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[37]
give them another mouth to feed, or to give them another man to fight?
Right, weakness, invasion!-how could there be any save one inference from such a trinity of propositions?
I did not fully realize this process as it was wrought out in me; but when I came to find my scruples and my shrinking gone-though not my sorrow — I looked back and plainly saw the path along which I had been led. From that hour, throughout the four years of my service as a Confederate soldier, never did I entertain a doubt as to my being where I should be and doing what I should do.
While our boat was making ready for the trip, some one called at the house and asked for me, but sent no card, so I went to the reception-room, having no idea who my visitor was.
“Why, Beers!”
I cried, “what are you doing here?”
He was very pale, and had evidently been subjected to severe mental and moral tension-nevertheless, Yankee-like, he answered my question by asking another, “What are you going to do?”
“O,” said I, “we are going South by sail-boat; General Scott won't let us go by railroad.”
Instantly he replied, “I am going with you.”
Who was the man who thus, without hesitation, reservation or condition, cast in his lot with us?
The story is in every way so remarkable that I cannot forbear a full recital of it. It should not be forgotten, however, that while the peace of death has, years agone, passed upon the chief actor in this strange, sad drama, and probably also upon most of his relatives living when he died --there may yet be others now living to whom the record of his life and death must needs be somewhat painful; therefore I shall endeavor to tell the story simply and quietly.
When I first knew James H. Beers he was an intelligent young mechanic-originally, I think, from Bridgeport, Conn., but at the time living in New Haven, where I was a college student.
We were both members of a Bible-class connected with a church of which my father was then pastor, and Mr. Gerard Hallock, of the New York Journal of Commerce, the most prominent member.
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