But I started on the subject of the impersonations that the Expression
Class of Juniors is to give the last day of April, before the whole
academy is turned over to the affairs of the Seniors, like graduation
essays being practised from morning to night until you speak each one
in your own dreams. This is the first time they ever had such a thing
in the academy, and the whole town is as excited and interested as it
well can be.

Mr. Douglass Byrd thought it all up a month ago for us Juniors because
of our Senior oppression and after his great loss he went on just the
same helping us practise and seemed to be as interested in us as if we
had been explosives in a bottle or a test-tube or a retort. His great
serenity of soul is a constant lesson to me. Good-night, Louise. You
are a comfort; you settle my thoughts, though just of leather.

This is the night of the impersonations and they are over. It was one
of the greatest triumphs ever experienced at the Byrd Academy. It will
probably be mentioned in the future with the same praise as the
Colonel's valedictory that left not a dry eye in the house, because
they all knew that all the boys in the Senior Class of sixty-one would
go to the war the next week. I choke up whenever I hear the Colonel
tell of it, as I have many times in these last two months of my life
in Byrdsville. Miss Prissy always cries copiously when he gets to the
place where she gave him a flower when he had walked home with
her--she only fourteen years old and in short dresses--and which he
wore in battle in his pocket Bible. What would she do if she should
lose the Colonel by sudden death before she has rewarded his
affections by marrying him? She ought to think of that.