HOME AGAIN.
The 1st Ga. Regiment was the only infantry organization from this State mustered out at the expiration of its first year's service. The Conscript Act became effective in the spring of '62, and succeeding regiments, whose terms expired later were under its provision retained in the service. On the return of the command from Romney the 1st Ga. was ordered to Tennessee. Going by rail to Lynchburg, a railroad accident occasioned some delay at that point and as their time would have expired in a few days they were sent to Augusta to be mustered out.
My brother, knowing that I would not be strong enough to rejoin the command before its term of service ended, decided to take me directly home. And so by stage and rail, with tiresome delays at every junction, in the deepening twilight of a fair spring day, weak and weary, I came in sight of the old homestead once more. Over the joy and gladness of such a meeting after an absence, every day of which had seemed to those I had left behind, an age of agony and dread, it is meet that the mantle of silence should fall. The halo that came to fathers and mothers hearts in those old days when their "boys" came home from the war, seemed like a breath from Heaven. It was sacred then and to me it is sacred still. Loving lips, that gave me glad welcome that spring day have long been cold and silent, and eyes that shone through misty tears are dim in death. Some time in the coming months or years, I know not when, and yet in God's good time, in weakness and in weariness at even-tide on some spring day again, it may be, I shall, I trust, go "home again;" not to the old homestead hallowed as it is by a mother's love and a father's prayers, and yet to find hard by the River of Life from lips long silent, a welcome just as loving in "a city, whose builder and maker is God."