There were evenings when the three of us
sat in the parlor with the dusk drifting in from the lake, and spoke of
the future of the nation. Judge Adams thought war inevitable. Abraham
Lincoln thought it could be averted. They both dreaded it. I was young,
and I hoped for it. 'What'll you do, Jim, if war should come?' they
asked me once. 'I'd go as a private,' I told them.

"If the war had come then I should have gone with the first regiment
out. But when the call sounded Ellsworth had gone to New York and the
Zouaves had merged with another regiment. I didn't go with them in the
beginning because I told myself that I wanted to be with the first troop
that went from Illinois to the front. I didn't join until after Lincoln
had sent out his call for volunteers.

"You see," he explained to the silent boy, "I had left Judge Adams's
office and struck out for myself. Chicago was showing me golden
opportunities. Before me, if I stayed, stretched a wide road of
success."

"And you didn't go?" Peter interrupted his father for the first time.
"I thought--" His voice broke.

"I went," James Thorold said. "The regiment, the Nineteenth, was at the
border when Lincoln gave the call. There was a bounty being offered to
join it. I would have gone anyhow, but I thought that I might just as
well take the money. I was giving up so much to go, I reasoned. And so
I took the bounty. The provost marshal gave me the money in the office
right across the square from the old court-house. I put it in the bank
before I started south.

"I left Chicago that night with a great thrill. I was going to fight
for a great cause, for Abraham Lincoln's great dream, for the country
my father had died for in Mexico, that my grandfather had fought for at
Lundy's Lane. I think," he said, "that if I might have gone right down
to the fighting, I'd have stood the test. But when I came to Tennessee
the regiment had gone stale. We waited, and waited. Every day I lost a
little interest. Every day the routine dragged a little harder. I had
time to see what opportunities I had left back here in Chicago. I wasn't
afraid of the fighting. But the sheer hatred of what I came to call the
uselessness of war gnawed at my soul. I kept thinking of the ways in
which I might shape my destiny if only I were free. I kept thinking of
the thousand roads to wealth, to personal success, that Chicago held
for me. One night I took my chance. I slipped past the lines."

"Father!" The