“In ’61 I was on my father’s farm in Pennsylvani’. I was on’y a kid then—fifteen—but when the war come I wanted the worst way to go. But my mother, she cried an’ begged me not to, an’ my daddy said he’d lick me, so I tried t’ forget it.
“But I couldn’t. Lots o’ other boys was goin’ away t’ enlist an’ they was all treated like heroes. Ye’d ’a’ thought they’d won the war already by themselves the way folks carried on when they left—the girls cryin’ about ’em an’ the teacher an’ the minister an’ the circuit judge speakin’ to ’em an’ all the stay-at-homes mad because they wasn’t goin’, too.
“It kept gettin’ harder an’ harder to work on the farm, an’ finally I said, ‘Well, I’ll go anyway.’ I knew pa an’ ma wouldn’t change their mind, so I didn’t say nothin’ to them. But I went to all the other boys an’ told them. ‘I’m goin’ away t’ enlist,’ I’d say, an’ when they’d laugh an’ say, ‘Why, y’r ma won’t let ye,’ I’d look wise an’ tell ’em to watch me, an’ I’d strut aroun’ an’ wink sly-like.
“They got to talkin’ about it so much I was scairt my dad would find out, but he didn’t, an’ I held back as long as I could, because all the other boys was lookin’ up to me. I was a man, all right, then. None o’ ’em that went away was the mogul I was. The girls got wind of it, too, an’ I could see ’em out o’ the tail o’ my eye watchin’ me an’ whisperin’ an’ sayin’, girl-like, all the things the boys was tryin’ not to say. That on’y made the boys talk more, too.
“So after a few days I ran away. The first night I hung roun’ near the town an’ after dark sneaked back to hear ’em talkin’. ‘He’ll be back soon,’ one feller said. Another, just to show he knew more, spoke up, ‘No, he won’ come back ’less in blue or in a coffin.’ An’ the others laughed.
“I thought that was fine—in blue or a coffin. ‘You bet I won’t; I’m the man f’r that,’ says I to myself.
“It took me three days to walk to the city. When I told the recruitin’ sergeant I wanted to be high corporal he laughed an’ pounded me an’ put me through my paces. Then he said I couldn’t be a soldier. My eyes wasn’t good enough.
“I cried at that; on’y a kid, y’ know—the’ was lots of ’em younger than me fightin’. But I remembered the feller what said, ‘He won’t come back ’cept in blue or a coffin,’ so I went where the soldiers was an’ bummed an’ hobnobbed with ’em till they let me help at peelin’ vegetables and pot-wrastlin’ an’ such things. Then I got to be a sort o’ water boy. My, I was proud!... But that on’y lasted a month, an’ I had to get out.
“I jus’ couldn’t go home without the blue, an’ it seemed too soon to get a coffin yet, so I went to New York an’ stayed all through the war. Nearly starved, too.
“After it was over I went back home. They didn’t suspicion, o’ course, an’ the first thing I knew I’d told ’em I’d been in the army. Hadn’t planned to, but some way it just popped out.