MY SOLDIER IN GRAY
So young and so handsome,
So brave and so neat,
From the crown of his head
To the soles of his feet.
He’s the light of my eyes,
As he marches away
To a place at the FRONT
With his comrades in gray.
Four years he has battled
For his Country’s rights,
Yet the bullets have spared him In the fiercest of fights.
Some day he’ll come home, I hope and I pray,
For ’tis Heaven on earth,
With My Soldier in Gray.
March 1st, 1866.—Little Diary, I have tried hard to tell you my secret but there are some things too sacred to write about. My Soldier in Gray has held by promise for many months and, before the year is out, we expect to be married. Father and Mother are willing, for they, too, like My Soldier in Gray but they insisted he should promise them never to take me away. I am the last one left at home and they cannot give me up. I love them so well and I am glad they want me to live with them always.
When the war was over, so many soldiers did not have anything to do, some even did not have a home to go to, but my soldier went immediately to work. His father has a large plantation and the overseer left as soon as the South surrendered; this Lake Lafayette plantation is five miles from Tallahassee, where the Eppes family live and his father is an old man and feeble; so he took right hold. He lives on the plantation and is managing splendidly, they say. I often hear his praises and I feel a glow of pride; but not even to you little friend, can I tell all My Soldier in Gray means to me. We met just after the Battle of Gettysburg and he has loved me ever since. Let me fasten this page down securely that none may see.
