CHICKAMAUGA

One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a
small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense
of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and
adventure; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for
thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and
conquest--victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries,
whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its
race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great
sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a
heritage.

The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In
his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against
naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a
civilized race to the far South. In the peaceful life of a planter the
warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. The man
loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to
make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would
hardly have known it for what it was. This weapon he now bore bravely,
as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the
sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures
of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art.
Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes
attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military
error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found