[143] the most conspicuous. He was an active and prominent member of the Glee Club, and a leading ‘brother’ of the Hasty-Pudding Club. Of the last he was also, during one term, Vice-President. After graduating he made preparations for entering the manufacturing business, in which his father's prominent position gave him promise of an excellent opening. But the breaking out of the war at once changed his occupation, his objects, and his destiny. Every dweller in Boston and vicinity must have a fresh personal recollection of the prompt emulation with which young men from Boston and its neighborhood hastened to solicit commissions in the Second Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers; and among these Mudge was enrolled from the outset, his commission as First Lieutenant bearing date May 25, 1861. He wrote, November 16, 1862, looking back to these opening scenes:—
If you will just look back to that Sunday morning when you and I jumped out of our beds at the news of the capture of Fort Sumter,—I fully made up my mind to fight, and when I say fight, I mean win or die. I do not wish to stop the thing half-way. I wish to establish the government upon a foundation of rock.The results of this earnest trust and stern intent were marked and admirable in him, as in so many others. Boyish things were put off, and their place was filled by a thoughtfulness, a depth of moral conviction, and a steadiness of moral purpose, not often to be found in a young man scarce twenty-two years of age. The principles and motives leading him to enter the war were not founded in any wish to do away with slavery. He felt no such active hostility to the great Southern ‘institution’; and a conflict based solely on the ground of accomplishing the abolition of negro servitude would have appealed to no kindred sentiment in his heart, at least to none of sufficient strength to induce him to peril health, limb, or life in the quarrel. He felt and said that if slavery should come athwart the march of the Northern armies, it must go down; if it should become a matter of military wisdom, or a benefit, in