“Mother, come back from that echoless shore,”
are alike vainly uttered. Having long had this in mind, I now for the
first time give to the world a simple little story of the early part of
my life. It is a story of the war without much war in it. My first
recollections of the Civil War (which I always thought very uncivil) are
of the days of ’61, after Sumter had been fired upon, when each night
one of the neighbors would come into our home, and she and my parents
would discuss the prospects of war, which at first though a cloud no
bigger than a man’s hand, was even then lowering darkly upon us. We
didn’t get the newspapers daily then as we do now, but whenever one
could be obtained, my mother would read the news aloud, while I lay in
my trundle bed, listening and cowering with fear. Who shall say that
children do not enter into the spirit of current events? I had all a
child’s fear of war, and that fear hung over me, for a time, as a dark
cloud, for I thought the battles would be fought at our very doors.
[Illustration]