CHAPTER LVII.

A fair sacrifice—­the story of one boy who willingly gave his young life for his country.

Charley Barbour was one of the truest-hearted and best-liked of my school-boy chums and friends.  For several terms we sat together on the same uncompromisingly uncomfortable bench, worried over the same boy-maddening problems in “Ray’s Arithmetic-Part III.,” learned the same jargon of meaningless rules from “Greene’s Grammar,” pondered over “Mitchell’s Geography and Atlas,” and tried in vain to understand why Providence made the surface of one State obtrusively pink and another ultramarine blue; trod slowly and painfully over the rugged road “Bullion” points out for beginners in Latin, and began to believe we should hate ourselves and everybody else, if we were gotten up after the manner shown by “Cutter’s Physiology.”  We were caught together in the same long series of school-boy scrapes—­and were usually ferruled together by the same strong-armed teacher.  We shared nearly everything —­our fun and work; enjoyment and annoyance—­all were generally meted out to us together.  We read from the same books the story of the wonderful world we were going to see in that bright future “when we were men;” we spent our Saturdays and vacations in the miniature explorations of the rocky hills and caves, and dark cedar woods around our homes, to gather ocular helps to a better comprehension of that magical land which we were convinced began just beyond our horizon, and had in it, visible to the eye of him who traveled through its enchanted breadth, all that “Gulliver’s Fables,” the “Arabian Nights,” and a hundred books of travel and adventure told of.

We imagined that the only dull and commonplace spot on earth was that where we lived.  Everywhere else life was a grand spectacular drama, full of thrilling effects.

Brave and handsome young men were rescuing distressed damsels, beautiful as they were wealthy; bloody pirates and swarthy murderers were being foiled by quaint spoken backwoodsmen, who carried unerring rifles; gallant but blundering Irishmen, speaking the most delightful brogue, and making the funniest mistakes, were daily thwarting cool and determined villains; bold tars were encountering fearful sea perils; lionhearted adventurers were cowing and quelling whole tribes of barbarians; magicians were casting spells, misers hoarding gold, scientists making astonishing discoveries, poor and unknown boys achieving wealth and fame at a single bound, hidden mysteries coming to light, and so the world was going on, making reams of history with each diurnal revolution, and furnishing boundless material for the most delightful books.