s this damned rheumatism, Carpenter. Las' night, suh, I
had to drink a quart of whiskey befo' I cu'd go to sleep at all. It
came on me soon aftah I come out of the wah, an' it growed on me like
jim'son weeds in a hog-pen. My appetite's quit on me--two pints of
whiskey an' wild-cherry bark a day, suh, don't seem to help it at
all, suh. I cyant tell whut the devil's the matter with my stomach.
Nothin' I eat or drink seems to agree with me but whiskey. If I drink
this malarial water, suh, m'legs an' m'feet begin to swell. I have to
go back to whiskey. Damn me, but I was born for Kentucky. Why, I've
got a forty dollar thirst on me this very minute. I'm so dry I cu'd
kick up a dust in a hog wallow. Maybe, though, it's this rotten stuff
that cross-roads Jew is sellin' me an' callin' it whiskey. He's got a
mortgage on everything here but the houn's and the house cat, an'
he's tryin' to see if he cyant kill me with his bug-juice an' save a
suit in Chancery. I'm goin' to sen' off an' see if I cyant git
another bran' of it, suh."

Edward Conway was the type of the Southerner wrecked financially and
morally by the war. His father and grandfather had owned Millwood,
and the present owner had gone into the war a carefully educated,
well reared youth of twenty. He came out of it alive, it is true,
but, like many another fine youth of both North and South, addicted
to drink.

The brutality of war lies not alone in death--it is often more fatal,
more degenerating, in the life it leaves behind.

Coming out of the war, Conway found, as did all others in the
Tennessee Valley who sided with the South, that his home was a wreck.
Not a fence, even, remained--nothing but the old home--shutterless,
plasterless, its roof rotten, its cellar the abode of hogs.

Thousands of others found themselves likewise--brave hearts--men they
proved themselves to be--in that they built up their homes out of
wreck and their country out of chaos.

The man who retrieves his fortune under the protecting arm of law and
order is worthy of great praise; but he who does it in the surly,
snarling teeth of Disorder itself is worthy of still greater praise.

And the real soldier is not he with his battles and his bravery. All
animals will fight--it is instinct. But he who conquers in the great
moral battle of peace and good government, overcoming prejudice,
ignorance, poverty and even injustice, till he rises to the height of
the brave whose deeds do vindicate th