“Why don’t you let him teach you to read, Chloe?”

“Oh, Lor’, missus, I couldn’t learn, nohow.  I ain’t got no gumption.  I don’t know noffin’.”

“Why couldn’t you learn as well as Pomp?”

“Dat ar boy’s a gen’us, missus.  His fader was a mighty smart niggar, and Pomp’s took arter him.”

Chloe’s conviction of her own inferiority and Pomp’s superior ability seemed so rooted that Mrs. Frost finally gave up her persuasions.  Meanwhile, as Chloe is in good health and has abundance of work, she has no difficulty in earning a comfortable subsistence for herself and Pomp.  As soon as Pomp is old enough, Frank will employ him upon the farm.

While I am writing these lines intelligence has just been received from Frank’s substitute at the seat of war.  He has just been promoted to a captaincy.  In communicating this he adds:  “You may tell Frank that I am now his equal in rank, though his commission bears an earlier date.  I suppose, therefore, I must content myself with being Captain Frost, Jr.  I shall be very glad when the necessities of the country will permit me to lay aside the insignia of rank and, returning to Rossville, subside into plain Henry Frost again.  If you ask me when this is to be, I can only say that it depends on the length of our struggle.  I am enlisted for the war, and I mean to see it through!  Till that time Frank must content himself with acting as my substitute at home.  I am so well pleased with his management of the farm that I am convinced it is doing as well as if I were at home to superintend it in person.  Express to Mr. Waring my gratitude for the generous proposal he has made to Frank.  I feel that words are inadequate to express the extent of our obligations to him.”

Some years have passed since the above letter was written.  The war is happily over, and Captain Frost has returned home with an honorable record of service.  Released from duty at home, Frank has exchanged the farm for the college hall, and he is now approaching graduation, one of the foremost scholars in his class.  He bids fair to carry out the promise of his boyhood, and in the more varied and prolonged campaign which manhood opens before him we have reason to believe that he will display equal fidelity and gain an equal success.

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK, Frank’s campaign ***

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