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earth, dissolved in flight.
    The War with Mexico was a pageant of names that made your flesh tingle. The names were Rio Grande, Monterey, Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Cherubusco, Molino del Rey, Chapultepec, Mexico City. The names were Zachary Taylor, Winfield Scott, John C. Fremont. The names were the Santa Fe Trail, Oregon, New Mexico, and California. The names were color of the sun on deserts and treeless mountains, color of buckskin breeches and blue coats, streaming South and West in a perpetual Fourth of July.
    The Mexican War was a memory of orators, long hair combed back lush behind their ears, frock coats flapping, standing on the platform in the Court House Square, raising and dropping their arms and bellowing the names of battles and heroes. Johnny remembered the recent Fourth in Freehaven, when the County had turned out to welcome back its boys who had fought in Mexico. Marching at their head was the young hero, Captain Jake Jackson, who had distinguished himself in the attack on Chapultepec and been three times wounded as he led his men over impregnable defenses. The girls of Raintree County had flung flowers on the marching soldiers.
    Johnny wished the men in front of the General Store would talk more about the real war, but instead, as usual, they talked about slavery.
    Grampa Peters kept saying that the best thing to do was just toleave the whole question alone and not get the South all excited about it and that the territories to be carved out of the new land would settle the question of slavery for themselves. He said there never would have been all this fuss and fidget if it hadn’t been for the Wilmot Proviso. The thin man said that the South was all for throwing over the Missouri Compromise and that they never would be satisfied to let California come in as a free state.
    â€”Damn them! the thin man said, getting excited, as people always did sooner or later when they talked about the new lands and slavery, that’s what they fought the damn war for—slavery.
    T. D. was inclined to take a hopeful view of the situation.
    â€”It was destiny, he said. We was going in that direction.
    Mr. Doniphant came back, carrying his banjo. He sat down and sang some songs in a soft whanging voice, and while he was singing, Ellen came out of the house to listen, and some other people gathered around.
    â€”Sing that one you sang last night, Grampa Peters said.
    Mr. Doniphant sang:
    â€”I come from Alabama
    With my banjo on my knee,
    I’se gwine to Louisiana,
    My true love for to see.
    It rained all day the night I left;
    The weather it was dry.
    The sun so hot, I froze to death,
    Susanna, don’t you cry.
    The chorus went:
    â€”O, Susanna,
    Do not cry for me;
    I come from Alabama
    With my banjo on my knee.
    The best verse was the second:
    â€”I had a dream the other night,
    When everything was still;
    I thought I saw Susanna dear,
    A-comin’ down the hill.
    The buckwheat cake was in her mouth,
    The tear was in her eye.
    Says I, I’se comin’ from the south,
    Susanna, don’t you cry.
    â€”That’s a good one, Grampa Peters said.
    They had him sing it again.
    â€”Where’d you learn it? T. D. said. I don’t recollect ever hearing it before.
    â€”O, I picked it up in a camp of folks over in Ohio. We had a different way of singin’ it too that they made up around there. They was some of ’em singin’ it thisaway:
    â€”O, Californy!
    That’s the place for me!
    I’m off for Sacramento
    With my washbowl on my knee.
    â€”Reckon you intend to git some gold out there, eh, son? Grampa Peters said.
    â€”Well, sir, Mr. Doniphant said. I didn’t know if all them stories about there bein’ gold there was true. Most people just said they heerd it from somebody else. I thought I’d git me some land. If they is gold to be got, maybe I could git some of it too. I ain’t worryin’ none about it. All I want is to git out