man and a good soldier.

He said he was glad I lived next door. I told him I was glad, too. He
asked me if I went in for any kind of sport like shooting; and I said,
not yet, but I climbed trees, and he said, when his cherries were ripe,
if I didn't make myself sick on Aunty Edith's, I could climb his, when
he was around.

Then I asked him if he would tell me a story about the Civil War, and he
laughed and said the most of them were too full of fighting and sad
things for a little boy like me; and I told him I didn't mind them being
a little bloody; that I wasn't a kindergarten baby.

He laughed some more, and said: "Speaking of climbing trees makes me
think of how near I was to being captured by some rebels once. You know,
boy, Quakers is agin all fighting, so at the beginning of the war, when
we regulars was sent to drill with a lot of new men and knock them into
shape, I was some surprised when fust thing I seen was young Jim Wilton,
whose father I knowed to be a Quaker living on the corner of the same
street where my uncle lived in Phillydelphy.

"I says to him, 'Hullo, Jim, what you doing here?' and he said, 'Well,
Tom, I come here to larn you how to fight.' 'And you a Quaker's son,'
says I. 'Yup,' he says, 'and thee knows that my old folks is none too
pleased; but somehow I couldn't stay home comfortable with all the other
boys fighting to free the blacks, so here I be.'

"Well, I was right glad to see him, and get news of all the old
neighbors, and Jim and me gits very chummy; and when there's a piece of
business needing the attention of one of us, it usually gits the