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On our entering, a small guard at the gate presented arms, a drummer beat the grenadiers' march, and a little fifer played the tune. Both the drum and the fife were of English manufacture. A little further was the tent we had seen in the stockade at least some part of it. It was riddled like a sieve with our shells, and the top of it was hanging in ribbons.
If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, We'd give the old Earth such a roundelay That she would cast all thought of labour from her Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? Some sulky drooping cloud comes pouting up, Stamping its glittering feet along the plain! Well, I will let that idle fancy drop. Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain!
In a few moments a drum was produced and the fifer, a round-shouldered, good-natured fellow, who stood six feet tall, made his appearance. Upon being introduced to the lad, he stooped down, resting his hands on his knees, and, after peering into the little fellow's face for a moment, said: "My little man, can you drum?" "Yes, sir," answered the boy promptly.
The three boys who were my companions on this excursion got two dozen stripes; I lost my two as fife-major, and was turned back to my original post as drummer, or rather as fifer. This severe punishment did not arise from the enormity of purloining the nuts, but from the fact of our being found some four miles from the cantonment.
He died March 27, 1854, the last survivor of the battle, and was buried with distinguished honors. See Hist. Abigail Harrington shouted it, bursting into her son Jonathan's chamber. He had not heard the bell, nor the commotion in the street. Jonathan was only sixteen years old, but was fifer for the minute-men.
Dacier threw his hands up and broke away. He had an impulse to dash from the room, to get a breath of different air. He stood at the window, observing tradesmen's carts, housemaids, blank doors, dogs, a beggar fifer. Her last words recurred to him. He turned: 'You were in extremity, you said. What is the meaning of that? What extremity?
Her cries brought every woman in the village to the spot, and solemn were the shakings of heads, and loud the recalling of prophecies that vengeance would soon overtake the wicked. Then the serjeant came elbowing his way through the crowd, and was hailed instantly, like the drummer and fifer, by Mrs. Mugford. "That's the man you'm a looking for, maister; and a bad one he is.
When that order was given, how we sprang to the bars, and heaved round that capstan; every man a Goliath, every tendon a hawser! round and round round, round it spun like a sphere, keeping time with our feet to the time of the fifer, till the cable was straight up and down, and the ship with her nose in the water. "Heave and pall! unship your bars, and make sail!"
On one side is the bar, at which several persons are standing, drinking with some of the sweet-voiced houris. The barkeeper and proprietor, both in their shirt sleeves, are behind it. On one side of the bar is a slightly-raised platform, upon which is a piano-player, a violinist and a shrill fifer. This is the music that charms and attracts.
When Josie Fifer, white and weak, first took charge of the H. & L. lares et penates, she told herself it was only for a few months a year or two at most. The end of sixteen years found her still there. When she came to New York, "Splendour" was just beginning its phenomenal three years' run. The city was mad about the play. People came to see it again and again a sure sign of a long run.
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