In the winter of this year, Mamma, for the fifth time, was stricken with diphtheria and her life despaired of. She pulled through on a perilous margin. Father, now thoroughly frightened, finally got it through his head that the east winds meant death. So in the summer of 1869 he moved his family to Chicago—leaving Louis behind, to live with his grandparents, and continue his education. Louis sobbed on his mother’s shoulder, but was much relieved to say to his father: Goodbye! Now he was free!
VII
Boston
The New Rice Grammar School
One day, in Boston, a boy of nine was walking northward on the east side of Washington Street. Just then “Yankee Doodle” came along whistling his tune to a brisk step, a pair of boots slung over one shoulder of his faded blue jeans; and, under a stovepipe hat, much battered in the strife of years, this agile elderly man wore a grey chin beard after the manner of Uncle Sam. And thus went Yankee Doodle tirelessly up and down Washington Street, always on the east side of it, day after day, year after year. In a legendary sense he was a cobbler. The boy watched his kindly face approaching, and for the hundredth time admired in despair the clear sharp whistle which he had tried in vain to emulate; and, as Yankee passed on southward the boy turned east into South Bennett Street following the south sidewalk. About midway to Harrison Avenue a paper bag struck the sidewalk in front of him, burst, and hard candies scattered over the pavement. The boy, startled, looked around, and then up. In a second story window, straight across the way, appeared two fat bare arms, an immense bosom, a heavy, broad, red face, topped with straight black hair. A fat finger beckoned to him; a fat mouth said something to him; and at the doorway of the house was the number 22—the house he had been born in; but the silver nameplate marked P. Sullivan in black script was no longer there.
He had been led to the spot, which he had not seen for years, by a revived memory of a sweet child named Alice Look, who lived next door when the two of them were three together. He had wished to see once more the sacred dwelling wherein she had lived and the walled yard in which she had mothered him and called him Papa in their play.
Much troubled, he walked on to Harrison Avenue, where Bennett Street ends its one block of length. There he noticed that the stately trees were bare of leaves and sickly to the sight, while on the twigs and among the branches and even on the trunks were hundreds of caterpillar nests which made the trees look old, poor and forsaken. While he was counting the nests on a single tree, caterpillars now and then would come slowly downward from the heights. Some of them would remain for a time in midair, suspended invisibly, before completing their descent, perchance upon a passerby. The boy was examining one of these caterpillars undulating upon his coat sleeve, when his quick ear detected the sound of snare-drums. Crowds began to gather on the sidewalks. Slowly the drums beat out their increasing sadness, pulsing to a labored measure of weariness and finality, as a faint bluish mass appeared vaguely in the north. The sidewalk crowds became dense—men, women and children stood very still. Onward, into distinctness and solidity, came the mass of faded blue undulating to the pathos of the drums. The drum corps passed—and in the growing silence came on and passed ranks of wearied men in faded blue, arms at right shoulder, faces weather-beaten, a tired slow tread, measured as a time-beat on the pavement, the one-two of many souls. And to these men, as they marched, clung women shabbily clothed, with shawls drawn over their heads, moving on in a way tragically sad and glad, while to the skirts of many of these women clung dirty children. Thus moved in regular mass and in silence a regiment of veterans, their women, their children, passing onward between two tense rows of onlooking men, women and children, triple deep, many of them in tears. So vivid was this spectacle, so heartrending, so new this aching drama of return, that the boy, leaning against a caterpillared tree, overflowed with compassion. When he had ceased weeping upon his coat sleeve, Harrison Avenue was vacant; but not so the boy—he in fullness of sympathy was ill with the thought of what all this might mean. What was the mystery that lay behind these men in faded blue? He found no sufficing answer. The men had been mustered out, he had been told; that was all.
He chafed until he got permission to go to South Reading for a week end; ostensibly to visit the grandparents, surreptitiously to visit Julia, to whom alone he could bare his heart. He knew in advance what Grandpa would say; he knew in advance what Grandma would say; he wished eagerly to learn what Julia might say. So after earnest greetings with Grandpa and Grandma he slipped quietly to the kitchen. Julia was not there. He moved to the barn; Julia was not there. Then, in dime-novel fashion he made a detour through the “old” orchard, dodging from tree to tree in Indian fashion, examining the grass, crawling slowly on all fours, bent on surprise, signalling to an imagined companion in the rear, cautiously advancing until he caught a glimpse of a broad back, topped with massy hair on fire. He approached at a flat crawl and, from behind the next tree, saw Julia sitting on a milking stool
