sin out with their engines, they all got
shovels and kept it in. They did not do this before it had overflowed
the street, and run into the cellars of the nearest houses. The water
stood two feet deep in the kitchen of my boy's house, and the yard was
flooded so that the boys made rafts and navigated it for a whole day.
My boy's brother got drenched to the skin in the rain, and lots of
fellows fell off the rafts.

He belonged to a military company of big boys that had real wooden guns,
such as the little boys never could get, and silk oil-cloth caps, and
nankeen roundabouts, and white pantaloons with black stripes down the
legs; and once they marched out to a boy's that had a father that had a
farm, and he gave them all a free dinner in an arbor before the house:
bread-and-butter, and apple-butter, and molasses and pound cake, and
peaches and apples; it was splendid. When the excitement about the
Mexican War was the highest, the company wanted a fort; and they got a
farmer to come and scale off the sod with his plough, in a grassy place
there was near a piece of woods, where a good many cows were pastured.
They took the pieces of sod, and built them up into the walls of a fort
about fifteen feet square; they intended to build them higher than their
heads, but they got so eager to have the works stormed that they could
not wait, and they commenced having the battle when they had the walls
only breast high. There were going to be two parties: one to attack the
fort, and the other to defend it, and they were just going to throw
sods; but one boy had a real shot-gun, that he was to load up with
powder and fire off when the battle got to the worst, so as to have it
more like a battle. He thought it would be more like yet if he put in a
few shot, and he did it on his own hook. It was a splendid gun, but it
would not stand cocked long, and he was resting it on the wall of the
fort, ready to fire when the storming-party came on, throwing sods and
yelling and holloing; and all at once his gun went off, and a cow that
was grazing broadside to the fort gave a frightened bellow, and put up
her tail, and started for home. When they found out that the gun, if not
the boy, had shot a cow, the Mexicans and Americans both took to their
heels; and it was a good thing they did so, for as soon as that cow got
home, and the owner found out by the blood on her that she had been
shot, though it was only a very slight wound, he was so mad that