the window of her little cottage, knittingneedles in hand. She wore a black satin gown, with a clear starched muslin kerchief crossed over her breast. She had a ladylike, quiet air. Long before anybody had ever heard of a photograph, Barbara Fritchie had her daguerreotype taken. The picture shows her between fifty and sixty years of age, wearing a close cap and the costume I have described, which was never changed. She looks very much like the traditional New England grandmother, reared under the shadows of the Puritan Church; and the first feeling that I had about the face was that it was very familiar and not at all German. Stern and somewhat cold she looked, but her eye was clear and true, and one saw in a moment how a little fun or a warm love might melt down the harsh lines. She had living with her at this time, and till her death, her niece Harriet Yorner, more properly Jahner, born on the 4th of May, 1797.

Her first trouble after her husband's death grew out of her patriotic devotion to the Union. In Caspar's time the local politics had seemed of very little importance, and he made one of his nephews his executor. This nephew turned out later what Barbara called an "arrant rebel." Every time she received her dividends they had some sharp words; she was nearing the last decade of her century and she wished to live in peace; so she went to one of the oldest and most respected of the German residents, the father of Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, afterwards well known in the army of the Potomac, where he was an active member of the Sanitary Commission. She begged him to take her power of attorney and receive her money from her husband's executor. Now Frederick is a small city, and it has a good many cliques. Its people are Northern as well as Southern, German as well as English-born, Protestant as well as Catholic. Mr. Steiner was very unwilling to interfere, but he could not well refuse, so he continued to transact Barbara's business until his death. Sometime before that, and previous to the breaking out of the war, he had a stroke of paralysis from which he recovered. Dr. Lewis had been away at school and college and knew very little of his towns-people. The

first time the old man was able to walk out he told his son that he had some money to pay to Frau Fritchie, and wished he would make out a receipt for her to sign. “Frau Fritchie" suggested to the young doctor one of the old German women he had often seen hoeing in her garden and ignorant of letters; so he not only made out the receipt, but signed it in such a way as to leave room for her mark.

When his father ushered him into the presence of the black satin gown and starched neckerchief he must have been a little startled, but his heart did not fail him. He courteously presented the pen. Barbara took it, pushed back her spectacles and looked at the signature. “Bless you, honey!" she exclaimed, bending a humorous glance on the young doctor. "Bless you! I wrote my name as well as that long before you were born!" Then drawing a line through the doctor's signature she wrote her name firmly beneath.

I drew this story out of my friend by asking whether he had not an autograph of Barbara. He had had a great many, but had preserved only one, and nothing would induce him to part with that; and then he showed me the receipt in question.

In this way our Barbara lived, doing her own work with only Harriet Yorner to help, until the war broke out. Then she found enough to do even for one of her advanced age. She went in and out of her own door many times a day. If she found it difficult to get up or down for the litter of idle soldiers that cumbered the steps, she was still strong enough to strike right and left with her stout cane, shouting in Shakespearian fashion, "Off! off! you lousy rebels!"

In the winter of 1861-2, when things looked badly enough for the cause of the Union, she went about helping and cheering. Henry Nixtorf, a Lutheran, well known for sturdy piety and patriotism, would tell with tears in his eyes how after every bit of bad news she would come into his shop, and, striking the ground with her cane, cry out, "Never mind, Harry, we must conquer sometime."

This winter Barbara bought a small silk flag, to please a younger relative. It was

certain that the story started in the hospital at Frederick, and traveled to the hospital at Washington, where Miss Dix found it and sent it to Whittier in the summer of 1863. Engelbrecht, mayor of the little city, lived in a house directly opposite Barbara, but his windows were not open at that early hour, and if they had been, he would have seen, owing to the difference of position, only the backs of the soldiers as they filed along the road.

The next day, General Jackson attended service at the Reformed church in Frederick, where Dr. Steiner saw him, "and I am sure," added the Doctor, "that he worshiped with relish!"

I think it very likely that Barbara brought down her flag that Saturday morning, when the breakfast hour came, and found Harriet still at her prayers. I think it also likely that one shot or more may have been aimed at the staff; but it is certain none ever struck either the flag or the house. We hear nothing of the flag when Lee entered the town on the following Wednesday. Jackson's advance had already pressed beyond it, but if the story had been "made to order" this moment would have been the most tempting to its invention.

The army of Lee moved to the west September 10th. On the next day but oneFriday, September 12th-Burnside's army entered the very streets of Frederick. The advance under Reno crossed the bridge, entering between Barbara's house and one opposite where an old German clergyman, the Rev. Joseph Trapnell, himself over 90 years of age, was waving his flag.

Barbara stood in the doorway of her house with Harriet Yorner and Mrs. Hanshew. A younger member of the party brought her flag from the sitting-room where it was shut up in a drawer. Somewhat reluctantly Barbara accepted and waved it. It was much more like her to shake her flag in the face of the advancing foe than to parade her good will when a friendly army entered.

The groups in the two houses attracted the attention of General Reno. He saw at one glance the advanced age and the deep emotion of those who held the flags. He halted between them. "Behold the 'spirit

of seventy-six,'" he cried out to his men, and they answered by a mighty shout which echoed along the street.

This little incident, which has never been questioned in Frederick or out of it, spread Barbara's fame throughout the town. It took place in full day, and was witnessed by both parties. The talk about it led the few persons who knew what had occurred on September 6th to speak of that also. The battle of South Mountain brought many wounded men into the hospital, and so the story slowly traveled. Whatever friends or relatives might know, they were little likely to boast of then, for outrage followed quick on loyalty. The close of September and the few weeks that came after brought more than one event likely to shatter aged nerves. Barbara's 96th birthday found her in bed, which she had not quitted for a month and where she was nursed by Mrs. Hanshew and Harriet Yorner.

On the 18th of December, 1862, three months and a half after her trembling hand had shut the attic window down upon her little flag, she breathed her last. In the graveyard of the Evangelical Reformed church the inquisitive traveler will find two marble headstones, with the inscriptions:

JOHN C. FRITCHIE, Died Nov. 10, 1849, aged 69 years.

BARBARA FRITCHIE,

Died Dec. 18, 1862, aged 96 years.

When the funeral was over, and the rebels were rid of "Brave Barbara," the " 'Mayor and Corporation" had a double reason for trying to get possession of the little house in which she had lived. In the first place, in spite of what has been said to the contrary, so many inquiries had already been made concerning Barbara that they were glad to cut them short by saying with apparent truth, "There is not a house in town which ever belonged to any such person." On the other hand, the little creek was a dangerous foe to the town and had more than once swamped the cellars and lower stories of the houses in its neighborhood in a way that not only threatened disease and death but that induced worthy citizens to

consider their taxes and the amount to be paid yearly to repair damages.

So the Corporation bought Barbara's house and pulled it down. Fortunately for us, Barbara had one relative who was not ashamed of her, and who knew very well that her little flag had been waved, although she might not suspect it, in the sight of the whole world. This was a certain John D. Byerly, photographer, who calls his workshop a studio, and refuses to send anything out of it which does not please him! If nobody knew anything of Miss Dix's story at the time of Barbara's death, how did it happened that this man made haste to copy the old daguerreotype?

I have said that Barbara left all her personal property to Mrs. Hanshew. If she gave her the flag with all the rest, there was one man in town shrewd enough to offer its price. Mr. Byerly knew where to find it, and in spite of the southern sympathies of its owner, he borrowed it, set it in the west window where it had waved from the time the war broke out until shortly before Barbara's death, and photographed the little house before the Corporation pulled it down. When it was leveled, about two-thirds of the lot was dug away, so that the wicked creek might find room enough for its sudden vågaries, and on the remaining third a small tin-shop was erected which still stands. Harriet Yorner survived her old friend. She died at the age of 77, on the 1st of May, 1874. Her body lies in the quiet yard at Frederick, beside those of Barbara and Caspar.

If this story be true, what were the motives to the various contradictions and denials connected with it? How peremptory these have been the following anecdote will show.

In the month of May, 1876, I went into a druggist's shop in Frederick to get a little quinine. It was Sunday morning, and while I waited, a stranger sauntered in, wearing the gray morning coat of the conventional Englishman.

"Will you tell me, sir," he asked of the druggist, "whether a woman named Barbara Fritchie ever lived in this town?"

"Certainly," was the answer.

"Ah?" responded the Englishman stroking his whiskers, "there is evidently a mystery. I came over from Philadelphia last night on purpose to find out. I asked at the hotel; they said there was no such person here. I replied that she might be dead, but there must be a grave, relatives, or at least the house where she had lived; but the man angrily denied that there was any such thing. I determined not to leave, without asking on the street; but it is Sunday and I must trouble you."

The druggist explained. The Englishman could not wait for Dr. Steiner who had not risen, and it ended in my leading him to the bridge, while the druggist put up my powders.

The owner of the hotel had been a personal enemy of Barbara. I think it is not difficult for the reader to see how little likely Barbara's relatives were to hear the story from her. Their denial was given partly in ignorance and partly in unsympathizing disgust, while the anti-Union feeling was still strong. Once given it must be adhered to.

If it be asked why the leading Unionists of the town said nothing about it, I would reply that the incident occurred at a time and place when no one but Jackson and his men could be expected to know of it. I once heard a Union officer assert in a railway car that he had seen the shot fired at the Fritchie flag. It was in November, 1868, long before I first went to Frederick, and he described the position of the house accurately, railing somewhat profanely because the Corporation had not preserved the house and widened the creek on the side of the Bentztown road. I did not ask his name, for at that time I did not know, as I have before said, that it was possible to doubt the story.

Who are the persons who have denied this story over their own names?

1. Mayor Engelbrecht, an honest man, but one who made a mistake in the time alluded to. It was on Wednesday, September 10th, not Saturday the 6th, that he stood all day at his window, watching the main body of Lee's army as it passed.

2. A certain Samuel Tyler, lawyer, author

of a life of Judge Taney, who has died while I have been writing these pages. He disposed of it by denying that Jackson's advance ever entered Frederick. That was true; but he did not tell how close to Barbara's windows the Bentztown road came, nor confess that the General himself went to church in the town the very next day.

3. A Bangor paper dated, I think, January 26, 1876. This denies the whole story on the authority of one of the family, whose name I will not mention, but who turns out on inquiry to be the "arrant knave" with whom Barbara would have nothing to do.

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4. A more elaborate denial, summing up the above statements, was made by a person calling himself Karl Edmund," in the Philadelphia Press for the 18th of May, 1876. As his letter was written after a visit to the spot, some of the statements in it must be met. That Dr. Steiner, a German Unionist living in Frederick City, should not publicly endorse Barbara's story will surprise no one who has lived in that town long enough to recognize the vestiges of the old feud between the English and German residents or to sympathize with the social predicament in which the close of the war left some of its best citizens. The story was undoubtedly told in Frederick while Barbara lived. It was openly gossiped over in the hospitals as soon as death released her from annoyance. It became public in the following year. Are there no survivors of Jackson's advance? Let them speak.

"Karl Edmund" suggests that a "Mrs.

Quantrill now in Washington" might be the real Barbara Fritchie. I trust that I have already shown this last bold proposition to be entirely untenable. If any Union flag was waved in Frederick that morning in the sight of Stonewall Jackson's troops, the direction followed by the troops settles the point that it was waved from Barbara's window. No Mrs. Quantrill was there to wave it. If Mayor Engelbrecht had waved a flag himself, it could only have been over the backs of the vanishing column. No one seems to ask how it was that a story to which there were no witnesses became instantly linked to Barbara's name! Jackson's men remained in the neighborhood four days. The few soldiers or hospital patients who witnessed the scene had many opportunities to ask who lived in the little house overhanging the creek. Everybody knew that; and the story was never doubted by the residents until it had become hopelessly entangled in double dates and mixed motives.

The poem is historically true to the spirit of the loyal woman who gave it being. In several minor respects it errs, for the history of that 6th of September had not been told when it was written.

"All that day through Frederick street sounded" no "tread of marching feet;" and the marching outside the bridge ceased at an early hour. It was not "noon" when Barbara climbed her attic stairs. But these things are of little consequence. The poet may do as he will with his own.

Caroline H. Dall.

THE "river," as the children called it, had been frozen over. It was not much more than an overgrown brook, and usually stupid and slow-going, as overgrown creatures are apt to be. But a warm spell had come on, and brought with it a two days' rain; and in the night the river had grown restless and unruly, and had thrown off the ice that had been keeping it under, carrying most of it

away to the sea, but leaving some of it in large cakes upon either bank.

And there it was when the children got up in the morning, mad with its liberty and tearing down toward the Sound as if fearful lest it might be caught and again imprisoned.

What a shout Charley raised as he drew aside the shade and peeped out! That was