[Footnote 3: See _Official Records of the Rebellion_, I., p. 77.]

* * * * *




TOMMY TAFT.

A STORY OF BOSTON-TOWN.


By A.L.G.


Tommy Taft, or T.T. as he was wont to call himself, had always regretted
two misfortunes,--first, the indisputable fact of his birth, and second,
the imprisonment of his father, not long afterwards.

The earlier misfortune, Tommy Taft, not being at the time aware of it,
was of course quite unable to prevent. The later misfortune it was alike
beyond his power to forestall. It came to pass that young Tommy Taft
grew up to be as crude a specimen of body and soul as had ever
flourished in Boston-town.

I have not set myself the task of following the drift of his life from
the dawn of babyhood to the twentieth anniversary of the same. But one
event ought to be here recalled, which was, that on a certain day Tommy
Taft was at work in a garden and in just that part of the garden, it
ought to be said, where the wall was so low that a person could easily