North--Pennsylvania way--called a
great deal of human nature in them, and that sometimes when you come to
know them, you find that they are very much like looking-glasses. I do
not mean because they pander to your vanity and show you your own face,
but because they are all bright and shining and surrounded by gold that
is not solid, and have a side, generally kept close to the wall, which
is all rough wood, paint, and glue.

Let me see! Where have I got to? Ah, I remember. I said my father may
not have been a hero, but he had a great deal of that sterling stuff in
him which you find in really sterling people; and in addition, he
performed his brave acts in a quiet, unassuming way, so that often
enough they passed unnoticed; and when he had finished, he sank back
into his perfectly simple life, and never marched about in metaphorical
uniform with a drawn sword, and men before him beating drums, and
banging cymbals, and blowing trumpets for the people to see, and hear,
and say, "Oh, what a brave man!"

Some may think it was not the act of a brave, self-denying man to let
his young son go with him into that awful place to try and remove the
powder. I am not going to set up as his judge. He thought as a true
man thinks, as a soldier, one of the thousands of true men we have had,
who, without a word, have set their teeth fast, and marched for their
country's sake straight away to where cannons were belching forth their
terrible contents, and it has seemed as if the next step they took must
be the last.

My father no doubt thought that as he was so weak he must have help, and
that it would be better for his son to die helping him to save the lives
of hundreds, than to hang back at such a time as that, when we marched
straight into the steam and smoke of the burning block-house.

I can remember now that, although overhead the logs were burning and
splitting and hissing in the fierce fire, and I knew that almost at any
moment the burning timbers might come crashing down upon us, or the fire
reach the little magazine of spare powder, the feeling of cowardice gave
place to a strange sensation of exaltation, and I stood by my father,
supporting him as he gave his orders firmly, the men responding with a
cheer, and groping their way boldly to the corner of the building beyond
the roughly-made rooms, where the good-sized place, half cellar, half
closet, had been formed.

It was quite dark, and the men had to feel their w