n the
free-state and the pro-slavery men, and once--twice--three times there
marched by on the road real soldiers, and it was no unusual thing to see
a dragoon dismount at the town well and water his horse. The big boys in
school affected spurs, and Miss Lucy brought to school with her one
morning a long bundle, which, when it was unwrapped, disclosed the sword
of her father, Captain Barnes, presented to him by his admiring soldiers
at the close of the "Black Hawk War." John traded for a tin fife and
learned to play "Jaybird" upon it, though he preferred the jew's-harp,
and had a more varied repertory with it. Was it an era of music, or is
childhood the period of music? Perhaps this land of ours was younger
than it is now and sang more lustily, if not with great precision; for
to the man who harks back over the years, those were days of song. All
the world seemed singing--men in their stores and shops, women at their
work, and children in their schools. And a freckled, barefooted little
boy with sunburned curly hair, in home-made clothes, and with brown bare
legs showing through the rips in his trousers, used to sit alone in the
woods breathing his soul into a mouth-organ--a priceless treasure for
which he had traded two raccoons, an owl, and a prairie dog. But he
mastered the mouth-organ,--it was called a French harp in those
days,--and before he had put on his first collar, Watts McHurdie had
taught the boy to play the accordion. The great heavy bellows was half
as large as he was, but the little chap would sit in McHurdie's harness
shop of a summer afternoon and swing the instrument up and down as the
melody swelled or died, and sway his body with the time and the tune, as
Watts McHurdie, who owned the accordion, swayed and gyrated when he
played. Mrs. Barclay, hearing her son, smiled and shook her head and
knew him for a Thatcher; "No Barclay," she said, "ever could carry a
tune." So the mother brought out from the bottom of the trunk her
yellow-covered book, "Winner's Instructor on the Guitar," and taught the
child what she could of notes. Thus music found its way out of the boy's
soul.

One day in the summer of 1860, as he and his fellows were filing down
the crooked dusty path that led from the swimming hole through the dry
woods to the main road, they came upon a group of horsemen scanning
the dry ford of the Sycamore. That was the first time that John
Barclay met the famous Captain Lee. He was a great hulk of a