cultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it
himself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just as well
have employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressed
out in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came
an old codger from the village, talking to Septimius about the war,--a
theme of which he was weary: telling the rumor of skirmishes that the next
day would prove to be false, of battles that were immediately to take
place, of encounters with the enemy in which our side showed the valor of
twenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars,
battalions, manoeuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art;
for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the whole
thought of man in a mist of gunpowder.

In this way, sitting on his doorstep, or in the very study, haunted by such
speculations, this wretched old man would waste the better part of a
summer afternoon while Septimius listened, returning abstracted
monosyllables, answering amiss, and wishing his persecutor jammed into one
of the cannons he talked about, and fired off, to end his interminable
babble in one roar; [talking] of great officers coming from France and
other countries; of overwhelming forces from England, to put an end to the
war at once; of the unlikelihood that it ever should be ended; of its
hopelessness; of its certainty of a good and speedy end.

Then came limping along the lane a disabled soldier, begging his way home
from the field, which, a little while ago, he had sought in the full vigor
of rustic health he was never to know again; with whom Septimius had to
talk, and relieve his wants as far as he could (though not from the poor
young officer's deposit of English gold), and send him on his way.

Then came the minister to talk with his former pupil, about whom he had