trench which for some hours his company had held under a heavy fire.
When the Yankees charged with the bayonet he rose to meet them, but at
the same moment the bugle sounded the retreat, and half of his company
broke and ran. My father sprang to the top of the trench and called,
"Come back, boys, we'll give them one more volley." It may have been
that he had misunderstood the call of the bugle, and disobeyed through
ignorance, or it may have been that in his education the signal to
retreat had been omitted, for he did not heed it, and stood outlined
against the sky, looking back and waving his hand to his men. But they
did not come to him, and the advancing troop fired, and he fell upon
the trench with his body stretched along its length. The Union officer
was far in advance of his own company, and when he leaped upon the
trench he found that it was empty and that the Confederate troops were
in retreat. He turned, and shouted, laughing: "Come on! there's only
one man here--and he's dead!"

But my father reached up his hand, to where the officer stood above
him, and pulled at his scabbard.

"Not dead, but dying, Captain," my father said. "And that's better
than retreating, isn't it?"

"And that is the story," my grandfather used to say to me, "you must
remember of your father, and whatever else he did does not count."

At the age of ten my grandfather sent me to a military academy near
Dobbs Ferry, where boys were prepared for college and for West Point
and Annapolis. I was a very poor scholar, and, with the exception of
what I learned in the drill-hall and the gymnasium, the academy did me
very little good, and I certainly did not, at that time at least,