, and, one never-to-be-forgotten
day, Jackson, the Scipio of the republic, had placed his brawny hand
upon the infant's head and declared that he would be "worthy of Jack
Sprague, who was man enough to make two Kentuckians."

"But you--you, ought to be a colonel. Your father was a major-general in
the Mexican War at twenty-five. A Sprague can't be a private soldier!"
she cried, seizing on this as the only tenable ground where she could
begin the contest against the two children confederated against her.

"I don't want to owe everything to my father. This is a republic, mamma,
and a man is, or ought to be, what he makes himself. I saw in a paper,
the other day, that the Government has more brigadiers and colonels
and--and--officers than it knows what to do with. I saw it stated that a
stone thrown from Willard's Hotel in Washington hit a dozen brigadiers.
I want to earn a commission before I assume it. I'll be an officer soon
enough, no fear. I could have had a lieutenant's commission if I had
gone in Blandon's regiment. But I hate Blandon. He is one of those
canting sneaks father detested, and I won't serve under such cattle."

Mrs. Sprague, like millions of mothers in those days, was cruelly
divided in mind. When the neighbors felicitated her on the valor and
patriotism of Mr. Jack she was elated and fitfully reconciled. When, in
the long watches of the night, she reflected on the hardships,
temptations, the dreadful companions her darling must be thrown with,
country, lineage, everything faded into the dreadful reality that her
darling was in peril, body and soul. He was so like his father--gay,
impressionable, easily influenced--he would be saint or sinner, just as
his surroundings incited him. This was the woe that ate the mother's
heart; this was the sorrow that clouded millions of homes when mothers
saw their boys pranked out in the trappings of war.

Our jaunty Jack enjoyed the worship that came to him. He was the first
boy in blue that appeared in the sandy streets of Acredale. Never had
the rascal been so petted, so feted, so adored. He might have been a
pasha, had he been a Turk. The promising down on his upper lip--the
object of his own secret solicitude and Olympia's gibes during the
junior year--was quite worn away by the kissing he underwent among the
impulsive Jeannettes of the village, who had a vague notion that
soldiers, like sailors, were indurated for battle by adosculation. Jack
may have believed