The Drummer Boy

by J. T. Trowbridge

The next day the boys, with somewhat lugubrious faces, returned to their hard diet of pork and hominy, heaving now and then a sigh of fond remembrance, as they thought of yesterday's puddings and turkeys.

And now came other hardships. The days were generally warm, sometimes hot even, like those of July in New England. But the nights were cold, and growing colder and colder as the winter came on. And the tents were but a thin shelter, and clothing was scanty, and the men suffered. Many a time Frank, shivering under his blanket, thought, with a swelling and homesick heart, of Willie in his soft, warm bed, of his mother's inexhaustible store of comforters, and of the kitchen stove and the family breakfast, those raw wintry mornings.

From the day the regiment encamped, the men had expected that they were soon to move again. But now they determined that, even though they should have orders to march in three days, they would make themselves comfortable in the mean while. They accordingly set to work constructing underground stoves, covered with flat stones, with a channel on one side to convey away the smoke, and a deeper channel on the other for the draft. These warmed the earth, and kept up an even temperature in the tents all night.

I said Frank sometimes had homesick feelings. It was not alone the hardships of camp life that caused them. But as yet he had not received a single letter from his friends, and his longing to get news from them was such as only those boys can understand who have never been away from home until they have suddenly gone upon a long and comfortless journey, and who then begin to realize, as never before, all the loving care of their parents, the kindness of brothers and sisters, and the blessedness of the dear old nest from which they have untimely flown.

Owing to the uncertainty of the regiment's destination, Captain Edney had told his men to have all their friends' letters to them directed to Washington. There they had been sent, and there, through some misunderstanding or neglect, they remained. And though a small mail-bag full had been written to Frank, this was the reason he had never yet received one.

Alas for those missing letters! The lack of them injured Frank more deeply and lastingly than simply by wounding his heart. For soon that hurt began to heal. He was fast getting used to living without news from his family. He consoled himself by entering more fully than he had done at first into the excitements of the camp. And the sacred influence of home, so potent to solace and to save, even at a distance, was wanting.

And here begins a portion of Frank's history which I would be glad to pass over in silence. But, as many boys will probably read this story who are not altogether superior to temptation, and who do not yet know how easy it is for even a good-hearted, honest, and generous lad sometimes to forget his mother's lessons and his own promises, and commence that slow, gradual, downward course, which nearly always begins before we are aware, and from which it is then so hard to turn back; and as many may learn from his experience, and so save themselves much shame and their friends much anguish, it is better that Frank's history should be related without reserve.

In the first place, he learned to smoke. He began by taking a whiff, now and then, out of the pipe of a comrade, just to be in fashion, and to keep himself warm those chill evenings and mornings. Then a tobacco planter gave him, in return for some polite act on his part, a bunch of tobacco leaves, which Frank, with his usual ingenuity, made up into cigars for himself and friends. The cigars consumed, he obtained more tobacco of some negroes, addicted himself to a pipe, and became a regular smoker.

Now, I don't mean to say that this, of itself, was a very great sin. It was, however, a foolish thing in Frank to form at his age a habit which might tyrannize over him for life, and make him in the end, as he himself once said to John Winch, "a filthy, tobacco-spitting old man."

But the worst of it was, he had promised his mother he would not smoke. He thought he had a good excuse for breaking his word to her. "I am sure," he said, "if she knew how cold I am sometimes, she wouldn't blame me." Unfortunately, however, when one promise has been broken, and nobody hurt, another is broken so easily!