The last fight of our regiment had been fought. We were proud of our victory, and though the little battle is barely noticed in military histories, it has an interest which makes it memorable to those who were there. It was the prelude of a great drama. The advance of our division of the Sixth Corps was a reconnaissance in force with the object of checking, if possible, Lee's northward movement, and in our little battle at Franklin's Crossing at the Rappahannock, the first blood of the great Gettysburg campaign was shed.

One Young Soldier

The generous sentiment which would crown every one who fell in our Great War with the hero's wreath may be excessive, yet a personal acquaintance with almost any random portion of that enormous death-roll will certainly make one feel that its length is its least significance.

Not long ago I made a pilgrimage to my native village. Of course the old cemetery had to be visited. I knew the place was full of ghosts of other days, but a strange thrill went through me as I found the frequent stones inscribed with the names of former schoolmates or comrades who had fallen in the war.

Here was one that said, "Captain R. S——, staff-officer—killed at the battle of the Wilderness." The silent stone recalled dear friends and neighbours and the sacrifice of their only son, the most high-spirited and pluckiest young fellow in the town, one of those ready and resourceful characters to whom the word "impossible" is a stranger. A little farther on, under the shadow of ancient cedars, were two marble shafts. One bore the name of gentle, reticent, but forceful W. P——, and the fateful words, "Fell at the Battle of Bull Run." How memory brings back the rush of feeling with which the tidings of his death came to us, his schoolmates from whom he had so lately parted!

The other monument, in its simple uprightness, seemed a fit memorial for a knightly soul. Noble Harry B——! We who knew him said to ourselves, How can the world spare such as he! But the legend on the marble told how he met his death while in command of a battery in Sheridan's great fight at Cedar Creek.

I wandered on till I came to an humble stone whose rudely pathetic inscription, telling how it was "erected to his memory by his wife," touched me deeply. Bluff, hearty Henry H—— was one of my own company who fell on the bloody field of Salem Heights. Just a plain man, only a private, no conspicuous hero, yet one of those faithfully courageous souls who, when thick-flying bullets are droning their deadly song, and the scorching breath of battle tries the line, never give captain or file-closers a moment's anxiety. You could always depend upon "Hank" to stand like a rock with his face to the foe, and to waste no shots on empty air. And one reason for the Homeric deadliness of our war was that both in the brown-clad ranks of the Southrons and among the blue-coated Men of the North there were thousands like him.

I turned from the place in pensive mood. Remembering the awful harvest of great battle-fields I said to myself: Only a small fraction of it is planted in such peaceful places as this, yet this is a fair example of its lesson. Every village graveyard throughout our broad land tells the same story. Death waited with grim confidence for the choice spirits in that war, and the best of us who took our share in it are not those who live to tell its story.

Then thought travelled afar to the banks of the Rappahannock and its camps and battle-fields. I dreamed that once more I stood amid the familiar, blue-clad throng, yet there was a difference. Past and present seemed to mingle. Here and there a face would vanish or a well-remembered voice fail, grow faint and far off, or suddenly become silent, and among these one, the first sought for, the most desired, the face and voice of my tent-mate. I awoke from my dream, remembering that he, too, now belongs to the army of the nobly fallen.

But ours was no common friendship. We had been schoolmates before we became comrades, then tent-mates, finally brothers like David and Jonathan.