“Mornin’ come, an’ the firin’ begin over toward Gettysburg. We could see the smoke risin’ agin an’ hear the big guns bellerin’ tell the ground beneath our feet seemed to swing up an’ down. I tell you uns that was a grand scene. We was awful excited, fer we knowd the first two days hed gone agin us, an’ more an’ more stragglers an’ wounded come limpin’ back, all with bad news. I was gittin’ nervous, thinkin’ an’ thinkin’ over it, an’ wishin’ I was where the fun was. Then I concided mebbe I wasn’t so bad off, fer I might ’a’ been killed like the poor felly I seen the night before, an’ in thinkin’ o’ the man I remembered the letter an’ got it out. I didn’t ’tend to open it, but final I thot it wasn’t safe to go mailin’ letters ’thout knowin’ jest what was in ’em, so I read it. “The letter was wrote on a piece o’ wrappin’ paper in an awful bad handwrite, but ’hen I got th’oo it I set plumb down an’ cried like a chil’. It was from John Parker to his wife Mary, livin’ somewhere out in western Pennsylwany. He begin be mentionin’ how we was on the eve of a big fight an’ how he ’tended to do his duty even ef it come to fallin’ at his post. It was hard, he sayd, but he knowd she’d ruther hev no husban’ than a coward. He was allus thinkin’ o’ her an’ the baby he’d never seen, but felt satisfaction in knowin’ they was well fixed. It was sorrerful, he continyerd, that she was like to be a widdy so young, an’ he wasn’t goin’ to be mean about it. He allus knowd, he sayd, how she’d hed a hankerin’ after young Silas Quincy ’fore she tuk him. Ef he fell, he thot she’d better merry Silas ’hen she’d recovered from the ’fects o’ his goin’. He ended up with a lot o’ last ‘good-bys’ an’ talk about duty to his country. “Right then an’ there I set down an’ wrote that poor woman a few lines tellin’ how I’d foun’ the letter in her dead husban’s pocket. I was goin’ to quit at that, but I concided it ’ud be nice to add somethin’ consolin’, so I told how we’d foun’ him on the fiel’ o’ battle, face to the enemy, an’ how his last words was fer her an’ the baby. That day we won the fight, an’ the next I mailed Mrs. Parker her letter. It seemed about the plum blamedest, saddest thing I ever hed to do with.” “I’ve allus ben cur’ous ’bout that widdy, too,” the Chronic Loafer remarked. The Teacher cleared his throat and recited: “Now night her course began, and over heaven Inducing darkness grateful truce imposed, And silence on the odious din of war; Under her cloud----” “No poetry jist yet, Teacher,” said the veteran. “Wait tell you hear the sekal o’ the story.” “Yes, let’s hev somethin’ new,” growled the Miller. Having silenced the pedagogue, the G. A. R. Man resumed his narrative.