Explore "John Brent" by Theodore Winthrop on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It grew dusk. Glimmering camp-fires marked the circle of the Mormon caravan. The wagons seemed each one, in the gloaming, a giant white nightcap of an ogress leaning over her coals. The world looked drowsy, and invited the pilgrims toward the Mecca of the new Thingamy to repose. They did not seem inclined to accept. The tramping and lowing cattle kept up a tumult like the noise of a far city. And presently another din!
As Brent and I approached the fort, forth issued Jake Shamberlain, with a drummer on this side and a fifer on that. "Pop goes the Weasel," the fifer blew. A tuneless bang resounded from the drum. If there was one thing these rival melodists scorned, time was that one thing. They might have been beating and blowing with the eight thousand miles of the globe's diameter between them, instead of Jake Shamberlain's person, for any consideration they showed to each other.