human
There was once a boy I liked. He was eighteen, stood six foot high in his stocking-boots, and his name was Pete Conkling. The lessons that boy taught me were useful in my after life. We began it every morning at five minutes past nine. Any little thing set us off. He might heave a desk, or a row of books, or the slates of the whole class at my head. I might go for him first. It was uncertain how it began, but the fight was bound to be fought. The boys expected it, and it pleased the gells. Sometimes it took me half an hour, and sometimes the whole morning, to wallop that boy. When it was done, Pete would take his place among the little gells, for he never could learn anything, and school would begin. To see him after it was over sitting alongside of little Hepzibah and Keziah, as meek as if he'd never heard of a black eye, and never seen the human fist, was one of my few joys. I was fond of Pete, and he was fond of me. Ways like his, gentlemen, kinder creep round the heart of the lonely teacher. Very fond of him I grew. But I got restless and dug out for another place; it was when I went on the boards and became an actor, I think; and it was close on fifteen years afterwards that I met him. Then he was lying on the slopes of Gettysburg--it was after the last battle--and his eyes were turned up to the sky; one of them, I noticed, was black; so that he had kept up his fighting to the end. For he was stark dead, with a Confed. bullet in his heart. Poor Pete!
gpt
You fought for the North?
human
I _was_ a Northerner,