The recruit / by John F.W. Ware.

  • John F. W. Ware
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The recruit / by John F.W. Ware. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/12
    THE EECHUIT You have not forgotten the time when you were a recruit, a raw recruit. You did not become one without a struggle. There was much to be gone through, much to be thought of. To draw the line between the demands upon you, to strike the bal- ance, was no easy thing. On the one side was in- clination, on the other was duty, perhaps a conflict of duties. Home, its pursuits and affections, bade you stay ; your country, her perils and honor, hade you go. There were the hopes and plans of a lifetime to be set aside; parents and wives and children to he thought of, provided for; everything you loved to be left. Behind were the prizes of the heart; be- fore, every uncertainty, privation, suffering, possibly death. Tou have not forgotten the fearful struggle, nor the hour when, at last, your mind made up, you turned your back on home, forsook your place and duties as a citizen, and in a strange garb offered yourself to your strange vocation. Did you ever experience a sensation like that when you first real- ized that you were a recruit ?