“I am from Pennsylvania.”
“Were you engaged in the war?”
“Yes.”
“Federal side, I suppose.”
“Yes; and were you also—”
“Confederate.”
“Exactly. Well, we are fellow-citizens and countrymen once more, and let us congratulate each other that the strife is over. If you are going in the stage in the morning, we will be traveling companions, and, I am sure, will prove agreeable to each other, notwithstanding that we have been fighting in opposing armies, and possibly shooting at each other.”
“I agree with you,” he replied, “and was about to make such a remark myself. True soldiers never carry animosities home with them, when the contest on the field is over.”
My Confederate companion was a young man of prepossessing appearance, twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, intelligent, affable and polite; and, as the lamp was extinguished and we retired to our respective beds in opposite corners of the room, I congratulated myself on my prospect of having an agreeable companion to join me in my visit to the Mammoth Cave on the morrow. Nor was I mistaken. My new acquaintance proved to be all that he appeared—a perfect gentleman.
With a confidence I seldom feel while a stranger is sleeping in the same room with me, I fell asleep, and enjoyed a good night’s rest, after my ride on the train from Louisville.