wrote the song. They brought him an accordion one day while he was
getting well, and the two sat together. Watts droned along and shut
his eyes and mumbled some words, and then burst out with the chorus.
Over and over he sang it and exclaimed between breaths: "Say--ain't
that fine? I just made it up." He was exalted with his performance,
and some women came loitering down the corridor where the wounded man
and the boy were lying. The visitors gazed compassionately at
them--little Watts not much larger than the boy. A woman asked, "And
where were you wounded, son?" looking at Watts with his accordion. His
face flushed up at the thought of his shame, and he could not keep
back the tears that always betrayed him when he was deeply moved.
"Ten--ten miles from Springfield, madam, ten miles from Springfield."
And to hide his embarrassment he began sawing at his accordion,
chanting his famous song. But being only a little boy, John Barclay
tittered.

A few days after the battle Captain Ward wrote to Miss Lucy telling
her that some soldiers slightly wounded would go home on a furlough to
Lawrence, and that they would take John with them and put him on the
stage at Lawrence for Sycamore Ridge. Then Ward's letter continued:
"It is all so horrible--this curse of war; sometimes I think it is
worse than the curse of slavery. There is no 'pomp and circumstance of
glorious war.' Men died screaming in agony, or dumb with fear. They
were covered with dirt, and when they were dead they merged into the
landscape like inanimate things. What vital difference is there
between a living man and a dead man, that one stands out in a scene
big and obtrusive, and the other begins to fade into the earth as soon
as death touches the body? The horror of death is upon me, and I
cannot shake it off. It is a fearful thing to see a human soul pass
'in any shape, in any mood.' And I have seen so many deaths--we lost