The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-14

he did as he did, because it was in his blood to do it, and that the instinct of facing to the front in the time of dan ger will go down to his sons and grand sons.
 ''The other boy was the grandson Of one of the best skirmishers in our reGi- ment. Brown came into the army wtt!s. some training and took more kindly to skirmish drill than to any other. He developed a system of his own and in the era of individual resourcefulness he became an expert. He knew how to use a tree or log or rock as shield, and if fighting in the open he knew just the time to fall and just the time to rise. He always stood up boldly when an enemy's line was coming forward at run, but dropped suddenly when there was Q halt and the guns came to a ready. He followed the same tactics with the enemy's sharpshooters.
 "On one occasion as we entered a field of standing corn we came upon an advancing rebel line. The regiments were marching in coluThs of four on line parallel to the front. All of our men except our skismisher were flat on the ground. He stood up smiling and went forward four or five paces to observe more clearly the marching reb- els. They came into line by the left flank with great suddenness and fired almost in our faces. Brown, standing in front, and a. dozen others, went down at that first fire and as our line gave back slowly, there was not a sound to indicate that one of the fallen men was alive. But in half an hour, Brown and two others came back to us to report that the rebels had swept on to the east and had left only few men to keep us occupied. Thereupon we charged and cleared another cornfield.
 On another occasion, Brown went forward, exposing himself, we thought, somewhat recklessly, but dropping whenever the sharpshooters on the oth- CT side fired. In a few minutes, how ever, they concentrated their fire on the cluster of brush and weeds in which he was hiding and kept up their fire so consistently that they cut the tops off the hazel brush and the taller weeds. In fact they seemed to trim down Browns shield close totthe, ground and
 
 In an hour he crept towards us from another direction laughing at the trick he had played on the Johnnies, they wasting their ammunition on weeds while he was hugging the ground ten paces to the right. He came to believe that he could stand up straight, let g. rebel sharpshooter aim at him and drop when the fellow pulled the trigger and save himself. The inclination to drop in time of danger became a habit with him and was fixed in his blood and so came down to his grandson.
 "The day of the Swift boiler explo- sion," said the doctor, 'I was called hurriedly to look after the wounded. noticed as drove up dozens of team sters sitting erect on their wagon seats with their arms folded looking over stolidly towards the turmoil about the boiler hous. In some way their posi- ton and bearing reminded me of artil lerymen sitting on caissons when the batteries were scurrying forward to go into action. have no doubt that most of them were soldiers or sons of sol- diers. I have noticed frequently work men engaged on new buildings sitting on wheelbarrows in the same way. I have noticed cowboys in Montana sit ting their horses or bronchos with arms | folded. Why fold their arms? Because of the fixed habit that came with four ; years of war.
 T have been called here in the city to see patients and I knew they were men of soldier habits the minute I en- tered the room. You pass any one of the hackstands in the city and you will notice that some of the men sit erect in their seats with arms folded wait
 ing, while others lounge. There is sol- dier blood in the folded arms. I am not the only one who has noticed all these things Matthew Arnold and other ob- serving Englishmen and German sol- diers who have travelled through the several states all have remarked upon the unconscious military bearing of Americans, north and south. This is not the result of liking for military life because there is no such liking. It is a habit independent and distinct from any tendency towards militarism, and l ir,x r,,41 ~f.1I 1IxyfS