the right was the 2d
Virginia, encamped in a great open field; to the left the 5th, occupying
a grove of oaks. These regiments were busied with their own genial hour,
but when the loudly sung air streamed across from the 65th they
suspended their work in hand. They also sung "Dixie." Thence it was
taken up by the 4th and the 33d, and then it spread to Burk and
Fulkerson. Th