CHAPTER I
ENLISTING IN THE GRAND ARMY
"HURRAH!" exclaimed Robert Alston, swinging his hat in the air, as he came up the path; "hurrah! there's going to be a draft at Brookside! Won't it be jolly?"
The group assembled glanced up at him, – a fair, fresh, rosy boy, without any cowardly blood in his veins, as you could easily tell, but given, as such natures often are, to underrating the silent bravery of others.
"What will there be so jolly about it, Rob?" asked his uncle, with a peculiar light in his eye.
"Why, – the whole thing," – and Rob made a little pause to think, though it did not seem half so funny now as out on the street with a crowd of boys, who had been singing at the top of their lungs, "John Brown's Body," and "My Johnny has gone for a Soldier," – "the surprise, Uncle Robert, when some of the fellows who have been skulking back and afraid to go find themselves compelled."
"So you think it rather funny to be forced to do what you would not choose of your free-will?" and Uncle Robert gave a queer little smile.
"But – " and Rob looked around considerably perplexed at not finding his argument at hand, and overwhelming. "O, you know what I mean!" throwing himself down upon the grass. "If men haven't patriotism enough to volunteer when their country needs them, why, I think they ought – I just wish I was old enough! I'd go in a moment. I'd like the fun of 'marching on'!"
"There is something beside marching," said Kathie, in her soft voice, thinking in a vague way of General Mackenzie.
"Well, I'd like all of it!"
"The being drafted as well?"
It was Uncle Robert who spoke.
"No, I'd never be drafted!" and Rob's fair face flushed with a boy's impulsive indignation; "I'd go at once, – at the first call."
"But if you were a man and had a wife, as well as bairnies, three or four, or half a dozen, and were compelled to leave them to poverty?"
"There is the bounty, and the pay."
"Neither of which would be as much as a man could earn in a year at home. And if he never came back – "
"But, Uncle Robert, don't you think it right for a man to be patriotic?" asked his nephew, in a little amaze.
"Yes. One can never approve of cowardice in any act of life. Still, I fancy there may be a great many brave and good men who have not volunteered, and who, if they are drafted, will do their country loyal service. It may not look quite so heroic, but God, who can see all sides of the question, will judge differently."
"The soldiers don't feel so, Uncle Robert. It seems to me that the men who volunteer do deserve a good deal of credit."
"A great many of them do; but still numbers go for the novelty, or, as you say, the fun. They like a rambling, restless life, and care little for danger, little for death; but is it an intelligent courage, – the highest and noblest kind? Does not the man who says, 'If my country in her sorest strait needs me, I will go and do my duty to the utmost,' deserve some credit, especially if he gives up what most men hold most dear?"
"I believe I didn't look at it in that light altogether. It seemed to me that it was only the cowards and the selfish men who waited to be drafted."
"Then you think I ought to volunteer?" said Uncle Robert, with a dry but good-natured smile.
There was a very general exclamation.
"You!" exclaimed Rob, aghast at the unlooked-for application.
"I have neither wife nor children. I am young, strong, in good health, and though I do not fancy a military life above all others, I still think I could endure the hardships like a good soldier, and if I stood in the front ranks to face the enemy I do not believe that I should run away."
He rose as he said this, and, folding his arms across his chest, leaned against the vine-covered column of the porch, looking every inch a soldier without the uniform.
It would break his mother's heart to have Uncle Robert go, and there was Aunt Ruth, and Kathie, and Freddy; but – what a handsome soldier he would make! Major Alston, or Colonel Alston, – how grand it would sound! So you see Rob was quite taken with military glory.
Kathie came and slipped her hand within Uncle Robert's. "We could not spare you," she whispered, softly.
"But if I were drafted?"
"Well," exclaimed Rob, stubbornly clinging to his point, "the boys over in the village think it will make some fun. There's a queer little recruiting shanty on the green, and a fifer and a drummer. If our quota isn't filled by next Wednesday, – and they all say it won't be, – the draft is to commence. I'm glad I'm not going away until the first of October. I only wish – "
"I wish you were, if that will do you any good," answered Mr. Meredith, glancing up from his book which he had been pretending to read.
"I'd rather enlist than go to school."
"Maybe enlisting in the home-guard will prove a wise step for the first one."
"Home-guard?" and Rob looked a bit perplexed.
"Yes. We all do considerable soldiering in our lives unconsciously; and if it comes hard to obey our captains here, I am not sure that we should always find it so easy out on the field. There are some things that take more courage than to march down to the valley of death as did the 'Six Hundred.'"
