I refused to entertain such a very poor idea, and clung to the name which had always been mine--for my father would never depart from it--and I even burst into tears, which would, I suppose, be called "sentimental;" but still the stern fact stared me in the face--I must go as "Miss Wood," or not go at all.

Upon this Major Hockin had insisted; and even Colonel Gundry could not move him from his resolution.
Uncle Sam had done his utmost, as was said before, to stop me from wishing to go at all; but when he found my whole heart bent upon it, and even my soul imperiled by the sense of neglecting life's chief duty, his own stern sense of right came in and sided with my prayers to him.
And so it was that he let me go, with pity for my youth and sex, but a knowledge that I was in good hands, and an inborn, perhaps "Puritanical" faith, that the Lord of all right would see to me.
The Major, on the other hand, had none of this.

He differed from Uncle Sam as much as a trim-cut and highly cultured garden tree differs from a great spreading king of the woods.

He was not without a strict sense of religion, especially when he had to march men to church; and he never even used a bad word, except when wicked facts compelled him.

When properly let alone, and allowed to nurse his own opinions, he had a respectable idea that all things were certain to be ordered for the best; but nothing enraged him so much as to tell him that when things went against him, or even against his predictions.
It was lucky for me, then, that Major Hockin had taken a most adverse view of my case.