90 POLITICAL LIFE-III 



tion or no repudiation, I am putting everything I can rake 

 and scrape together into National bonds, to help this 

 government maintain itself; for, by G d, if I am not 

 to have any country, I don't want any money. " It is 

 to be hoped that this oath, bursting forth from a patriotic 

 heart, was, like Uncle Toby's, blotted out by the record- 

 ing angel. I have quoted it more than once to show how 

 the average American though apparently a crude mate- 

 rialistis, at heart, a thorough idealist. 



Keturning to the University of Michigan at the close 

 of the vacation, I found that many of my students had en- 

 listed, and that many more were preparing to do so. With 

 some it was hard indeed. I remember two especially, who 

 had for years labored and saved to raise the money which 

 would enable them to take their university course; they 

 had hesitated, for a time, to enlist; but very early one 

 morning I was called out of bed by a message from them, 

 and, meeting them, found them ready to leave for the 

 army. They could resist their patriotic convictions no 

 longer, and they had come to say good-bye to me. They 

 went into the war ; they fought bravely through the thick- 

 est of it; and though one was badly wounded, both lived 

 to return, and are to-day honored citizens. With many 

 others it was different; many, very many of them, alas, 

 were among the ' ' unreturning brave ! ' ' and loveliest and 

 noblest of all, my dear friend and student, Frederick Arne, 

 of Princeton, Illinois, killed in the battle of Shiloh, at the 

 very beginning of the war, when all was blackness and dis- 

 couragement. Another of my dearest students at that time 

 was Albert Nye. Scholarly, eloquent, noble-hearted, with 

 every gift to ensure success in civil life, he went forth 

 with the others, rose to be captain of a company, and I 

 think major of a regiment. He sent me most kindly mes- 

 sages, and at one time a bowie-knife captured from a rebel 

 soldier. But, alas ! he was not to return. 



I may remark, in passing, that while these young men 

 from the universities, and a vast host of others from dif- 

 ferent walks of life, were going forth to lay down their 



