ght, there
would be such a banging, cracking, and barking as to suggest a South
American revolution aided by blood-hounds. That somebody in the _melee_
now and then got a charge of shot in his face, or that angry parties in
dispute over a bird sometimes blazed away at one another and fought _a
l'outrance_ in every way, "goes without saying." Truly they were
inspiriting sights, and kept up the martial valour, aided by frequent
firemen's fights, which made Philadelphians so indomitable in the
Rebellion, when, to the amazement of everybody, our Quaker city
manifested a genius or love for hard fighting never surpassed by mortals.

There were, of course, some odd episodes among the infantry or gunners on
foot, and one of these was so well described by my brother Henry in a
poem, that I venture to give it place.

REED-BIRDING.

Two men and a bull-dog ugly,
Two guns and a terrier lame;
They'd better stick out in the marsh there,
And set themselves up for game.

But no; I mark by the cocking
Of that red-haired Paddy's eye,
He's been "reeding" too much for you, sir,
Any such game to try.

"Now, Jamie, ye divil, kape dark there,
And hould the big bull-dog in;
There's a bloody big crowd of rade-birds,
That nade a pepperin'!"

_Ker-rack_! goes the single barrel,
_Flip-boong_! roars the old Queen Anne;
There's a Paddy stretched out in the mud-hole,
A kicked-over, knocked-down man.

"Och, Jamie, ye shtupid crature,
Sure ye're the divil's son;
How many fingers' load, thin,
Did ye putt in this d---d ould gun?"

"How many fingers, be jabers?
I nivir putt in a wan;
Did ye think I'd be afther jammin'
Me fingers into a gun?"

"Well, give me the powder, Jamie."
"The powder! as sure as I'm born,
I put it all into yer musket,
For I'd nivir a powder-horn!"

Then we all had reed-bird suppers or lunches, eked out perhaps with
terrapins and soft-shell crabs, gumbo, "snapper," or pepper-pot soup,
peaches, venison, bear-meat, _salon la saison_--for both bear and deer
roamed wild within fifty or sixty miles--so that, all things considered,
if Philadelphians, and Baltimoreans did run somewhat over-much to eating
up their intellects--as Dr. Holmes declares they do--they had at least
the excuse of terrible temptation, which the men of my "grandfather-land"
(New England), as he once termed it in a letter to