ve Missed You,"
"Just Before the Battle, Mother," "Brave Boys Are They," and the "Vacant
Chair."

In a little break in the singing. Hen Withers sang a wonderful song, now
almost forgotten. It was new to the boys then, but the bugler had heard
it, and as Hen's magnificent voice rolled forth its fervid words the
bugle caught up the high note theme, and never did the stars sing
together more entrancingly than did the "wicked mule whacker" and that
bugle--

"Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen.
Fling to the winds your needless fears.
He who unfurled our beauteous banner
Says it shall wave a thousand years."

On the glorious chorus a thousand voices took up the refrain in droning
fashion that made one think of "The Sound of the Great Amen."

"A thousand years, my own Columbia!
Tis the glad day so long foretold!
'Tis the glad mom whose early twilight
Washington saw in times of old."

By the time Hen had sung all of the seven verses the whole brigade
knew the refrain and roared it forth as a defiance to the Southern
Confederacy, which took on physical vigor in the days that came after,
when the 200th Ind. went into battle to come off victorious on many a
fiercely contested field.

Then the tenor sang that doleful, woe begone, hope effacing,
heart-string-cracking "Lorena." Some writer has said that it sung the
heart right out of the Southern Confederacy.

"The sun's low down the sky, Lorena,
The snow is on the grass again."

As Wilse Hornbeck let his splendid voice out on the mournful cadences,
Si felt his very heart strings snap, and even Shorty drew his breath
hard, while some of the men simply rolled over, and burying their faces
in their arms, sobbed audibly.

Wilse had not counted on losing his own nerve, but found his voice
breaking on the melancholy last lines, and bounding to his feet with a
petulant,

"Oh, hang it!"

"Say, darkies, hab you seen de Massa"

came dancing up from the jubilating chords of that wonderful human music
box, and soon the camp was reeling giddily with the jolly, rollicking,

"Or Massa ran, ha! ha!!
The darkies stay, ho! ho!!"

Then, far in the distance a bugle sounded "lights out," and the songfest
was at an end; as bugler after bugler took it up, one by one the
campfires blinked out, and squad after squad sank into quiet.

"I feel a heap better somehow," remarked Si, as he crawled under his
blanket.