Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/395

Rh known as the author of textbooks and monographs in his chosen field of scholarship, he has also shown himself in such volumes as "Essays and Studies" and "Hellas and Hesperia" to be gifted as an English stylist.]

A few months ago, as I was leaving Baltimore for a summer sojourn on the coast of Maine, two old soldiers of the war be tween the states took their seats immediately behind me in the car and began a lively conversation about the various battles in which they had faced each other more than a quarter of a century ago, when a trip to New England would have been no holiday jaunt for one of their fellow travelers. The veterans went into the minute detail that always puts me to shame, when I think how poor an account I should give if pressed to describe the military movements that I have happened to witness; and I may as well acknowledge at the outset that I have as little aptitude for the soldier's trade as I have for the romancer's. Single incidents I remember as if they were of yesterday. Single pictures have burned themselves into my brain. But I have no vocation to tell how fields were lost and won, and my experience of military life was too brief and fitful to be of any value to the historian of the war. For my own life that experience has been of the utmost significance, and despite the heavy price I have had to pay for my outings, despite the daily reminder of five long months of intense suffering, I have no regrets. An able-bodied young man, with a long vacation at his disposal, could not have done otherwise, and the right to teach Southern youth for nine months was earned by sharing the fortunes of their fathers and brothers at the front for three. Self-respect is everything; and it is