“No,” she said; “your father gave his life in the war with Mexico. Now my health is gone and you are all that's left to us. You are enlisted in a war with Poverty, and I can't spare you.”
She put her arms around me and cried, and I promised to stay at home, if possible, and it seemed a hard fate in spite of my happiness.
I wrote a long letter to the Colonel and confessed my love for his daughter, and begged him not to think ill of me without full information as to my character, and referred him to a number of good people.
This brief and suggestive letter came promptly:
Dear Sir,—As to your character, I have had all the information I desire. I should think better of it if you were to cease communicating with my daughter against my wishes.
It hurt like the blow of a hammer, and I could not think of the Colonel with any degree of charity for a week or more, but, after all, it helped to make a man of me. In the heat of such days a man shapes his character—as the smith his iron that is hot from the forge—and tempers it in cool reflection. Soon I got a letter from Sam that told of the departure of Jo and the Colonel for Washington.