The Red Acorn | Page 7

boonions all over my fete from hard
marchin, ime all rite, an i hope you ar injoin the saim blessin. Weve jest
had an awful big fite, and the way we warmed it to the secshers jest
beat the jews. i doant expect theyve stopt runnin yit. All the Sardis boys
done bully except Lieutenant Harry Glen. The smell of burnt powder
seamed to onsettle his narves. He tuk powerful sick all at wunst, jest as
the trail was gittin rather fresh, and he lay groanin wen the rest of the
company marched off into the fite. He doant find the klime-it here as
healthy as it is in Sardis. i 'stinguished myself and have bin promoted,
and ive got a Rebel gun for you with a bore big enuff to put a walnut in,
and it'll jest nock your hole darned shoulder off every time you shoot it.
No more yours til deth send me some finecut tobacker for heavens
sake.

Jacob Alspaugh.
Rachel tore the letter into a thousand fragments, and flung the volume
of poems into the ditch below. She hastened to her room, and no one
saw her again until the next morning, when she came down dressed in
somber black, her face pale, and her colorless lips tightly compressed.

Chapter II
. First Shots.

"Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will
be put out." --Sir Walter Raleigh, on "The Snuff of a Candle."
All military courage of any value is the offspring of pride and will. The
existence of what is called "natural courage" may well be doubted.
What is frequently mistaken for it is either perfect self-command, or a
stolid indifference, arising from dull-brained inability to comprehend
what really is danger.
The first instincts of man teach him to shun all sources of harm, and if
his senses are sufficiently acute to perceive danger, his natural
disposition is to avoid encountering it. This disposition can only be
overcome by the exercise of the power of pride and will--pride to aspire
to the accomplishment of certain things, even though risk attend, and
will to carry out those aspirations.
Harry Glen was apparently not deficient in either pride or will. The
close observer, however, seemed to see as his mastering sentiment a
certain starile selfishness, not uncommon among the youths of his
training and position in the slow-living, hum-drum country towns of
Ohio. The only son of a weakly-fondling mother and a father too
earnestly treading the narrow path of early diligences and small savings
by which a man becomes the richest in his village, to pay any attention
to him, Harry grew up a self-indulgent, self-sufficient boy. His course
at the seminary and college naturally developed this into a snobbish
assumption that he was of finer clay than the commonality, and in some
way selected by fortune for her finer displays and luxurious purposes. I
have termed this a "sterile selfishness," to distinguish it from that grand
egoism which in large minds is fruitful of high accomplishments and
great deeds, and to denote a force which, in the sons of the average

"rich" men of the county seats, is apt to expend itself in satisfaction at
having finer clothes and faster horses and pleasanter homes, than the
average--in a pride of white hands and a scorn of drudgery.
When Harry signed his name upon the recruiting roll--largely impelled
thereto by the delicately-flattering suggestion that he should lead off for
the youth of Sardis--he had not the slightest misgiving that by so doing
he would subject himself to any of the ills and discomforts incidental to
carrying out the enterprise upon which they were embarking. He, like
every one else, had no very clear idea of what the company would be
called upon to do or undergo; but no doubt obtruded itself into his mind
that whatever might be disagreeable in it would fall to some one else's
lot, and he continue to have the same pleasant exemption that had been
his good fortune so far through life.
And though the company was unexpectedly ordered to the field in the
rugged mountains of Western Virginia, instead of to pleasant quarters
about Washington, there was nothing to shake this comfortable belief.
The slack discipline of the first three months' service, and the confusion
of ideas that prevailed in the beginning of the war as to military duties
and responsibilities, enabled him to spend all the time he chose away
from his company and with congenial spirits, about headquarters, and
to make of the expedition, so far as he was concerned, a pleasant picnic.
Occasionally little shadows were thrown by the sight of corpses
brought in, with ugly-looking bullet holes in head or breast, but these
were always of the class he