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Updated: April 30, 2025
The year was 1861; the war was on and the Governor already famous for the intelligence and zeal with which he directed all the powers and resources of his State to the service of the Union. "What! you?" the Governor was saying in evident surprise "you too want a military commission? Really, the fifing and drumming must have effected a profound alteration in your convictions.
The night is rendered hideous, and sleep well-nigh impossible, by the drumming, fifing, and shouting of the revellers, kept up till break of day. During this period many think themselves at liberty to do what at another time they would deem very culpable. Not a few partake of intoxicating drink, and if native statements be true they give themselves over to the grossest licentiousness.
At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance: " were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early from the tree "
They were thirty-five, all told. Keeping step to Luther Blanchard's fifing of the White Cockade, and Francis Barker's drumming, they marched past the men from Concord and formed on their left. "Order arms!" They rested their muskets on the ground and wiped the perspiration from their foreheads. Men from Westford, Lincoln, and Carlisle are arriving. They are four hundred now.
The Indian idea of a holiday is bonfires, processions, masquerading, especially the mimicry of different kinds of animals, plenty of confused drumming and fifing, monotonous dancing, kept up hour after hour without intermission, and, the most important point of all, getting gradually and completely drunk.
Those were exciting times, and we all were as much infected as the rest of English folk, for we were at war with France, and there was drumming, and fifing, and enlisting, and men marching off to join their regiments, and we boys were fully determined to arrange with our respected fathers as soon as we got home to get us all commissions in cavalry regiments, and failing commissions, we meant to petition for leave to enlist to fight for our country.
One day, as we sat in our committee-room discussing various subjects brought before us, there appeared in the street leading to the main entrance of the grounds a large body of soldiers with loud drumming and fifing.
Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing.
Farms were rather scattered in that neighborhood, but occasionally they passed country homes, when all the folks would rush forth to learn what the drumming and fifing meant. "They are the Putnam Hall cadets," said one farm woman. "How neat they look and how nicely they march!" "Puts me in mind o' war times, Mirandy," said her husband. "Don't you remember how the boys marched away in them days"?
"He has the heart and fancy to command a garrison; there's a drum forever beating in his head, a whistle aye fifing in his lug, and he will amuse you with his conceits of soldiering ancient and modern, a trade he thinks the more of because Heaven made him so unfit to become 'prentice to it. Good Mungo! There have been worse men; indeed what need I grudge admitting there have been few better?
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