the biggest boy could reach, and then drop a match into them; in
a moment a dusky, smoky flame would burst from the top, and fly there
like a crimson flag, while all the boys leaped and danced round it, and
hurrahed for the Whig candidates. Sometimes they would tumble the
blazing barrels over, and roll them up and down the street.

The reason why they wore buckeyes was that the buckeye was the emblem of
Ohio, and Ohio, they knew, was a Whig state. I doubt if they knew that
the local elections always went heavily against the Whigs; but perhaps
they would not have cared. What they felt was a high public spirit,
which had to express itself in some way. One night, out of pure zeal for
the common good, they wished to mob the negro quarter of the town,
because the "Dumb Negro" (a deaf-mute of color who was a very prominent
personage in their eyes) was said to have hit a white boy. I believe the
mob never came to anything. I only know that my boy ran a long way with
the other fellows, and, when he gave out, had to come home alone through
the dark, and was so afraid of ghosts that he would have been glad of
the company of the lowest-down black boy in town.

There were always fights on election-day between well-known Whig and
Democratic champions, which the boys somehow felt were as entirely for
their entertainment as the circuses. My boy never had the heart to look
on, but he shared the excitement of the affair, and rejoiced in the
triumph of Whig principles in these contests as cordially as the
hardiest witness. The fighting must have come from the drinking, which
began as soon as the polls were opened, and went on all day and night
with a devotion to principle which is now rarely seen. In fact, the
politics of the Boy's Town seem to have been transacted with an eye
single to the diversion of the boys; or if not that quite, they were
marked by traits of a primitive civilization among the men. The
traditions of a rude hospitality in the pioneer times still lingered,
and once there was a Whig barbecue, which had all the profusion of a
civic feast in mediaeval Italy. Every Whig family contributed loaves of
bread and boiled hams; the Whig farmers brought in barrels of cider and
wagon-loads of apples; there were heaps of pies and cakes; sheep were
roasted whole, and young roast pigs, with oranges in their mouths, stood
in the act of chasing one another over the long tables which were spread
in one of the largest pork-houses, where