l the other wristlets put
together; it was a sort of gold-tried-in-the-fire-color to John,
and burned there with a steady flame. Now that Cynthia had become
a Christian, this band of hair seemed a more sacred if less glowing
possession (for all detached hair will fade in time), and if he had
known anything about saints, he would have imagined that it was a part
of the aureole that always goes with a saint. But I am bound to say that
while John had a tender feeling for this red string, his sentiment was
not that of the man who becomes entangled in the meshes of a woman's
hair; and he valued rather the number than the quality of these elastic
wristlets.

John burned with as real a military ardor as ever inflamed the breast of
any slaughterer of his fellows. He liked to read of war, of encounters
with the Indians, of any kind of wholesale killing in glittering
uniform, to the noise of the terribly exciting fife and drum, which
maddened the combatants and drowned the cries of the wounded. In his
future he saw himself a soldier with plume and sword and snug-fitting,
decorated clothes,--very different from his somewhat roomy trousers and
country-cut roundabout, made by Aunt Ellis, the village tailoress, who
cut out clothes, not according to the shape of the boy, but to what
he was expected to grow to,--going where glory awaited him. In his
observation of pictures, it was the common soldier who was always
falling and dying, while the officer stood unharmed in the storm of
bullets and waved his sword in a heroic attitude. John determined to be
an officer.

It is needless to say that he was an ardent member of the military
company of his village. He had risen from the grade of corporal to that
of first lieutenant; the captain was a boy whose father was captain
of the grown militia company, and consequently had inherited military
aptness and knowledge. The old captain was a flaming son of Mars, whose
nose militia, war, general training, and New England rum had painted
with the color of glory and disaster. He was one of the gallant old
soldiers of the peaceful days of our country, splendid in uniform, a
martinet in drill, terrible in oaths, a glorious object when he marched
at the head of his company of flintlock muskets, with the American
banner full high advanced, and the clamorous drum defying the world.
In this he fulfilled his duties of citizen, faithfully teaching his
uniformed companions how to march by the left leg, and