“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
    But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

    A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
    Over the face of the leader came;

    The nobler nature within him stirred
    To life at that woman’s deed and word: 

    “Who touches a hair of yon gray head
    Dies like a dog!  March on!” he said.

    All day long through Frederick street
    Sounded the tread of marching feet: 

    All day long that free flag tossed
    Over the heads of the rebel host.

    Ever its torn folds rose and fell
    On the loyal winds that loved it well;

    And through the hill-gaps sunset light
    Shone over it with a warm good-night.

    Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,
    And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

    Honor to her! and let a tear
    Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

    Over Barbara Frietchie’s grave
    Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!

    Peace and order and beauty draw
    Round thy symbol of light and law;

    And ever the stars above look down
    On thy stars below in Frederick town!

* * * * *

A LETTER TO THOMAS CARLYLE.

SIR,—­You have Homered it of late in a small way, one sees.  You profess to sing the purport of our national struggle.  “South chooses to hire its servants for life, rather than by the day, month, or year; North bludgeons the Southern brain to prevent the same”:  that, you say, is the American Iliad in a Nutshell.  In a certain sense, more’s the pity, it must be supposed that you speak correctly; but be assured that this is the American Iliad in no other nutshell than your private one,—­in those too contracted cerebral quarters to which, with respect to our matters, your powerful intelligence, under such prolonged and pitiless extremes of dogmatic compression, has at last got reduced.

Seriously, not in any trivial wilfulness of retort, I accuse you of a narrowness and pettiness of understanding with regard to America.  Give me leave to “wrestle a fall” with you on this theme.  And as I can with but twoscore years match your threescore and five, let me entreat of your courtesy to set that circumstance aside, and to constitute me, for the nonce, your equal in age and privilege of speech.  For I must wrestle to-day in earnest!

You are a great nature, a great writer, and a man of piercing intellect:  he is a jack or a dunce that denies it.  But of you, more than of most men at all your equals in intellectual resource, it may be said that yours is not a spherical or universal, but a special and linear intelligence,—­of great human depth and richness, but special nevertheless.  Of a particular order of truths you are an incomparable champion; but always you are the champion and on the field, always your genius has its visor down, and