"It is so always and everywhere," I replied. "You may never study life as you study nature. With men you must take your choice: liberty for your mind and a prison for your body; liberty for your body and a prison for your mind. Nearly all people choose the latter; we know what becomes of the few who do not."
But this reference to the times led us to speak slowly and solemnly of what all men now are speaking—war that must come between the North and the South. We agreed that it would come from each side as a blazing torch to Kentucky, which lies between the two and is divided between the two in love and hate—to Kentucky, where the ideal of a soldier's life is always the ideal of a man's duty and utmost glory.
At last I felt that my time had come.
"Georgiana," I said, "there is one secret I have never shared with you. It is the only fear I have ever felt regarding our future. But, if there should be a war—you'd better know it now—leave you or not leave you, I am going to join the army."
She grew white and faint with the thought of a day to come. But at last she said:
"Yes; you must go."
"I know one thing," I added, after a long silence; "if I could do my whole duty as a Kentuckian—as an American citizen—as a human being—I should have to fight on both sides."
I have thus set down in a poor way a part of the only talk I ever had with Georgiana on these subjects during the year 1851.
Yesterday, about sunset, the earth and sky were beautiful with that fulness of peace which things often attain at the moment before they alter and end. The hour seemed to me the last serene loveliness of summer, soon to be ruffled by gales and blackened by frosts.
Georgiana stood at her window looking into the west. The shadows of the trees in my yard fell longer and longer across the garden towards her. Darkest among these lay the shapes of the cedars and the pines in which the redbird had lived. Her whole attitude bespoke a mood surrendered to memory; and I felt sure that we two were thinking of the same thing.