INTRODUCTION



Civil War was the most vital thing within his
knowledge. In the autumn of 1880 a letter was
shown him which had been taken from the pocket
of a dead private in a Georgia regiment on one
of the battle-fields around Richmond. It was
written in an illiterate hand on coarse blue Con-
federate paper, and was from a young girl in
Georgia to her sweetheart. In it she told him
that she had discovered since he left home that
she loved him, and that she did not know why
she had been so cruel to him before he went
away; that, in fact, she had loved him ever since
they had gone to school together in the little
school-house in the woods, when he had been so
good to her; and that now if lie would get a fur-
lough and come home she would marry him.
This was all, except, of course, a postscript. As
if fearful that such a temptation might prove too
much even for the man she loved, across the blue
Confederate paper were scrawled these words:
" Don't come without a furlough; for if you
don't come honorable, I won't marry you. "
The date of the letter was not more than two
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