had heard often enough, for there had been more stories told than read in
our house. But now for the first time I knew what my grandmother and my
uncles had meant when they told me about the way they had come into the
wilderness, and about the great happiness and freedom of those first days. I,
too, felt this freedom, and it seemed to me as if I never again wanted walls to
close in on me. All my fear was gone, and I felt wild and glad. I could not
believe that I was only a little girl. I felt taller even than my father.
Father's mood was like mine in a way. He had memories to add to his
emotion, but then, on the other hand, he lacked the sense of discovery I
had, for he had known often such feelings as were coming to me for the first
time. When he was a young man he had been a colporteur for the American
Bible Society among the Lake Superior Indians, and in that way had earned
part of the money for his course at the University of Michigan; afterward he
had gone with other gold-seekers to Pike's Peak, and had crossed the plains
with oxen, in the company of many other adventurers; then, when President
Lincoln called for troops, he had returned to enlist with the Michigan men,
and had served more than three years with McClellan and Grant.
So, naturally, there was nothing he did not know about making himself
comfortable in the open. He knew all the sorrow and all the joy of the
homeless man, and now, as he cooked, he began to sing the old songs—
"Marching Through Georgia," and "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie," and "In
the Prison Cell I Sit." He had been in a Southern prison after the Battle of
the Wilderness, and so he knew how to sing that song with particular
feeling.
I had heard war stories all my life, though usually father told such tales in a
half-joking way, as if to make light of everything he had gone through. But
now, as we ate there under the tossing pines, and the wild chorus in the
treetops swelled like a rising sea, the spirit of the old days came over him.
He was a good "stump speaker," and he knew how to make a story come to
life, and never did all his simple natural gifts show themselves better than
on this night, when he dwelt on his old campaigns.
For the first time I was to look into the heart of a kindly natured man, forced
by terrible necessity to go through the dread experience of war. I gained an
idea of the unspeakable homesickness of the man who leaves his family to an unimagined fate, and sacrifices years in the service of his country. I saw
that the mere foregoing of roof and bed is an indescribable distress; I
learned something of what the palpitant anxiety before a battle must be, and
the quaking fear at the first rattle of bullets, and the half-mad rush of
determination with which men force valour into their faltering hearts; I was
made to know something of the blight of war—the horror of the battlefield,
the waste of bounty, the ruin of homes.
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz