The 42nd Parallel

The Camera Eye (14)

Sunday nights when we had fishballs and baked beans and Mr. Garfield read to us in a very beautiful reading voice and everybody was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop because he was reading The Man Without a Country and it was a very terrible story and Aaron Burr had been a very dangerous man and this poor young man had said “Damn the United States; I never hope to hear her name again” and it was a very terrible thing to say and the grayhaired judge was so kind and good

and the judge sentenced me and they took me far away to foreign lands on a frigate and the officers were kind and good and spoke in kind grave very sorry reading voices like Mr. Garfield and everything was very kind and grave and very sorry and frigates and the blue Mediterranean and islands and when I was dead I began to cry and I was afraid the other boys would see I had tears in my eyes

American shouldn’t cry he should look kind and grave and very sorry when they wrapped me in the stars and stripes and brought me home on a frigate to be buried I was so sorry I never remembered whether they brought me home or buried me at sea but anyway I was wrapped in Old Glory