“You know then how Minnesota was a pioneer state, and how she sent a fifth of her population to the war, and Dad among the first? You know how the First Minnesota held the hill and turned the day at Gettysburg, though few of them lived to tell of their own bravery? It makes the lump come up in my throat even to remember it, just as it did when I first heard the news and knew that my boy-lover was there.”
There was silence a moment.
“Ah, Dick, you have a young body to match your heart,” Mrs. Percival went on, “but Dad, before he was twenty, carried a bullet in his side. He had to conquer pain before he could spend strength on other things.”
Dick rubbed his cheek with the mother’s trembling hand.
“Yes,” he said soberly, “it must have been harder to endure the sufferings that clung to him and killed him at last than it would have been to give everything in one swift sacrifice. Endurance,—that’s a word I don’t know, do I, mother?”
“No, dear, that’s the word you know least; but you’ll have to learn it.”
“Ellery, I guess that’s where you have the advantage of me.” Dick looked up with a smile.
“If I have, it’s been a dour lesson,” Norris answered with a wry face.
“Well, if Dad gave his life to his country by dying, I mean to give mine by living,” Dick went on. “There must be things that need doing.”
“More than there are men to do them,” said his mother softly. “You have his spirit and his genius. You have health, too. Don’t put a bullet in your young manhood.”