As this is not a story of fiction, I have given the names of all that I remember who were in any way connected with it, in the hope that there are yet some of the number living who will read my little narrative and recognize their own part in it. Should such be the case, my joy at hearing from any or all of them could not be expressed. I have written, that there might be a record of the facts, that my sister and brothers might become familiar with them, and because I love to dwell upon the incidents of my “army life,” as I sometimes term it. Lastly, I have written that it might be as a memorial to my brave, courageous mother, who, with her own hands, ministered so tenderly to the sick and wounded with whom she was brought in close contact. Whether this ever reaches the public eye is a question. Should it be so fortunate, I ask the public to read with kindly criticism, remembering that it is the story of the child told in the language of the adult.
1862-1899. The line between the dates represents a bridge as it were of thirty-seven planks, and each plank a year. It takes but a single stroke of the pen to make the little bridge of ink representing the years; but can I measure the smiles and tears, the joys and sorrows, that are crowded into each year? Can I retrace my steps, passing on the way the graves that have opened and closed on some of earth’s best and dearest treasures, and gather from the past a few memories that the corroding cares of life and the ever onward-rushing “flood of years” have not wholly obliterated from my mind? I can but try, and in so doing I feel constrained to cry out,
“Backward, turn backward, O, time in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight.”
But alas! this and my hungry heart-cry of
“Mother, come back from that echoless shore,”
are alike vainly uttered. Having long had this in mind, I now for the first time give to the world a simple little story of the early part of my life. It is a story of the war without much war in it. My first recollections of the Civil War (which I always thought very uncivil) are of the days of ’61, after Sumter had been fired upon, when each night one of the neighbors would come into our home, and she and my parents would discuss the prospects of war, which at first though a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, was even then lowering darkly upon us. We didn’t get the newspapers daily then as we do now, but whenever one could be obtained, my mother would read the news aloud, while I lay in my trundle bed, listening and cowering with fear. Who shall say that children do not enter into the spirit of current events? I had all a child’s fear of war, and that fear hung over me, for a time, as a dark cloud, for I thought the battles would be fought at our very doors.