twenty years at hull house

Chapter 26: Pg.44



living-room. As children we used to read this list of names again and

again. We could reach it only by dint of putting the family Bible on a

chair and piling the dictionary on top of it; using the Bible to stand on

was always accompanied by a little thrill of superstitious awe, although

we carefully put the dictionary above that our profane feet might touch

it alone. Having brought the roster within reach of our eager fingers, —fortunately it was glazed, —we would pick out the names of those

who "had fallen on the field'' from those who "had come hack from the

war," and from among the latter those whose children were our

schoolmates. When drives were planned, we would say, "Let us take

this road," that we might pass the farm where a soldier had once lived;

if flowers from the garden were to be given away, we would want them

to go to the mother of one of those heroes whose names we knew from

the "Addams's Guard." If a guest should become interested in the roster on the wall, he was at once led by the eager children to a small

picture of Colonel Davis which hung next the opposite window, that

he might see the brave Colonel of the Regiment. The introduction to

the picture of the one-armed man seemed to us a very solemn ceremony, and long after the guest was tired of listening, we would tell

each other all about the local hero, who at the head of his troops had

suffered wounds unto death. We liked very much to talk to a gentle old

lady who lived in a white farmhouse a mile north of the village. She

was the mother of the village hero, Tommy, and used to tell us of her

long anxiety during the spring of

' 62 ; how she waited day after day for

the hospital to surrender up her son, each morning airing the white homespun sheets and holding the little bedroom in immaculate readiness. It was after the battle of Fort Donelson that Tommy was wounded

and had been taken to the hospital at Springfield; his father went

down to him and saw him getting worse each week, until it was clear

that he was going to die; but there was so much red tape about the

department, and affairs were so confused, that his discharge could not

he procured. At last the hospital surgeon intimated to his father that

he should quietly take him away; a man as sick as that, it would be all

right; but when they told Tommy, weak as he was, his eyes flashed,

and he said, "No, sir; I will go out of the front door or I'll die here." Of

course after that every man in the hospital worked for it, and in two

weeks he was honorably discharged. When he came home at last, his

mother's heart was broken to see him so wan and changed. She would


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