The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1903-12-26
TWO NEW YEARS.
A Story Of War and Love.

"Since saw you last, Sam, an
other strange thing has happened?' %
What, old man? Had another
romance? Which planet is it, John,
that causes romance in the life of
person? You must have been born
under that. Your life has been chock-
full of that sort of thing, to my cer-
tain knowledge"
They were two gray-haired old
chums, talking together. One of them
not so very gray, for the reason that
he was quite bald. John was the
bald one, and the fact gave Sam in
spiration for frequent jokes on John,
from which he derived a perennial
supply of fun. Sans chiefest joke
was to send surreptiously, to his rath-
er sedate comrade and lifelong friend
ing, or a large comb, or recipes for
removing superfuous hair, or any
other thing by which he could ring
the changes on this piece of annoy
ance.
Sam would work all sorts of schemes
to have the packages containing these
articles sent from different and dis
tant places, and John, in his serious
way, would inform Sam about them,
and would piteously complain to him
of the annoyance they caused him
through the poorly suppressed merri-
ment that they occasioned among the
several members of his family, his
jolly wife, a grown son and three
daughters, lass of IS, and her two
slightly older sisters.
Sam would mischievously condole
with his friend, and would bring the
matter up in the Grand Army post
and Masonic lodge to which both be-
longed, with the pretended intention
of having steps taken to rescue the
suffering member from the outrages.
Of course John would expostulate
with Sam for the weaving solici-
tude, but Sans well-assumed indig-
nation that his friend should be thus
put upon could do no less than in
crease Johns gratitude to Sam, while
the post and lodge, being in the joke,
also had much quiet amusement in the
trick, poor old John being the uncon-
scious butt.
Continuing the conversation begun
at the outset of this chronicle, John
said:
eyes. I have had my romances,
but this last one is not mine, though
I am interested in it.
"You remember that poor girl !
brought back from Knoxville in the
spring of '64?"
"Well, I should think I ought to
remember her. I've always thought
she was the cause of your losing your
hair, and"
"Never mind my hair, you blamed
scamp"
"I don't mind it. Nobody does.
1t amt in anybody's way"
"Sam Nelson, I'll hurt you yet"
Don't, John. But what about
the girl? She's got over being girl
by this time"
"I should say she had. She's we'll
on the way to being a grandmother. F."
"You don't say I"
"I just did say"
"How do you know"
''Lemme tell you"
"That's what I'm waiting for. !"
Before repeating what John now
told Sam it is necessary to say that
the two were members of the same
Illinois regiment of infantry in East
Tennessee in the winter of 1854,
until after the campaign that involv-
ed the siege of Knoxville, and that
Johns son John was soldier in the
Cuban war, hero of Santiago and
one of the invaders of Porto Rico.
After the siege of Knoxville had
been raised large be 1y of the Feder-
al troops followed Longstreet's retreat
into Virginia as far as Strawbridge
Plains, Tenn, where the federals went
into camp for some weeks in the most
uncomfortable bivouc that was known
in the history Of the war. The wealth
er was, for the most part, intensely
cold, food was pitifully scarce, and
what little there was was bread made
from "sick wheat" and bad corn, and
beef from a lot of unfed cattle that
were so poor and thin and feeble that
the butchers had to hold them up to
knock them down.
The pitiful herd was daily driven