The Drummer Boy | Page 2

to be shot at a few times," he replied; "but every man that's shot at isn't shot, sissy; and every man that's shot isn't killed; and every man that's killed isn't dead--if what the Bible says is true."
"O my son," said Mrs. Manly, regarding him with affectionate earnestness, "do you know what you say? have you considered it well?"
"Yes," said Frank, "I've thought it all over. It hasn't been out of my thoughts, day or night, this ever so long; though I was determined not to open my lips about it to any one, till my mind was made up. I know five or six that have enlisted, and I'm just as well able to serve my country as any of them. I believe I can go through all the hardships any of them can. And though Helen laughs at me now for a coward, before I've been in a fight, she won't laugh at me afterwards." But here the lad's voice broke, and he dashed a tear from his eye.
"No, no, Frank," said Helen, remorsefully, thinking suddenly of those whose brothers have gone forth bravely to battle, and never come home again. And she saw in imagination her own dear, brave, loving brother carried bleeding from the field, his bright, handsome face deathly pale, the eyes that now beamed so hopefully and tenderly, closing--perhaps forever. "Forgive my jokes, Frank; but you are too young to go to war. We have lost one brother by secession, and we can't afford to lose another."
She alluded to George, the oldest of the children, who had been several years in the Carolinas; who had married a wife there, and become a slave-owner; and who, when the war broke out, forgot his native north, and the free institutions under which he had been bred, to side with the south and slavery. This had proved a source of deep grief to his parents; not because the pecuniary support they had derived from him, up to the fall of Fort Sumter, was now cut off, greatly to their distress,--for they were poor,--but because, when he saw the Union flag fall at Charleston, he had written home that it was a glorious sight; and they knew that the love of his wife, and the love of his property, had made him a traitor to his country.
"If I've a brother enlisted on the wrong side," said Frank, "so much the more reason that I should enlist on the right side. And I am not so young but that I can be doing something for my country, and something for you here at home, at the same time. If I volunteer, you will be allowed state aid, and I mean to send home all my pay, to the last dollar. I wish you would tell me, father, that I can have your consent."
Mr. Manly sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed, his hands pressed together, and his head sunk upon his breast. For a long time he had not spoken. He was a feeble man, who had not succeeded well in the business of life; his great fault being that he always relied too much upon others, and not enough upon himself. The result was, that his wife had become more the head of the family than he was, and every important question of this kind, as Frank well knew, was referred to her for decision.
"O, I don't know, I don't know, my son," Mr. Manly groaned; and, uncrossing his legs, he crossed them again in another posture. "I have said all I can; now you must talk with your mother."
"There, mother," said Frank, who had got the answer he expected, and now proceeded to make good use of it; "father is willing, you see. All I want now is for you to say yes. I must go and enlist to-morrow, if I mean to get into the same company with the other boys; and I'm sure you'd rather I'd go with the fellows I know, than with strangers. We are going to befriend each other, and stand by each other to the last."
"Some of them, I am afraid, are not such persons as I would wish to have you on very intimate terms with, any where, my child," answered Mrs. Manly; "for there is one danger I should dread for you worse than the chances of the battle-field."
"What's that?"
"That you might be led away by bad company. To have you become corrupted by their evil influences--to know that my boy was no longer the pure, truthful child he was; that he would blush to have his sisters know his habits and companions; to see him come home, if he ever does, reckless and dissipated--O, I could endure any thing, even his death, better than that."
"Well," exclaimed Frank,