It was not until 1863 that I left school, being then just about at
my nineteenth birthday. It is probable that the magazine stories
and Sunday-school books and hack work occupied from one to two years
without interruption; but I have no more temperament for dates in my
own affairs than I have for those of history. At the most, I could
not have been far from twenty when the book was written; possibly
approaching twenty-one.
At that time, it will be remembered, our country was dark with
sorrowing women. The regiments came home, but the mourners went about
the streets.
The Grand Review passed through Washington; four hundred thousand
ghosts of murdered men kept invisible march to the drum-beats, and
lifted to the stained and tattered flags the proud and unreturned gaze
of the dead who have died in their glory.
Our gayest scenes were black with crape. The drawn faces of bereaved
wife, mother, sister, and widowed girl showed piteously everywhere.
Gray-haired parents knelt at the grave of the boy whose enviable
fortune it was to be brought home in time to die in his mother's room.
Towards the nameless mounds of Arlington, of Gettysburg, and the rest,
the yearning of desolated homes went out in those waves of anguish
which seem to choke the very air that the happier and more fortunate
must breathe.
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