A Straggler of '15

It was a dull October morning, and heavy, rolling
fog-wreaths lay low over the wet grey roofs of the
Woolwich houses. Down in the long, brick-lined
streets all was sodden and greasy and cheerless.
From the high dark buildings of the arsenal came the
whirr of many wheels, the thudding of weights, and
the buzz and babel of human toil. Beyond, the
dwellings of the workingmen, smoke-stained and
unlovely, radiated away in a lessening perspective of
narrowing road and dwindling wall.

There were few folk in the streets, for the
toilers had all been absorbed since break of day by
the huge smoke-spouting monster, which sucked in the
manhood of the town, to belch it forth weary and
work-stained every night. Little groups of children
straggled to school, or loitered to peep through the
single, front windows at the big, gilt-edged Bibles,
balanced upon small, three-legged tables, which were
their usual adornment. Stout women, with thick, red
arms and dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened
doorsteps, leaning upon their brooms, and shrieking
their morning greetings across the road. One
stouter, redder, and dirtier than the rest, had
gathered a small knot of cronies around her and was
talking energetically, with little shrill titters
from her audience to punctuate her remarks.

"Old enough to know better!" she cried, in answer
to an exclamation from one of the listeners. "If he
hain't no sense now, I 'specs he won't learn much on
this side o'Jordan. Why, 'ow old is he at all?
Blessed if I could ever make out."

"Well, it ain't so hard to reckon," said a sharp-
featured pale-faced woman with watery blue eyes.
"He's been at the battle o' Waterloo, and has the
pension and medal to prove it."

"That were a ter'ble long time agone," remarked a
third. "It were afore I were born."

"It were fifteen year after the beginnin' of the
century," cried a younger woman, who had stood
leaning against the wall, with a smile of superior
knowledge upon her face. "My Bill was a-saying so
last Sabbath, when I spoke to him o' old Daddy
Brewster, here."

"And suppose he spoke truth, Missus Simpson, 'ow
long agone do that make it?"

"It's eighty-one now," said the original speaker,
checking off the years upon her coarse red
fingers, "and that were fifteen. Ten and ten, and
ten, and ten, and ten--why, it's only sixty-and-six
year, so he ain't so old after all."

"But he weren't a newborn babe at the battle,
silly!" cried the young woman with a chuckle.
"S'pose he were only twenty, then he couldn't be less
than six-and-eighty now, at the lowest."

"Aye, he's that--every day of it," cried several.

"I've had 'bout enough of