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But after weeks of this long, weary struggle, he decided to join the Union army. His mother saw that he believed he was shirking a duty, and that he longed for action.
She thought she would make one more effort to change his purpose. She said to him suddenly one day, when she saw his troubled face: “Ralph, you are only seventeen. You have never been away from your home, and know nothing about hardships and privations. Do you think you could face a cannon, and know that its deadly mouth might lay you low on the field, mangled and torn?”
“Oh, mother, I never think of such things. If I enlist, I must take my chances with the rest. I want to go with the other boys. Eddie Downing and George Martin have and are going into camp to-morrow, at Readville.”
“But will the government accept you? Eddie and George are three or four years older than you. There are plenty of men, without taking a boy who is his mother's chief comfort.”
