Another thing which I remember very distinctly is the work we used to do in the public schools in those days. Every afternoon we devoted a part of our time to picking lint. We were told by our teachers that it was to be sent to the front, where it would be used in dressing the wounds of the soldiers. None of us dreamed of the real horrors of war, but I think our hearts were in that work just the same. And we used to get our mothers to make housewives, which we filled with combs, brushes, and soap; and these, too, were sent to the front. We saw soldiers going to war every day with no other baggage than their knapsacks, and we well understood, children as we were, that the housewife would be welcome in every tent. And finally came the news of Appomattox. Guns were fired, and people cheered, and we boys simply danced war-dances all over the city. Soon the troops began to come home, and then we had our eyes opened a bit. The boys of to-day see the old fellows of the Grand Army of the Republic turn out in their sober blue uniforms, carrying the old battle-flags carefully wrapped up, and the boys think them a monotonous lot, and take little interest in them. But I saw them come back with their bare feet sticking out of their ragged shoes, with the legs of their trousers and the arms of their coats hanging in tatters, with the army blue faded by the sun and washed by the rain to a sickly greenish-gray, with their faces baked and frozen and blown till they looked like sheets of sole-leather, saving the happy smiles they bore. And I saw those old battle-flags come back with their rent and shivered stripes streaming in the wind, while strong men stood looking on with tears in their eyes. And I saw one of my uncles, who had been a prisoner in Andersonville, come to Pittsburg with a gangrened foot, which my mother dressed every day. I shall never forget his condition, nor that of the heroes who marched through Pittsburg day after day when the war was over. I am sorry there had to be a war; but I am unspeakably grateful that I was old enough to get those impressions, which will live as long as I do. They spring to life again whenever I see troops on the march, and they give the old flag a meaning for me which I think it cannot have for those without my memories. II THE CAPTAIN OF COMPANY Q _The Tale of an Unenlisted Soldier_ Zebedee was the Captain of Company Q. Sheer merit had won him the title. He was the first and the last of his kind. He stood unique. For it was the only Company Q that had ever been captained--Company Q being the stragglers and camp-followers, miscellaneous and heterogeneous, who drift in an army’s wake. Unique though Zebedee’s position was, it was far from satisfying the ambition that he had once cherished. For he had longed to be a soldier. He had dreamed of doing great deeds; of rising from the ranks, of steadily mounting upward, of winning lofty title and mighty fame.