Page was a North Carolina boy; he has himself recorded the impression
that the Civil War left upon his mind.

"One day," he writes, "when the cotton fields were white and the elm
leaves were falling, in the soft autumn of the Southern climate wherein
the sky is fathomlessly clear, the locomotive's whistle blew a much
longer time than usual as the train approached Millworth. It did not
stop at so small a station except when there was somebody to get off or
to get on, and so long a blast meant that someone was coming. Sam and I
ran down the avenue of elms to see who it was. Sam was my Negro
companion, philosopher, and friend. I was ten years old and Sam said
that he was fourteen. There was constant talk about the war. Many men of
the neighbourhood had gone away somewhere--that was certain; but Sam and
I had a theory that the war was only a story. We had been fooled about
old granny Thomas's bringing the baby and long ago we had been fooled
also about Santa Claus. The war might be another such invention, and we
sometimes suspected that it was. But we found out the truth that day,
and for this reason it is among my clearest early recollections.

"For, when the train stopped, they put off a big box and gently laid it
in the shade of the fence. The only man at the station was the man who
had come to change the mail-bags; and he said that this was Billy
Morris's coffin and that he had been killed in a battle. He asked us to
stay with it till he could send word to Mr. Morris, who lived two miles
away. The man came back presently and leaned against the fence till old
Mr. Morris arrived, an hour or more later. The lint of cotton was on his
wagon, for he was hauling his crop to the gin when the sad news reached
him; and he came in his shirt sleeves, his wife on the wagon seat with
him.