Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/399

Rh We rode together towards the front, and as we rode our talk fell on Goethe and on Faust, and of all passages the soldiers song came up to my lips—the song of soldiers of fortune, not the chant of men whose business it was to defend their country. Two lines, however, were significant:

We reached the front. An occasional "zip" gave warning that the sharpshooters were not asleep, and the quick eye of the general saw that our line needed rectification, and how. Brief orders were given to the officer in command. My comrade was left to aid in carrying them out. The rest of us withdrew. Scarcely had we ridden a hundred yards towards camp when a shout was heard, and, turning round, we saw one of the men running after us. "The captain had been killed." The peace of heaven was on his face as I gazed on the noble features that afternoon. The bullet had passed through his official papers and found his heart. He had received his discharge, and the glorious reward had been won.

This is the other picture that the talk of the two old soldiers called up—dead Confederate against living Federal; and these two pictures stand out before me again, as I am trying to make others understand and to understand myself what it was to be a Southern man twenty-five years ago; what it was to accept with the whole heart the creed of the Old South. The image of the living Federal bids me refrain from harsh words in the presence of those who were my captors. The dead Confederate bids me uncover the sacred memories that the dust of life's Appian Way hides from the tenderest and truest of those whose business it is to live and work. For my dead comrade of the Valley campaign is one of many—some of them my friends, some of them my pupils as well. The eighteenth of July, 1861, laid low one