Bull Run by Paul Fleischman

Author:Paul Fleischman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

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SHEM SUGGS

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It was a warm night. We knew there’d soon be a battle. The horses knew it too. Greta was restless as a flea-bit dog, stamping her hooves and flicking her tail. Most of the company played at cards. No one seemed to want to turn in. One read a letter from his father saying wars were uncivilized, low, immoral, and that civil wars were the worst of the brood. The letter was burned with great jollity. After a time, though, the men took to studying Bibles instead of poker hands. It struck me as strange that nearly all the legions of soldiers camped around me considered themselves to be whole-souled Christians, had heard preaching every Sunday of their lives, had memorized piles of Scripture verses, and yet were ready to break the commandment against killing the moment the order was given. I went walking. I came to a man who was reading Gulliver’s Travels to a circle of listeners. I stopped and gave ear. Gulliver had come to a curious country where horses ruled and men were thought to be the foulest of beasts. The horses, wise as they were, had no wars. They could scarcely believe it when Gulliver told them that soldiers were men paid to kill each other. Then he described sabers, muskets, bullets, cannons that left the field of battle strewn with bloody limbs, and other clever inventions that had led humans to think themselves far advanced beyond horses. It was almost too frightful to laugh at. I dearly wished I might go to that land. When the man stopped reading, I promised myself that if I lived through the war I’d learn my letters and read the rest of that book. Then I visited with the horses a long spell, and tried not to think upon what was coming.

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