k that followed a
mother's last embrace, started afresh at the sight of the dome of the
old University building at Madison. For the months preceding the
enlistment, the struggle had been not choosing between home and camp.
No! not even between danger and safety, life and death, but what seemed
the final choice between a country to save and an education to acquire.
For in the dim haze of the farmer boy's horoscope, the University
outline was shaping itself. In choosing his country's cause it seemed to
him that he was relinquishing forever the hope of the education of which
he dreamed. Forty-seven years after the campus was dimmed with his
tears, the University of Wisconsin invested this private of the 6th
Wisconsin Battery with the degree of LL. D.

A great thing was done for humanity in America, between 1861 and 1865.
If it could not have been done otherwise, it was worth all it cost. And
if this same dire predicament were to come again, I would do my past
all over again. But Oh! it was such a wrong way of doing the right
thing! May the clumsy sentences of a boy's diary, so lacking in
perspective, so inadequate in expression, contribute a few sentences to
the Gospel of Peace.

[Illustration: Signature "Jenkin Lloyd Jones"]

Tower Hill, Wisconsin, September 9, 1913.

THE DIARY OF AN ARTILLERY PRIVATE

_A Journal of daily events during my campaign in the war to crush the
rebellion in 1861. If in the battle I may fall, or die away from the
withering hand of disease in the hospital, this favor may I ask, to send
this and what may accompany it to my aged parents. Addressed to R. Ll.
Jones, Lone Rock, Richland Co._

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Spring Green, Wis., Thursday, Aug. 14, 1862. I enlisted under Lieutenant
Fancher for the 6th Battery, Wisconsin Artillery.

Madison, Wis., Monday, Aug. 25. I bade good-bye to friends, relatives
and companions most dear, and at 8 o'clock embarked for Madison to begin
my soldier's life. Arrived at camp at 12 M. and slept my first night on
the lap of mother earth with Uncle Sam's blanket for a coverlid and a
few rough boards raised about four feet in the center for a roof. I laid
down; my eyelids were heavy and demanded sleep but the mind wandered and
the stars shone bright and it was long ere sleep threw her curtain over
the scene.

Madison, Tuesday, Aug. 26. I got partially rested by my short sleep, but
I was awake long ere the rising of the sun. I awoke to a differen