[Original]
Ralph was silent. His heart burned with patriotic fire, and it seemed to him that it was his duty to help swell the numbers of those who were ready to respond to the President's call. But he also knew that his mother loved her early home, and that it seemed to her unnatural for him to be so ready to take up arms against “her people,” and he respected her too deeply to wound her willingly. That mother had been gently born, and when she met the young Northern lawyer, she had loved him from the first, and cheerfully shared his humble but peaceful home. She was now left alone in the world, with her three girls and this boy, the youngest. The fortunes of war were too varying. She might never see him again, and how could she live without him?
To Ralph was presented a problem that he was called unexpectedly to solve. He pondered over it in the silence of night, and in the busy hours of day. Was it right to fly in the face of his beloved mother's prejudices by joining the Federal forces? On the one hand he felt that he, too, was Southern in feeling and in birth. His father was a Northern man, and he would uphold the old flag; but which side it was his duty to join, he could not determine. He was resolved to go into one of the two armies. In the crisis that had come, it was clearly every one's duty to come to the front.
The boy talked with every one whom he could interest. He was not able to study out the problem alone. One of his schoolmates had the proud distinction of having an uncle who was a commissioned officer, and he took the bold step of meeting him one day when he was walking past his home.
“Sir,” he said timidly, “may I speak to you?”
“Certainly,” the officer replied. And then and there he poured forth his doubts, his desire to do what was right, his mother's objections—all, he told the waiting gentleman whose opinion he so desired.
The officer laid his hand kindly on the boy's shoulder.
“Your wish does you credit. The fortunes of war are too varying for me to decide for you. Try and work out the proper answer yourself, and may you be helped to make a wise decision.”
Alas, the question was too hard for a boy like him to answer. He was humbly trying to see where his duty lay, and then he was ready to enlist on whichever side called him. On one hand was his mother and her early teachings, on the other his dead father, with all his views. “What side would he choose were he here?” was the ever-recurring thought in his anxious brain.