Page:War; or, What happens when one loves one's enemy, John Luther Long, 1913.djvu/192

WAR rather see 'em go. Aren't we drinking parched rye for coffee—and only a little of that? Don't we pay a dollar a pound for musty flour? And glad to get it—when we have the dollar. And it takes two of them now to make one. No one is working, all are fighting. But the secessionists are gone, to jail or elsewhere—thanks to Ben Butler—and this is a Union and not a rebel place now."

He yells that so hard that the houses rattled. And, Lord, what yells answered him! And the names they called him! But the old boys with the pitchforks turned their backs to the editor, and their forks and scythes to the crowd, and, maybe, it was correct that they were cowards—as Kratz called 'em—them outside the scythes. For they said they would tear his insides out but no one came to do it. The editor is game and yells it at 'em again:

"This is a Union town and not a rebel town, now, I say. And I have just proved it. Out there, the further away the better for them, they have threatened to kill me. Well, does 176