He was a bachelor, and he owned a little tobacco store in the suburbs. All the labour, manual and mental, requisite to the continuance of the establishment, however, was done by the ex-newsboy, to whom the old soldier paid $4 per week and allowed free tobacco.

He had come into the neighbourhood from the interior of the state shortly after the war, and for a time there were not ten houses within a block of his shop. The shop is now the one architectural blemish in a long row of handsome stores. Miles of streets have been built up around it.

The old soldier used to sit in an antique armchair in the rear of his shop, smoking, from meal to meal.

“I l'arnt the habit in the army,” he would say. “I never teched tobacker till I went to the war.”

People would look inquiringly at his empty sleeve.

“I got that at Gettysburg in the second day's fight,” he would explain, complacently.

He was often asked whether he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.

“No; 'tain't worth while. I done my fightin' in '63 and '64—them times. I don't care about doin' it over again in talk. Talk's cheap.”

This made folks smile, for he was continually fighting his battles over again in conversation. Every regular customer had been made acquainted with the part that he had taken in each contest, where he had stood when he received his wound, what regiment had the honour of possessing him, and how promptly he had enlisted against the wishes of parents and sweetheart.

“Of course you get a pension,” many would observe.

He would shake his head and answer, in a mild tone of a man consciously repressing a pardonable pride.

“I never 'plied, and as long as the retail tobacker trade keeps up like this, I reckon I won't make no pull on the gover'ment treash'ry.”

And he would puff at his cigar vigorously, beam upon the group that surrounded his chair, and start on one of his long trains of reminiscences.

He was an amiable old fellow, with gray hair carefully combed back from his curved forehead, a florid countenance, boyish blue eyes, puffed cheeks, a smooth chin, and very military-looking gray moustache. He was manifestly a man who ate ample dinners and amply digested them. He would glance contentedly downward at his broad, round body, and smilingly remark:

“I didn't have that girth in my fightin' days. I got it after the war was over.”

All who knew him admired him. He would tell with simple frankness how, after distinguishing himself at Antietam, he chose to remain a private rather than take the lieutenancy that was placed within his reach. He would frequently say:

“I ain't none o' them that thinks the country belongs to the soldiers because they saved it. No, sir! If they want the country as a reward, where's the credit in savin' it?”

How could one help exclaiming: “What a really noble old man!”

Finally some of the young men who received daily inspiration from his autobiographical narratives arranged a surprise for the old soldier. They presented him with a finely framed picture of the battle of Gettysburg, under which was the inscription:

“To a True Patriot. Who Fought and Suffered Not for Self-Interest or Glory, but for Love of His Country.”

This hung in his shop until the day of his death. Then his brother came from his native village to attend to his burial. The brother stared at the picture, inquired as to the meaning of the inscription, and then laughed vociferously.

In the old soldier's trunk was found a faded newspaper that had been published in his village in 1865. It contained an account of an accident by which a grocer's clerk had lost his arm in a thrashing-machine. The grocer's clerk and the old soldier were one person.

He had never seen a battle, but so often had he told his war stories that in his last days he believed them.