"A thousand years, my own Columbia!Tis the glad day so long foretold!'Tis the glad mom whose early twilightWashington saw in times of old."
By the time Hen had sung all of the seven verses the whole brigade knew the refrain and roared it forth as a defiance to the Southern Confederacy, which took on physical vigor in the days that came after, when the 200th Ind. went into battle to come off victorious on many a fiercely contested field.
Then the tenor sang that doleful, woe begone, hope effacing, heart-string-cracking "Lorena." Some writer has said that it sung the heart right out of the Southern Confederacy.
"The sun's low down the sky, Lorena,The snow is on the grass again."
As Wilse Hornbeck let his splendid voice out on the mournful cadences, Si felt his very heart strings snap, and even Shorty drew his breath hard, while some of the men simply rolled over, and burying their faces in their arms, sobbed audibly.
Wilse had not counted on losing his own nerve, but found his voice breaking on the melancholy last lines, and bounding to his feet with a petulant,
"Oh, hang it!""Say, darkies, hab you seen de Massa"
came dancing up from the jubilating chords of that wonderful human music box, and soon the camp was reeling giddily with the jolly, rollicking,
"Or Massa ran, ha! ha!!The darkies stay, ho! ho!!"
Then, far in the distance a bugle sounded "lights out," and the songfest was at an end; as bugler after bugler took it up, one by one the campfires blinked out, and squad after squad sank into quiet.
"I feel a heap better somehow," remarked Si, as he crawled under his blanket.
"Dogged if I hain't had a sort of uplift, too," muttered Shorty, as he wrapped his blanket round his head. In the distance a tenor voice was singing as he kicked out his fire and got ready for bed—
"Glory, glory, hallelujah."