Excerpt from Pig Iron The news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox reached the little Massachusetts town of Mendon almost at the very hour of Sam Smith's birth. The baby's father, gray-featured and gray-bearded Theophilus Smith, who had given two sons to the Union cause, took his Wife's hand in his as he knelt beside the bed, and gently patting it, told her the glad tidings in a voice that slightly trembled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.