On my return to the old homestead I found the place desolate,
with burnt barns and fields laid waste. The Shenandoah Valley had
experienced war in its dread reality, for on every hand were the
charred remains of once splendid homes. I had little hope that the
country would ever recover, but my father, stout-hearted as ever, had
already begun anew, and after helping him that summer and fall I again
drifted west to my brother's farm.
The war had developed a restless, vagabond spirit in me. I had little
heart to work, was unsettled as to my future, and, to add to my other
troubles, after reaching Missouri one of my wounds reopened. In the
mean time my brother had married, and had a fine farm opened up. He
offered me every encouragement and assistance to settle down to
the life of a farmer; but I was impatient, worthless, undergoing a
formative period of early manhood, even spurning the advice of father,
mother, and dearest friends. If to-day, across the lapse of years, the
question were asked what led me from the bondage of my discontent, it
would remain unanswered. Possibly it was the advantage of good birth;
surely the prayers of a mother had always followed me, and my feet
were finally led into the paths of industry. Since that day of
uncertainty, grandsons have sat upon my knee, clamoring for a story
about Indians, the war, or cattle trails. If I were to assign a motive
for thus leaving a tangible record of my life, it would be that my
posterity--not the present generation, absorbed in its greed of gain,
but a more distant and a saner one--should be enabled to glean a faint
idea of one of their forbears.
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