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QUIET OF CEMETERY HILL.

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blocks of stone lie scattered along its bed. Its low shores are covered with thin grass, shaded by the forest-trees. Plenty of Rebel knapsacks and haversacks lie rotting upon the ground; and there are Rebel graves near by in the woods. By these I was inclined to pause longer than John Burns thought it worth the while. I felt a pity for these unhappy men, which he could not understand. To him they were dead Rebels, and nothing more; and he spoke with great disgust of an effort which had been made by certain "Copperheads" of the town to have all the buried Rebels now scattered about in the woods and fields gathered together in a cemetery near that dedicated to our own dead.

"Yet consider, my friend," I said, "though they were altogether in the wrong, and their cause was infernal, these, too, were brave men; and, under different circumstances, with no better hearts than they had, they might have been lying in honored graves up yonder, instead of being buried in heaps, like dead cattle, down here."

Is there not a better future for these men also? The time will come when we shall at least cease to hate them.

The cicada was singing, insects were humming in the air, crows were cawing in the tree-tops, the sunshine slept on the boughs or nestled in the beds of brown leaves on the ground, - all so pleasant and so pensive, I could have passed the day there. But John reminded me that night was approaching, and we returned to Gettysburg.

That evening I walked alone to Cemetery Hill, to see the sun set behind the Blue Ridge. A quiet prevailed there still more profound than during the day. The stone-cutters had finished their day's work and gone home. The katydids were singing, and the shrill, sad chirp of the crickets welcomed the cool shades. The sun went down, and the stars came out and shone upon the graves, the same stars which were no doubt shining even then upon many a vacant home and mourning heart left lonely by the husbands, the fathers, the dear brothers and sons, who fell at Gettysburg.

The next morning, according to agreement, I went to call

on the old hero. I found him living in the upper part of & little whitewashed two-story house, on the corner of two streets west of the town. A flight of wooden steps outside took me to his door. He was there to welcome me. John Burns is a stoutish, slightly bent, hale old man, with a light-blue eye, a long, aggressive nose, a firm-set mouth expressive of determination of character, and a choleric temperament. His hair, originally dark-brown, is considerably bleached with age; and his beard, once sandy, covers his face (shaved once or twice a week) with a fine crop of silver stubble. A short, massy kind of man; about five feet four or five inches in height, I should judge. He was never measured but once in his life. That was when he enlisted in the War of 1812. He was then nineteen years old, and stood five feet in his shoes. "But I've growed a heap since," said John.

At my request he told his story.

On the morning of the first day's fight he sent his wife away, telling her that he would take care of the house. The firing was near by, over Seminary Ridge. Soon a wounded soldier came into the town and stopped at an old house on the opposite corner. Burns saw the poor fellow lay down his musket, and the inspiration to go into the battle seems then first to have seized him. He went over and demanded the gun.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked the soldier.

"I'm going to shoot some of the damned Rebels!" replied John.

He is not a swearing man, and the strong adjective is to be taken in a strictly literal, not a profane, sense.

Having obtained the gun, he pushed out on the Chambersburg Pike, and was soon in the thick of the skirmish.

"I wore a high-crowned hat and a long-tailed blue; and I was seventy year old."

The sight of so old a man, in such costume, rushing fearlessly forward to get a shot in the very front of the battle, of course attracted attention. He fought with the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment; the Colonel of which ordered him back, and

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questioned him, and finally, seeing the old man's patriotic determination, gave him a good rifle in place of the musket he had brought with him.

"Are you a good shot?"

"Tolerable good," said John, who is an old fox-hunter. "Do you see that Rebel riding yonder?"

"I do."

"Can you fetch him ?”

"I can try."

The old man took deliberate aim and fired. He does not say he killed the Rebel, but simply that his shot was cheered by the Wisconsin boys, and that afterwards the horse the Rebel rode was seen galloping with an empty saddle.

"That's all I know about it."

He fought until our forces were driven back in the afternoon. He had already received two slight wounds, and a third one through the arm, to which he paid little attention; "only the blood running down my hand bothered me a heap." Then, as he was slowly falling back with the rest, he received a final shot through the leg. "Down I went, and the whole Rebel army run over me." Helpless, nearly bleeding to death from his wounds, he lay upon the field all night. "About sun-up, next morning, I crawled to a neighbor's house, and found it full of wounded Rebels." The neighbor afterwards took him to his own house, which had also been turned into a Rebel hospital. A Rebel surgeon dressed his wounds; and he says he received decent treatment at the hands of the enemy, until a Copperhead woman living opposite "told on him."

"That's the old man who said he was going out to shoot some of the damned Rebels!"

Some officers came and questioned him, endeavoring to conviet him of bushwhacking. But the old man gave them little satisfaction. This was on Friday, the third day of the battle; and he was alone with his wife in the upper part of the house. The Rebels left; and soon after two shots were fired. One bullet entered the window, passed over Burns's head, and penetrated the wall behind the lounge on which he was lying.

The other shot fell lower, passing through a door. Burns is certain that the design was to assassinate him. That the shot were fired by the Rebels there can be no doubt; and as they were fired from their own side, towards the town, of which they held possession at the time, John's theory seems the true The hole in the window, and the bullet-marks in the door and wall, remain.

one.

Burns went with me over the ground where the first day's fight took place. He showed me the scene of his hot day's work, pointed out two trees behind which he and one of the Wisconsin boys stood and "picked off every Rebel that showed his head," and the spot where he fell and lay all night under the stars and dew.

This act of daring on the part of so aged a citizen, and his subsequent sufferings from wounds, naturally called out a great deal of sympathy, and caused him to be looked upon as a hero. But a hero, like a prophet, has not all honor in his own country. There is a wide-spread, violent prejudice against Burns among that class of the townspeople termed "Copperheads." The young men especially, who did not take their guns and go into the fight as this old man did, but who ran, when running was possible, in the opposite direction, dislike Burns; some averring that he did not have a gun in his hand that day, but that he was wounded by accident, happening to get between the two lines.

Of his going into the fight and fighting, there is no doubt whatever. Of his bravery, amounting even to rashness, there can be no reasonable question. He is a patriot of the most zealous sort; a hot, impulsive man, who meant what he said when he started with the gun to go and shoot some of the Rebels qualified with the strong adjective. A thoroughly honest man, too, I think; although some of his remarks are to be taken with considerable allowance. His temper causes him to form immoderate opinions and to make strong statements. "He always goes beyant," said my landlord.

Burns is a sagacious observer of men and things, and makes occasionally such shrewd remarks as this:

LITTLE ROUND TOP.

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"Whenever you see the marks of shells and bullets on a house all covered up, and painted and plastered over, that's the house of a Rebel sympathizer. But when you see them all preserved and kept in sight, as something to be proud of, that's the house of a true Union man!"

Well, whatever is said or thought of the old hero, he is what he is, and has satisfaction in that, and not in other people's opinions; for so it must finally be with all. Character is the one thing valuable. Reputation, which is a mere shadow of the man, what his character is reputed to be, is, in the long run, of infinitely less importance.

I am happy to add that the old man has been awarded a pension.

The next day I mounted a hard-trotting horse and rode to Round Top. On the way I stopped at the historical peachorchard, known as Sherfy's, where Sickles's Corps was repulsed, after a terrific conflict, on Thursday, the second day of the battle. The peaches were green on the trees then; but they were ripe now, and the branches were breaking down with them. One of Mr. Sherfy's girls-the youngest she told me -was in the orchard. She had in her basket rareripes to sell. They were large and juicy and sweet, all the redder, no doubt, for the blood of the brave that had drenched the sod. So calm and impassive is Nature, silently turning all things to use. The carcass of a mule, or the godlike shape of a warrior eut down in the hour of glory, she knows no difference between them, but straightway proceeds to convert both alike into new forms of life and beauty.

Between fields made memorable by hard fighting I rode eastward, and, entering a pleasant wood, ascended Little Round Top. The eastern slope of this rugged knob is covered with timber. The western side is steep, and wild with rocks and bushes. Near by is the Devil's Den, a dark cavity in the rocks, interesting henceforth on account of the fight that took place here for the possession of these heights. A photographic view, taken the Sunday morning after the battle, shows eight dead Rebels tumbled headlong, with their guns, among the rocks below the Den.

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