“Put back your money. My son was a soldier,” she said.
“But I am not a soldier. Well, well,” (as he looked into her face,) “I thank you, and I take it for his sake.”
He wished good-night to his kind entertainer and turned away. As he walked off, slow and limping, bent by infirmity, the long skirt of his army overcoat struck bright and blue against the splendor of the sunset; he shaded his eyes with one trembling hand and looked wistfully at the rose and amethyst door that seemed to open in the west. What saw he there? A little, round-shouldered woman with a small, homely face; a lank, overgrown boy, with sparse, red hair. Ay, and of such as these are angels made. So, watching, he passed down into the shadows and disappeared.
The woman at the gate looked after him.
“No soldier!” she said gently, “but I wonder if the boy who died on his first battle-field ever fought as he has, or sacrificed as much to his country? All the soldiers didn’t go into the war with flying flags and rolling drums. Some of them stayed at home and fought harder battles. I’m glad I gave him a bite and a sup. He is a soldier, and a brave one, too, and one day he will know it!”
And I think she was right.
—Detroit Free Press.
The Old Actor’s Story.
First Honor at the Third Annual Commencement of the Mt. Vernon Institute of Elocution and Languages, 1886.
Mine is a wild, strange story,—the strangest you ever heard;