As the two approached me they halted, saluted, and the old “vet” gave me two or three sly winks, as much as to say, I’ll bet you a “V” you can’t tell who I have here.
I was puzzled, but instinctively felt it was one of the old Co. H. The man had evidently seen better days. He carried his hat in his hand like a well-mannered man, and there were other unmistakable traces of birth and good breeding.
We looked hard at each other. A twinkle came into a pair of black eyes that had once been the handsomest I ever saw in a man’s head. A smile hovered around his mouth, and then out of the misty past came my companion of that memorable ride of long ago. I reached out my hand and said, “It’s George,” and I believe he was more pleased than as if I had handed him a hundred-dollar greenback, which is saying a good deal, for it was plainly evident that his finances were low.
It was the old story. A young man, the son of an officer of our regiment who had been the leading merchant of--well, a smart town not a hundred miles from Watertown, well educated, with prospects in life that were the best, and now the follower of a circus. Always going somewhere and never getting anywhere was the way he put it. Still, my comrade.
I think he held my hand five minutes, and memories of other days were kindled anew. He had forgotten nothing. It was safely stored away in memory and the meeting had tapped it.
Graphically he portrayed the incidents of our Bull Run ride to the amusement of clerks and customers. All at once he recalled that he was in the presence of ladies, and bowing and smiling he gallantly tiptoed his way to the front part of the store and apologized for forcing an old soldier’s story upon them.
No one could have done it with more ease and grace, for, as I have stated, George’s early associations had been of the best. His family was in the swell set of the town in which they lived, and his father was a gentleman of the old school and noted for his polished manners.
“You see, ladies,” said he, “I haven’t been in your beautiful city since war times until this morning. Struck town with Barnum & Bailey’s greatest aggregation on earth.”
“Perhaps traveling with a circus does not meet your approval. I like it, though. Something like soldiering. Always under marching orders. Plenty of fresh air and one never sleeps so good as he does on the ground with only a strip of canvas between him and the heavens.