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The Iron Brigade: A Story of the Army of the Potomac
The Iron Brigade A Story of the Army of the Potomac Author:Charles King Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE FIRST UNIFORM And then for many a week there came no word from Paul Ladue. At the little frame cottage near the lake a sad-eyed, submissive... more », broken man sat long hours each day in a worn old rocking-chair, apathetic, uncomplaining, yet looking wistfully into the faces of the few who came to see him as though imploring news of his now doubly banished boy. The children—Nina, a fond little daughter of fourteen, and Alphonse, a merry-eyed lad of ten, sought vainly to rouse him. There was not business enough at the shop to call him thither. People had no time for books in the war days. They read only the papers, and, many of them,only the news and rumors from the front. Through the efforts of Squire Benton a reliable, if not over bright, young man was found to take charge of what was left of the stock in trade, and to supply the casual wants of school children in search of sponges and slate pencils, or elders in need of stationery with which to write to the boys now in camp by thousands along the line of the Potomac and the Ohio. Weak eyes and legs had led to his rejection when surging patriotism prompted him to throw up the charge of a ward school and present himself as food for powder, and in sore disappointment he meekly took the tendered place. At least it would give him abundant time to read and study. In still other ways did the Squire seek to aid the needy household and, all unrebuked now, Elinor went day after day to see Ladue and the fragile woman, his wife, who never left her room. Womanfully did she strive to cheer the aging and to guide the young, and rarely did she go empty handed. All through the long, hot summer of '61 she was ever slipping over to the cottage and ever coming back with pathetic sadness in her sweet blue eyes. There was still no fu...« less