"A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen."

JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG.

HAVE you heard the story that gossips tell

Of Burns of Gettysburg? No? Ah, well!

Brief is the glory that hero earns,

Briefer the story of poor John Burns:

He was the fellow who won renown,

The only man who didn'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.

That was in July, sixty-three,

The very day that General Lee,

Flower of Southern chivalry,

Baffled and beaten, backward reeled

From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.

I might tell how, but the day before,

John Burns stood at his cottage door,
Looking down the village street,

Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or I might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk, that fell in a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood!

Or how he fancied the hum of bees

Were bullets buzzing among the trees.

But all such fanciful thoughts as these

Were strange to a practical man like Burns,

Who minded only his own concerns,

Troubled no more by fancies fine

Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine,

Quite old-fashioned and matter-of-fact,

Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folk say,

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