Excerpt from The Southerners: A Story of the Civil War There is in my mind a picture of the days of Sixty-one - Sixty-five. I close my eyes, and out of the mists of the past there rises before me an old white house on a hill. It is springtime. A child is playing in the grass under the trees. A woman watches at the gate. And a soldier comes home from the wars. A soldier, sick, worn, weary; a haggard, broken wreck of the brave young man who left all at his country's first appeal and looked not back so long as he had strength to stand. His fighting days are over. And the woman meets him at the gate - They come down the long walk under the trees toward the little lad, the woman proudly supporting the man's faltering steps. The child, who has grown to step and speech while the man has been absent, shrinks away from the tired figure in the dusty faded Army blue, who stretches out trembling hands to him with words of affectionate appeal. The little boy does not recognize the stranger until he is caught up against that brave heart and hears the words, "My son, my son!" I close my eyes and see once more my Father, as I saw him on that day nearly forty years ago. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.