338 SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



about as much as the men of those two towns and no more. 

 While the shells bursted and the cannon thundered, the people 

 stayed in the cellars, and when the battle was over did all 

 they could to take care of the wounded. Still, I was^orry to see 

 a disposition among the people of the town to undervalue the 

 heroism of the only two citizens who risked their lives for our 

 cause — John Burns and Jennie Wade. In their humble ways 

 they were the hero and heroine of the fight, and epics might 

 be written on them, but their fellowmen and women, veritable 

 cave-dwellers as they were in that age, seeing how their exalta- 

 tion belittles themselves, persist in acting iconoclastic parts and 

 sneer at or tear to pieces the stories of the young girl and old 

 Scotchman. Some of these, knowing Burns is too dead to tell 

 his side of the story, say he was no more in the fight than 

 they were, which is making a very lamb of him, and what 

 scratches he had were self-inflicted ; that if he did get into the 

 fight it was either while he was drunk or else while he was out 

 hunting his cow. It struck me that the most Texan cow-boy 

 would not have dared the latter feat, and that a man who 

 would go cow-hunting on Seminary Ridge on the first day of 

 July, 1863, needed no further eulogy. As an instance of how 

 little some of the people knew of Burns, I will state that while 

 on the way from Carlisle I came across a hotel-keeper who had 

 lived in Gettysburg two years and had never heard of him. 

 To make the matter worse, this landlord kept a livery-stable 

 and furnished guides to show its patrons over the battle-field. 

 The home of 



" The only man who wouldn't back down 

 When the rebels rode through his native town, 

 But held his own in the fight next day 

 When all his townsfolk ran away," 



was a story and a-half house with a basement, over which hung 

 a platform reached by a flight of steps running up the front of 

 the house. It is on the extreme western edge of the town, 



