The Red Acorn | Page 4

- - - - - - - - - - - - 38
Chapter V
.--The Lint-Scraping and Bandage-making Union, - - - 52
Chapter VI
.--The Awakening, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 62
Chapter VII
.--Pomp and Circumstance of Glorious War, - - - - 71
Chapter VIII
.--The Tedium of Camp, - - - - - - - - - - - - - 85
Chapter IX
.--On the March, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 92
Chapter X
.--The Mountaineer's Revenge, - - - - - - - - - - - 112
Chapter XI
.--Through the Mountain and the Night, - - - - - - 126
Chapter XII
.--Aunt Debby Brill, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 141

Chapter XIII
.--An Apple Jack Raid, - - - - - - - - - - - - - 160
Chapter XIV
.--In the Hospital, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 175
Chapter XV
.--Making Acquaintance with Duty, - - - - - - - - - 184
Chapter XVI
.--The Ambuscade, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 204
Chapter XVII
.--Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain, - - - - - - - - - - 230
Chapter XVIII
.--Secret Service, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 252
Chapter XIX
.--The Battle of Stone River, - - - - - - - - - - 279

Chapter I
. A Declaration.

O, what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the Earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm
ear lays." --Lowell.
Of all human teachers they were the grandest who gave us the New
Testament, and made it a textbook for Man in every age. Transcendent
benefactors of the race, they opened in it a never-failing well-spring of
the sweet waters of Consolation and Hope, which have flowed over,
fertilized, and made blossom as a rose the twenty-century wide desert
of the ills of human existence.
But they were not poets, as most of the authors of the Old Testament
were.
They were too much in earnest in their great work of carrying the glad
evangel of Redemption to all the earth--they so burned with eagerness
to pour their joyful tidings into every ear, that they recked little of the
FORM in which the saving intelligence was conveyed.
Had they been poets would they have conceived Heaven as a place with
foundations of jasper, sapphires and emeralds, gates of pearl, and

streets of burnished gold that shone like glass? Never.
That showed them to be practical men, of a Semitic cast of mind, who
addressed hearers that agreed with them in regarding gold and precious
stones as the finest things of which the heart could dream.
Had they been such lovers of God's handiwork in Nature as the Greek
religious teachers--who were also poets--they would have painted us a
Heaven vaulted by the breath of opening flowers, and made musical by
the sweet songs of birds in the first rapture of finding their young
mates.
In other words they would have given us a picture of earth on a perfect
June day.
On the afternoon of such a day as this Rachel Bond sat beneath an
apple-tree at the crest of a moderate hill, and looked dreamily away to
where, beyond the village of Sardis at the foot of the hill, the Miami
River marked the beautiful valley like a silver ribbon carelessly flung
upon a web of green velvet. Rather she seemed to be looking there, for
the light that usually shown outward in those luminous eyes was turned
inward. The little volume of poems had dropped unheeded from the
white hand. It had done its office: the passion of its lines had keyed her
thoughts to a harmony that suffused her whole being, until all seemed
as naturally a part of the glorious day as the fleecy clouds in the
sapphire sky, the cheerful hum of the bees, and the apple-blossoms'
luxurious scent.
Her love--and, quite as much, her girlish ambition--had been crowned
with violets and bays some weeks before, when the fever-heat of
patriotism seemed to bring another passion in Harry Glen's bosom to
the eruptive point, and there came the long-waited-for avowal of his
love, which was made on the evening before his company departed to
respond to the call for troops which followed the fall of