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