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when johnny comes marching home

by mary crawford

A FEW WEEKS after Sally and I were married, we visited my grand-
parents, and Grandpa asked her to enter her name in our fami-
ly Bible. Being one of those individuals forever in love with the ro-
mantic past, my wife began leafing back through the Bible to look at
the names of long-dead Fairhills. Seeing here interest, Grandpa be-
gan to relate some of the history of our tribe.

"The first Fairhill that we know of was Edmund, who came to
Massachusetts in 1637 with four of his sons. Then in 1642 his wife
came over with two more-no, they hadn't been born in the mean-
time."

"Gee, one of my ancestors came to Virginia in 1636/' said Sally
impishly.

"Just means he was thrown out of the old country earlier."
"Well, at least he had the sense not to come to a Puritan colony.
How did you all ever manage to survive this long?"

"Because we always had good women to keep us on the straight
and narrow-up 'til now."

My grandmother interrupted: "Sally, if you're really interested
in all this, maybe you'd like to look at some old letters and things up
in the attic."

"Oh, I would!" cried Sally, jumping as eagerly as if Grandma had
mentioned buried treasure. Maybe, to Sally's way of thinking, she
had. I sometimes felt that her slew of ancestors, in various degrees of
"great"-ness, were as real to her as her immediate family.

"You know where they are, don't you, Dick?" Grandma con-
tinued. "I don't like to climb the stairs anymore."

I thought I knew, and in a few minutes I lifted the lid of a dusty
horse-hair trunk and brushed the cobwebs away from the jumble of
yellowed papers within. Sally, looking over my shoulder, bounced up
and down in anticipation.

"I don't know what's in here," I warned her. "No one's looked
through it for a long time-afraid of what they might find, I guess."

"Oh, that's- the wrong attitude?" exclaimed Sally. "You have to
go into it with the idea that skeletons in the closet are delightfully
interesting! Who's that?"

I picked up the daguerreotype to which she pointed. It depicted

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