Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1912. 
VOL. LXX1X.—N«. 24. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
RAIL SHOOTING ON PAWTUXENT. 
Note—Just below the line of fire, 1% inches from the left side of the picture, the crumpled rail bird may be seen. 
Photograph by Dr. H. Lindley. 
Christmas in ’64 
By FRED A. OLDS 
T HE autumn of 1864 had begun in Piedmont, 
North Carolina, and the flaming glory of the 
foliage vied with the gorgeousness of the sun¬ 
set. There was a tang in the air,.and in the retired 
country home, where the little Confederate boy 
lived, life ran very smoothly. The story has been 
told of how he made the shot for his gun, how 
he got the powder for it, and also how he killed 
his first turkey and thus “won his spurs,” which 
his beloved Uncle Frank, home from the battle¬ 
field minus his best arm, had given him as a 
reward for his marksmanship. 
The war was on in all its bitterness, and it 
bore very hard upon Jimmy’s mother, whose 
husband, though twice wounded, was still in the 
field fighting with Lee’s ragged, but dauntless, 
veterans; men who illustrated in a splendid way 
the American spirit, its pride and its valor, and 
who in this happy day have come to share with 
their erstwhile enemies the respect and the re¬ 
gard of all people who love the memory of men 
who dare to die for what they think is right, no 
matter whether their uniform happened to be 
Blue or Gray. 
Father was still at the front, and mother, 
with Uncle Frank, helping all he could, was do¬ 
ing her best to keep things going. There were 
the forty slaves, little and big, to be looked after, 
clothed, fed and cared for, and there was the 
little boy, Jimmy, the only child to be cherished 
and looked after in every way. It was astonish¬ 
ing in those days how self-reliant even children 
became, for there were boys of Jimmy’s ac¬ 
quaintance barely turned sixteen years, at the 
front in the battle line, and one under seven¬ 
teen had been brought back to the neighbor¬ 
hood, one leg gone, taken off by a shell. But 
to the little lad all these things seemed remote 
and yet strangely near. He had not seen father 
in three years, and sometimes a fortnight passed 
and even more without a word of him or from 
him. Fighting and not writing was the fashion 
in those days. 
Jimmy, by the aid of the trusty and well 
beloved Uncle Esek, the oldest of the slaves, had 
built a sort of shack, which he called his “fort.” 
It was roofed and in it were some of his treas¬ 
ures, including first of all the Joe Manton gun 
so dear to his father and himself. It was well 
kept, though its barrels were worn at the muzzle 
almost to paper thinness, but still shooting fine 
and strong, provided one held it on the game. 
One day of days—after Jimmy had oiled this 
precious gun and put it lovingly back on the 
prongs of the deer horns which formed a gun- 
rack, and had gone out to the front of his fort 
and looked at his two cannon which were in 
truth old pillars of a portico, mounted on dis¬ 
used wagon wheels, all painted black, and had 
cast an eye upward to see if his Confederate 
flag, the “Stars and Bars,” was floating in the 
properly dignified way from the top of a high 
pole—he saw a wagon coming to the house and 
presently mother appeared on the porch with 
half a dozen slaves around her and beckoned 
for Jimmy. There had come from the nearest 
railroad town, a good many miles away, a box 
or two with very precious things which had been 
brought “through the blockade”; in other words 
had come from England to Nassau, from that 
island to Wilmington, and then by railway, and 
but slowly, too, into the Piedmont country among 
the mountain foothills. In the box were some 
“cards” used for carding cotton for spinning, 
for the spinning wheels and the looms were great 
features of the Southern homes of those dread¬ 
ful days, and they had to whirr and clank until 
the very last, to keep families and slaves clothed. 
