The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Littlest Rebel, by Edward Peple
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Title: The Littlest Rebel
Author: Edward Peple
Release Date: March 19, 2005 [EBook #15414]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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The
LITTLEST REBEL
By
EDWARD PEPLE
GROSSET & DUNLAP: _Publishers_
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1914 By the ESTATE OF EDWARD H. PEPLE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM
WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER.
_Printed in the United States of America_
FOREWORD
The play, from which this book is written, was in no sense of the word
intended as a war drama; for war is merely its background, and always in
the center stands a lonely little child.
War is its theme but not its purpose. War breeds hatred, horror,
pestilence and famine, yet from its tears and ashes eventually must rise
the clean white spirit of HUMANITY.
The enmity between North and South is dead; it sleeps with the fathers
and the sons, the brothers and the lovers, who died in a cause which
each believed was just.
Therefore this story deals, not with the right or wrong of a lost
confederacy, but with the mercy and generosity, the chivalry and
humanity which lived in the hearts of the Blue and Gray, a noble
contrast to the grim brutality of war.
* * * * *
The author is indebted to Mr. E.S. Moffat, who has novelized the play
directly from its text, with the exception of that portion which
appeared as a short story under the same title several years ago,
treating of Virgie in the overseer's cabin, and the endorsing of her
pass by Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison.
EDWARD PEPLE.
THE LITTLEST REBEL
CHAPTER I
Young Mrs. Herbert Cary picked up her work basket and slowly crossed the
grass to a shady bench underneath the trees. She must go on with her
task of planning a dress for Virgie. But the prospect of making her
daughter something wearable out of the odds and ends of nothing was not
a happy
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