Chapter V: Correspondence

1.

MY DEAR TOM:――This letter will reach you after you have been
at home a day; and you must leave home as soon as you receive
it, to join my company. Our colonel is splendid,――grim and
grizzled, and the nerve of a steam-engine. I told him about
you, and said I wanted you as second lieutenant. He asked how
much you knew; and I said, “Little enough, but more than any
other of my vagabonds,――God bless them!” Then I told him about
your study of Hardee; and he laughed, but asked me anxiously
what you thought of Hardee. I forget what I said; but I know
your opinion satisfied him perfectly; for he said that your
youth was your greatest disqualification. Then I said that the
rough set of my company needed the influence of an acknowledged
gentleman, as well as the fellow-feeling and sympathy which
that rough Murphy gives them. He agreed to that. Then he
spoke of the value, in any rank of life, of a university
education;――he hasn’t been through Harvard, you see;――and I
agree with him. Then, when he heard who was your father, and
who was your mother, he smiled, and said he believed in blood.
I agreed again with him, and expressed the opinion that no one
could get along very well without it. Moreover, I said, that,
if you did not come as an officer, the whole company would
become insubordinate; for you always had your own way with me;
and it would not do for a private to control his captain. He
laughed; but you are sure of your position, if you come on at
once. We are not a swell regiment, Tom; but my sword-belt and
sash are stunning, for all that. You must begin work at once.
And, Tom, you must feel an interest in Murphy. It will do him
good; and, through him, the men. He dined with me to-day, and
made an attempt to eat with his fork instead of his knife,
which was tolerably successful. He is a little uneasy about
meeting you, being sensible of a certain lack of polish in
his manner; but with you as the positive pole, and I as the
negative, we shall have him duly magnetized in time.

I have been out to Cambridge, to see about destroying our old
room; but I could not do it. I sat down and cried like a towel,
or a sponge; I couldn’t help it. The goody had profited by your
absence to leave everything out of order; for which I thanked
her in my soul. The pictures that I hated, and the pictures
that you didn’t like, hung on the walls; your dressing-gown
was in your chair; the globe in which our departed goldfish
once resided was still swinging at the window; and everything
seemed like a dream of the past to me. Well, I should have been
a brute if I hadn’t felt a little touched.

O Tom! you’ve forgotten to return “Roderick Random” to the
library; and Sibley will come down on you for a nice lot of
fines, see if he don’t.

But I was going to tell you about our room. Bob Lennox, who is
rooming outside, you know, wants to come in as tenant during
our absence, so that we can have everything just as it always
has been, when we come back by next class-day; by which time,
I am quite sure, the war will be ended; so I agreed to his
proposition, subject to your objection, of course.

I thought, since your educational advantages impressed the
colonel, that a copy of the last rank-list might work in your
favor; but I decided, finally, that it would require too much
explanation. In the same way I was thinking of getting you a
certificate of moral character from Dr. Peabody, but was not
sure that he had forgotten you sufficiently.

If you wish to secure your position, you must be here by Friday
night. My love to the Professor, and sincere regards to your
father and mother.

In haste, but, as ever, your friend,

NED.

2.

MY DEAR OLD NED:――Your letter was just like you, cross old
devil that you are! I’m coming, old horse; so write my name
down on your parchment immediately. The Professor starts this
noon, and says he will wait over a train for me in Endeston,
where he wants to make a visit this afternoon; so that I shall
start to-morrow morning, and meet him there. Mother says it’s
because he has so much delicacy of feeling that he doesn’t want
to see our parting; and, by Jove! Ned, it’s going to be hard.
She doesn’t say much; but I know how she suffers; and it makes
me almost feel as though I was wrong to go. I’ll bet I’ll have
a handsomer sash than you will, after all. Mother wants me to
give you the enclosed letter, which seems mysterious to me;
still I obey. I am in a great hurry, so can’t write any more,
but shall be with you on Friday.

Yours,

TOM.

3.

MY DEAR NED,――For though I have never yet had the pleasure of
seeing you at our house, I still feel as though I knew you,
Tom has said so much to me of you, and has shown so much more
than he has said. I have felt very thankful that you were his
friend; and now that this terrible and dreadful parting is to
separate me from my only child, I am glad that you are to be
with him. I know the cause that calls him, and I feel that it
is better for him to go than to stay; but, though I say yes,
I say it with an agony beyond your comprehension. I want your
promise that you will not leave Tom during the time that your
country may need you; that you will suffer nothing but death
to separate you; that you will refuse promotion and honor, if
it is to part you from him; that you will stay by his side in
the progress of the battles that may come. It is through your
influence that he goes; I must look to you for his safety. So
make me this promise; and, in return, what can I give? what
can I say? This only: that my house shall be your home; and
that I shall feel as if I had two sons instead of one.