men. But even if you do, you will regret it! Yours will be a
sorrowful old age. In the years to come, mayhap, there'll be a wee
grandchild nestling on your knee that'll circle its little arms about
your neck and look into your wrinkled face, and ask you:

"'How old are you, Grandpa? You're a very old man.'

"How will you answer that bairn's question?" So I asked the young
men. And then I answered for them: "I don't know how old I am, but I
am so old that I can remember the great war."

"And then"--I told them, the young men who were wavering--"and then
will come the question that you will always have to dread--when you
have won through to the old age that may be yours in safety if you
shirk now! For the bairn will ask you, straightaway: 'Did _you_ fight
in the great war, Grandpa? What did you do?'

"God help the man," I told them, "who cannot hand it down as a
heritage to his children and his children's children that he fought
in the great war!"

I must have impressed many a brave lad who wanted only a bit of
resolution to make him do his duty. They tell me that I and my band
together influenced more than twelve thousand men to join the colors;
they give me credit for that many, in one way and another. I am proud
of that. But I am prouder still of the way the boys who enlisted upon
my urging feel. Never a one has upbraided me; never a one has told me
he was sorry he had heard me and been led to go.

It is far otherwise. The laddies who went because of me called me