I KNOW DEAR FATHER WAS A GREAT MAN
"I KNOW DEAR FATHER WAS A GREAT MAN AND KNEWMOST EVERYTHING, BUT I DIDN'T KNOW HEHAD GOD'S EYES AND COULDSEE EVERYTHING"
To my query whether he had done anything else by the way which his dear father had not seen, he replied:
"Yes; I threw Branch Barksdale's hat over the fence, and I wouldn't have been home yet if he hadn't chased me."
Charlotte Cushman was with me at the time and I had an amusing illustration of the way in which she unconsciously threw herself into a situation.
"Poor little man! Poor little man!" she said in her deep sympathetic voice, as she observed the bewilderment of the child, expressed in every line of his tense little body, his puckered features and bent fingers. "His little brain is all puckered up, too. He can't understand how this thing should have come to him. Poor little man! It is wicked to mystify him so—bless his little heart!"
In her sympathy she had assumed the pose of the bewildered child, and her face and hands were "puckered up," as she had described his brain.
This was Miss Cushman's last visit to Richmond, when she came as a reader, having left the dramatic stage. When I first knew her she was at the height of her wonderful career asan actress. I met her at the house of a friend, and she often visited me when in Richmond. She became very fond of our children and they were fascinated by her. My little Corbell asked her:
"What is the use of acting? Why don't you be it—just be it?"
"Ah," she replied, "there is the trouble. I do 'be it,' my child. There is where strength and vitality go—in just being it."
Corbell was anxious to see her play, but she would not let him see her as Meg Merrilies.
"No Meg Merrilies must ever come into the life of a child like that," she said. "Of all the people I have ever known, he would be the most deeply impressed by Meg Merrilies."
A friend had sent in some birds for Corbell, and he said to Miss Cushman:
"I wasn't brought up thinking it any wrong to shoot birds or any wrong to eat birds, and all the good people I know shoot them and eat them. But things that have such pretty feathers and such pretty talk in their throats must have souls, and so I don't know for sure about shooting them and eating them, not for really, truly sure, you know."
"I think you are right, my child, about the birds having souls, and I believe horses and dogs have souls, too. You know, dear, I believein reincarnation. We eat the body of the bird, the feathers we put in our cap, and the soul is the voice that must sing in another bird."
After that Corbell did not feel so bad about the shooting of the birds. "The soul goes out and another bird catches it and sings."
Charlotte Cushman told me how her idea of Meg Merrilies had come to her. On the evening of the day that she had been unexpectedly called upon to play the character she was standing in the wing awaiting her cue, book in hand, when she heard one of the gypsies say, "Meg—why, she is no longer what she was; she doats." In a flash there came to her the conception of the character in which she was to make her greatest success.
I never saw her Lady Macbeth on the stage, but retain a vivid impression of the awesome personation when she showed me in my own room how she had played the sleep-walking scene upon her first appearance in drama when she was nineteen. I still see her tragic face with the dawning horror creeping over it as she looked at the stain on her hand. With the sudden impulse of a frightened woman, she hurriedly took up a fold of her dress to rub it off. The futility of the effort flashing upon her, she removed her clutch from her dress and a deeper terror gloomed into her face. Shecaught up her long hanging hair and tried to rub away the stain. With her great awe-compelling eyes fixed upon her hand she uttered the words, "Out, damned spot!" in a tone of anguished despair that thrilled me with terror. She did not act Lady Macbeth; shewasLady Macbeth in all her pride, all her ambition, all her determination, all her despair. She said that she did not like to play the character because it exhausted her. It is easy to understand that a woman of cold and unscrupulous ambition would drain the life of one so gentle and sweet-natured as Charlotte Cushman.
In this engagement she did not play Nancy Sikes, but she gave us her characterization of the part because my Soldier wanted to see it. Lawrence Barrett described it accurately when he said: "It sounded as if she spoke through blood." She was one of the few to whom a set stage with scenery and music and costumes and an audience are not necessary in the production of artistic effects. A private room, or a grassy plot under a tree, or an open space in the sunshine, was all the stage she required, one soul that understood her was audience enough, and when she threw herself into the character she represented no one would have known whether she wore the garb of a beggar or a queen.
I told her of having met Ellen Tree in Canada.
"Oh," she said, "that was worth losing your name for," referring to the fact that in Canada the General and I were known by our middle name of Edwards. "The very fact that she could not keep from acting when off the stage made her interesting. Did you ever see her wipe her nose?"
I never had, so, to illustrate Ellen Tree's manner of performing that ceremony, Miss Cushman slowly and mysteriously drew her handkerchief from her pocket. As she did so her eyes opened wide and glared ominously, as if some scene of tragic import were looming up in the middle distance. Her form was tense and rigid, all her muscles drawn taut as if for a fatal spring. The handkerchief was lifted and applied to each nostril, while the face was stern and uncompromising as might have been that of the noble Roman sentencing his son to death for breaking the law. The handkerchief was returned to her pocket in the same dramatic manner.
"The blood of all the Cæsars was on that handkerchief when it was put away," Charlotte said. "Ellen Tree could not help acting; it was her nature."
Ellen Tree's everyday tragedy was sometimes productive of startling results. Going into Price's dry-goods store in Richmond she asked in her most dramatic voice:
"Haveyeany prints?"
"N-n-no, no, dear Madam," stammered the gallant but startled Virginian, "I—I'm sorry."
One of the clerks came to his assistance with the information that the lady meant calicoes, at the same time taking down some pieces from the shelf. The customer examined them with tragic significance and looked up with eyes filled with fathomless depths of emotion, inquiring in a voice of intense power, dwelling with dramatic force upon each word:
"Said ye they would wash?"
"N-n-no, Ma'am," replied the terrified clerk, "I d-d-did not, Ma'am."
Charlotte Cushman's manner was the opposite of that of Ellen Tree. She was a perfect child of Nature, and one meeting her would have supposed that she was a gentle, quiet home-keeper with no thought except to please her own.
Speaking of Joe Jefferson she said:
"I think his paintings are as marvelous as his acting, and the colors in his voice blend as perfectly as those in his paintings. He really must have had a dog named Schneider when he was playing Rip Van Winkle, and if you had told him differently he would not have believed you. He could fool himself into thinking that whatever he acted was a fact, and his audience readily took the same view."
Once when Charlotte Cushman was with us Judge Moncure, then an old man, came in and, meeting his wife, greeted her with great chivalry, bending and kissing her hand. Judge Joynes, of Petersburg, asked, "How old is Mrs. Moncure, Judge?" Judge Moncure replied, "She was sixteen when I married her, Judge, and to me she has been that age ever since."
The little incident reminded Charlotte of the Brownings, whom she had known in Florence, and of the beautiful compliments that Robert Browning used to pay his wife. She spoke of his indignation when Mrs. Browning's poetry was compared with his own in a manner unfavorable to her. He really felt that she was superior to himself and had no patience with people who could not appreciate her greater merit.
Miss Cushman told me that of all the parts she had ever played she most enjoyed Romeo, which she used to play to her sister's Juliet.
She was fond of dialects, saying, "Everything is more fascinating than plain English." In Ireland she talked the brogue with the peasants so well that she might have passed for one of them. She was equally at home with Scotch, German and Italian dialects, and when in the North had been noted for recitations in negro speech, which she thought the most beautifulof all. But on coming to Richmond she found that she did not know anything about the lingo of the darkies. Being anxious to learn it, she used to talk with old Wash and Julia, two historical characters at the Ballard and Exchange Hotel, repeating their expressions over and over. Later she would try to say them, finding that she was no more expert than in the beginning. Thus she learned that to know plantation talk one must be born to it; it cannot be acquired.
She was at that time victim to a painful and wasting disease. Seeing her suffering one day from the treatment for the malady, I said:
"Oh, I am so sorry! You can't play to-night."
"Yes, my dear," she replied gently, "I shall play to-night, and, it may be, all the better for the pain."
Watching her wonderful performance that evening I thought it might be that pain is the gateway to the highest realm of art.
The last time I saw Charlotte Cushman was in Philadelphia. A great sorrow had shrouded me from the sunlight, and she tried to shelter me in the warmth of her own heart.
"You ought to have been an actress," she said, "and then you would have regained happiness by simulating it."
Another of our friends from the mimic worldwas Joe Jefferson, whom we saw now for the first time since meeting him in Canada. On coming to Richmond he found that his old friend, Mr. Caskie, who had helped him to a foothold upon life, had lost his fortune by the war, and was in even greater need than the unknown boy had formerly been. The famous comedian was not one to forget a kindness. "Let's give him a benefit," he said to my Soldier. It was characteristic of Joe Jefferson that he never said "I will do" thus and so. He said "Let's do it," as if the success of the project depended upon the one to whom he was talking rather than on his own ability. The benefit was given and the man of ruined fortunes had reason to be glad that in the days of the full larder he had "cast his bread upon the waters."
The old Ballard and Exchange Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, celebrated for having entertained more distinguished visitors than any other hostelry in this country, consisted of two houses on opposite sides of the street, connected by one of the most picturesque bridges, where the guests found a pleasant meeting place as they passed from one building to the other.
Colonel Carrington, the proprietor, was a courtly, gallant and hospitable old Virginia gentleman, a peer of peers, yielding to no superiority of position, as was evidenced in his reception of the Prince of Wales on his visit to Richmond. After cordially shaking hands with the royal visitor he slapped him on the back and said:
"Make yourself at home, Prince, make yourself at home, sir. I extend to you my heartiest welcome, sir. Old Wash will look after youand if I can be of any service, Prince, just call on me."
I never heard whether the Prince returned the Colonel's slap but I know that he accepted the cordiality in the same spirit in which it was offered. He visited the Colonel's stables and discussed the pedigree of his fine thoroughbred, drove with him behind his fastest trotter, and so liked the old Virginia mint juleps which he drank with his host, that he asked for and received the recipe for making them and took it back with him to the motherland, with some mint roots to plant in his palace garden.
The Colonel was our life-long friend and devoted to our children who, while they returned his affection, stood in awe of him from the time that he gave them a graphic illustration, by pulling his wig awry and turning his eyelids wrong side out, of what had happened to "peeping, prying, inquisitive Jerry."
On our return from Salt Sulphur Springs the summer our little Corbell was in his eighth year, as we drove up to the Exchange Hotel the dear old Colonel came out to the carriage and said:
"Your rooms are all ready, General. We received your telegram and prepared for your coming, but we have two cases of measles here, so I have arranged to have you taken care of at the Monumental Hotel till the danger is over."
We thought it best not to run any risk, and went to the Monumental. The rooms were large and comfortable. Dr. and Mrs. Barksdale were the first to greet us. They, too, with several others of our friends who had little children, had been obliged to leave the Exchange for the same reason.
Our precautions proved in vain, for my sister, a young lady just entering society, who was staying with us, was stricken with the disease, and my schoolboy brother and my two children caught the contagion. At the end of three months, however, all were well except our beautiful, gifted, wonderful boy, our little Corbell, always a delicate child, who now became weaker day by day.
There was never anything like the goodness of the people of Richmond in those trying months. Relatives, friends and strangers came daily with toys, books, good things, carriages, as long as we could take our darling to ride, for his beautiful angel face, his wonderful mind and his glorious voice had won a place in every heart.
While Corbell was ill Mr. Davis called on us for the last time, as he was never again in Richmond. When he came in I drew up a chair for him, but he said:
"May I not sit on the bed beside our sick boy?"
When Corbell's lunch was brought in he asked that luncheon be brought for Mr. Davis, to which Mr. Davis added his voice.
"Shall I say grace, Mr. Davis, or will you?" asked the child.
"You, if you please," Mr. Davis replied, "for I should like to hear your grace."
Closing his beautiful eyes Corbell said the grace his father had taught him:
"Dear Jesus, be our Guest to-day,"
"Dear Jesus, be our Guest to-day,"
"Dear Jesus, be our Guest to-day,"
"Dear Jesus, be our Guest to-day,"
adding, "and never mind, Jesus, about Mr. Davis being here for he would like to have you."
I do not think that the child took his eyes from Mr. Davis's face, except to say grace, during the whole time the visitor was there. Oh, but that face was so awfully, so pathetically changed! Every expression, the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, all betokened a broken heart. Only the harmony of motion and the melody of tone remained.
On Good Friday night, seven months afterward, in sorrowful tones one and then another of my friends as they left me for the night whispered resignation to the will of God. Our Corbell was dying. All through the long weary night my Soldier, Mary and I breathlesslywatched and listened beside him. As we were moving softly about the room he said:
"I'm not asleep, our mama. 'Tisement thought I was dreaming 'cause I was laughing, but I wasn't. I was laughing about the funny thoughts I had when I was young. I just couldn't make my eyes open wide and when she caught me laughing I could see the first time I found out that God was ahead. It was that time in the bathroom when I wanted you to turn on the snow and 'Tisement said you couldn't do it, and couldn't any of you do it; neither our mama nor our papa nor Thomas could turn on the snow. You said you could all of you turn on the water. Well, I couldn't see why you couldn't just as well turn on the snow as the water. Then all of a sudden the thought came into my head that God was ahead of you all and that only He could turn on the flaky, flying, zig-zag snow, and I began wondering what more He could do that nobody else, not even our mama and our papa, could do. Do you remember how Thomas laughed at me the next day when I told him about it? How funny I was when I was young, wasn't I? I reckon all the little children are just as funny, though, and all of them think there isn't anything in the world that their father and mother can't do. I know I thought so until that verymorning and then I knew that God was ahead even of them. Once I asked our papa which was the oldest, he or God, and oh, my, but I was so hurt and disappointed when he said God was the oldest."
Little streaks of light were just beginning to scramble in through the slatted blinds. My Soldier smiling, stooped and kissed our darling's little wasted hands and said, "Yes, my boy; God is ahead," and then he walked over to the double windows and opened wide the blinds so that all the dawn-colors might stream in untrammeled and light the room, that our little one could see the eastern sky and watch for the sun he loved so well. The sky became a deeper red and moving across it was a black specky cloud.
"What are those dark specks, Soldier; are they crows?" I asked as I walked through the window onto the veranda to take a better look at the long queer line and to breathe in the morning air.
"No, little one," replied my Soldier, "they are wild geese; the cold weather is all gone."
"Then summer has come, our papa," said the child. "I was watching those little moving black flakes, too, when our mama asked you what they were."
A wrangling of voices from below grated upon our ears.
"Some unfortunate fellow has been overcome and is in the hands of the police," explained my Soldier.
The sacredness of our watch, the loneliness of the hour and the hollow silence of the deserted streets made the harsh voices seem more discordant. I looked over the rail.
"Oh, what a pitiable sight!" I exclaimed. "The poor man looks like a gentleman, too, refined and distinguished looking. Poor fellow! He seems so angry and—so sick. Please, my darling, go to his rescue. Who knows but perhaps somewhere there are belonging to him little ones like ours?"
"Yes, please go, our papa, please, sir," echoed the pleading tones from the bed, "go and bring him in. He may have little ones ofourkind and maybe he has a little one ofour mama's kind, too, waiting for him somewhere."
My Soldier went out just as the round red rim of the sun burst into sight out of the east. There was a greater joy than a smile on his face when he came back. He had brought the stranger in and registered him in the hotel as our guest. Our lives frequently came in touch with this stranger's in the years that followed, and he told me that often and again when he was attacked by that same terrible, almost incurable, malady, the memory of the spirit of thechild in the dawn of Good Friday had saved him.
A year later, when my Soldier went home and little Corbell was placed beside him, the children of this man came to me and said, "We are sorry Corbell is taken away, for we have been putting flowers on his grave every day, as our papa told us. But we can just as well put them here and on the General's grave, too."
The long Saturday passed and Easter Sunday came over the hills in the whiteness of its lilies and with melodious chimes rang out the blessed tidings that a Saviour had risen to bring Heaven to the world. But the golden light brought no dawn of hope to the hearts of those who watched sorrowfully over the little life that was drifting out upon that sea of glorious music into the Heaven of which it gave glad promise. Lulled to rest while the children sang their Easter carols, our boy went to join his brother angels. Through the open window the voices were sounding "Christ is risen" as he turned his head and laid his face against mine and reached out his little hand to my Soldier and Mary. I felt his spirit flutter and go. With a shivering sigh for me his soul slipped through the gate that Christ had risen to unlock.
During his long illness thoughtful friends from everywhere had been untiring in kindness.All their gifts he had willed to the poor children. His books he had left to his little brother, his ring to Mary, his "Confederate Orphan" fund to his father and me, saying, "Next quarter you will both be Confederate Orphans, for I shall be with the soldiers in the Lord's Army—maybe I'll be His little drummer boy, so I want you both to have that money."
His "Uncle Bev," as he called Judge Beverly Tucker, had given him a little enameled democratic rooster and on the Saturday evening before the Easter dawn he asked his father to give the rooster to the "poor handsome man who had come in the early morning when the sun was biggest and reddest and Good Friday was getting out of the way for Easter."
Weeks before he had selected his pall-bearers from among his little playfellows and had asked them all to wear white. To Dr. Minnegerode he said:
"Please, sir, Doctor, don't make the boys or any of my friends or relations cry but, please, sir, tell them something pretty, as you do at Sunday-school sometimes, and make them as happy as you can and have them all sing bright songs; and I want everybody to bring me red and blue and yellow and pink flowers, as well as white ones, and when you all get through and start back home I want the boys and girls tocarry all the flowers with them because the flowers would be so lonesome out there that they'd fade and die. Birds don't care for flowers and children do." He often asked me, "Don't you think flowers can feel?"
The Easter blossoms were still fresh and fragrant in St. Paul's Church when fourteen of Corbell's little boy friends all in white, singing their Easter anthem, carried the little white casket that held the flower just budding into blossom in our Father's garden, across the street and up the aisle, followed by all the children of the Sunday-school and the many sympathizing friends.
We left him under the shade of the young green leaves, among the blooming flowers of the early spring, where the music of the waters of the winding stream as it rippled over the pebbles could be heard mingling with the sweet song of the birds.
The morning that he went to sleep George had come in with a waiter of white cape jasmine from General and Mrs. Maury, who had taken him to their home during these last days of his little brother's perfect life. In his loving haste to bring them to his brother some of the delicate white blossoms had fallen and been crushed. Corbell looked down at the hurt leaves, then up into George's eyes, saying, "Little brother, begentle with the flowers; they die so soon." These, almost his last words, my Soldier had engraved on one side of the gold dollar, the "Confederate Orphan" money which he had willed to us, and wore it always on his watch-chain. After he went to our boy I wore it and always have tried to obey its voice and "be gentle with the flowers, they die so soon."
LITTLE BROTHER, BE GENTLE WITH THE FLOWERS
"LITTLE BROTHER, BE GENTLE WITH THE FLOWERS;THEY DIE SO SOON"
My Soldier longed to take me away at once from the scenes where so much suffering had come to me and the next morning I summoned all my strength for the trial awaiting me. I went to Mary's room and found her dressed, with the exception of her gloves, ready to go out. Her trunks, marked and strapped, were being taken down-stairs. Upon the bed were my dress and wrap, bonnet and veil and gloves of mourning, all laid out by her careful hand.
"Come," she said, "let me help you off with your wrapper. You have not much time; I was just coming for you. You are to leave on the ten-thirty train. George has gone with his father while he makes the final arrangements. I have said good-bye to them."
"Good-bye? Mary!" I said. "Good-bye? What do you mean? You would never leave me now when I need you so?"
Her beautiful face was as white as marble as she said:
"Weeks ago, my lady, when I saw that our little darling could not live I made all my arrangements to take the veil. God has again taken from meallI had on earth. When you, too, like me, are bereft ofeverythingcome to me."
"Passengers for the New York express, time's up!" rang through the hall.
For one minute we were clasped in each other's arms; her cold lips pressed mine for the first time. No word was spoken—she was gone—I was alone. I looked about me, dazed, confused. There was my hand satchel packed, a book and a letter, Mary's writing, on the bureau. Mechanically I picked them up, shuddering as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Was that pale, pinched face shrouded in crêpe mine?
"Dear Mother, where are you?" George's little arms were clasping my knees. "Dear Father sent me to take care of you till he comes back. He says he will be up in a minute for you and I must help you to get ready."
Always before our precious boy had called me "Our Mama" and his father "Our Papa," as he had been taught by his father. I sat down, taking him in my lap.
"'Our Mama' is ready, my precious boy," I said.
"Dear Mother, you've got me and Dear Father; don't cry—please, Dear Mother. I saw Mammy-Mary again but she shook her head at us and pointed up here to you and so Dear Father wouldn't stop her. Oh, she looked most as dead as you do, Dear Mother."
"Why do you call me differently, dear?" I asked.
"I don't know," he replied, "but the words 'Dear Mother' just came to me and choked up in my throat and so I said them out."
From that time to him I was always "Dear Mother."
From the walls of a convent in France for many years came at Easter time a message of love, a book, an embroidered flower, a letter or a prayer. Then, when all had been taken from me and I needed her most, only silence came, and I knew that she, too, had passed beyond.
In the early summer of 1875, as we were on the eve of going to Green Brier White Sulphur Springs for the rest that my Soldier so much needed after a winter of hard work, a telegram came from the Insurance Company he represented notifying him that an important matter in their Norfolk Agency had arisen, requiring his immediate personal attention.
"Little one," he said to me, "you must go on to the Springs with our boy and I will join you just as soon as this business is settled."
"Go without you? Not for the whole world!" I replied. "No, indeed, my Soldier. I am going with you. Why, I would not leave you even if you were perfectly well. I am going with you."
He, with his usual unselfishness, urged my going to the Springs, pleading that he was not at all seriously ill and would be all right in a day or two.
"I am going to Norfolk," I said, "and that settles it."
"But think, little one, think," he replied. "You are packed and ready to start, your rooms are engaged and your tickets bought. Now, don't be a foolish little wife. Go on to the White where it is cool and pleasant—please, now, my Lily, please, dear. This business may not detain me over a day or two. Be good and go, and please me by escaping the heat and mosquitoes."
"I want to be foolish," I replied, "and I don't want to be good, nor stay in a cool and pleasant place when you are where it is uncomfortable and sweltering; I want to be scorched with heat and bitten by mosquitoes, so I am going with you if it is not longer than a minute."
I went. The day following our arrival in Norfolk my Soldier returned to the hotel suffering with a chill. The duties had proved more complicated than were anticipated and his illness had been aggravated by hard work in the intense heat. Feeling better the next morning, he insisted upon going out again, but within the hour came back with another chill.
Thus began the long battle with death, in which no impatient word escaped his lips. With the endurance born to the brave, trained in long marches and agonizing campaigns and steeledin the fires of battle, his soul rose triumphant above the shocks of physical torture. When intense pain forced a moan from his lips he would look up pathetically and apologize, saying:
"You must not mind my moaning, little one. I'm afraid husband is getting into bad habits; forgive him."
So solicitous was he for me that often he would not acknowledge that suffering had caused an expression of pain, but would say, "Oh, it was nothing." With serene face he met the agony, fighting a braver battle than had ever been waged upon a field of war. Oh, those dark, dark days when hope failed and faith waned! If there was one ray of light in their gloom as I look back through the long weary years, it was in the loving thoughtfulness and sympathy of his people, the people of our beloved land everywhere.
Especially do I recall, among the legion of those who came to serve, my cousin, William Jasper Phillips, a mere boy in years but a man in mind and spirit, who with willing hand and heart, with gentle words and loyal, loving eyes, came to watch with me through the dark hours—holding my hands with a child's loving fervor and a man's strong sympathy.
Long years afterward, when I stood by theopen grave of this cousin and looked upon the many mourners whom special trains had brought from all parts of the country to do him honor and show their love, my thoughts went back to that dread time and I wondered not that a host of friends were saddened by his passing.
ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC
"ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC"
In vain were all our prayers—in vain our loving care. The time soon came when I knew that my Soldier's warfare was almost ended.
Father Jansen, who had come from Richmond to see him, asked, "Do you want to see me alone?" With his hand on the Father's knee, he replied:
"You know, Father, I never was a solitary bird. I was never alone except sometimes in the twilight or in the woods and then I had the spirit of my mother and my little girl with me."
"I know you are reconciled to death," said the priest.
"Ah, no; how could I be? I think God does not want me to be reconciled to leaving my wife and little boy alone in the world. He only wants me to obey with the courage of a soldier who receives an order that must be carried out because he is a soldier."
The Father was silent for a time as if going back in memory to an hour long past. Then he said:
"The first time I remember seeing you and having a talk with you was on Shockoe Hill. Standing there alone, your little boy gathering flowers some distance away, you seemed completely lost in the view before you. You held a bunch of wild flowers in your hand and were singing, 'As I view now those scenes so charming,' I listened and when you had finished the song you began to whistle. I asked you what tune you whistled and you said, 'I was thinking of Forsyth and of the boys and of the old fellow who came into the camp at San Antonio and acted out "Bennie Havens, O," and we all gave him money to go on his way and I sang that song that night, and it came back to me, and I wondered what had become of the boys. The next morning at breakfast a young fellow named May came in and said, "Boys, here is your money and it is worth it. I was Bennie Havens, O." I was wondering where May was.'"
On the last day when the physicians wanted to give my Soldier an anodyne, he said:
"No, I would rather suffer and know. You say there is no help for me; that I've got to cross the river. Well, I want to go over in my right mind—to know when I'm going; and I want to see how to steer my little craft as it pulls out from the shore and look into the dear faces of my loved ones till I breathe my lastgood night. Now, please, Doctor, excuse me, but won't you all go and leave me alone with my wife? You have tried to save me for her and I thank you. Now, all that you can do for me is to say good night."
Just as they were going my uncle, Colonel Phillips, and his wife came in with our little boy, who was staying with them.
"Well, Colonel," said my Soldier, "the enemy is too strong for me again, you see, and, Colonel—my ammunition is all out. I am glad you have both come. Thank you, and now good night, my dear friend; you are the last old comrade to whom I shall give an order—watch over my wife and child."
Calling our boy he said:
"Crawl up here by 'Dear Father,' my baby," and laying his hand on our boy's head he closed his eyes and there was silence in the room. Presently he spoke:
"This is the month that God sent you to us, my boy, and this is the month, I am afraid, that God is going to call me away from you. You must take my place at the side of your Dear Mother, begin at once to be the little husband to her, the little man for her, and I will watch over you and help you to perform all these offices."
"What are officers?" asked the child.
"Offices. You are old enough to know offices and officers. You must begin to learn words, because words are things and their meanings have much to do with our lives."
He spoke of Indian words and how the Indians had chosen their words.
"Klosch nonnitsh, look out, means you must not tell anybody; it is a secret. Tum-tum, heart. Klosch mika tum-tum, my heart speaks to yours."
He turned to me and said in Chinook:
"I am trying to make him understand the value of words and feel their meaning as indicated in their sound."
He gave George some money and told him to treat his little friends, saying that he had found that it brought him much more pleasure to give than to receive, and that one of the expressions of the eyes that he liked more than anything else wasgratitude and love.
"I have seen gratitude and love in a dog's eyes almost as strong as in a human being's."
Little George asked:
"How about a cat's?"
"Cats have secret eyes. They are eyes of mystery; eyes that defy you to read them. They are wonderfully beautiful, and there is a jewel that looks like them and is called cat's-eye.
"They told Dear Father that he must not write and he is a good soldier, but he is going to risk a court-martial and write. Now, run along and spend your money and have a good time and remember when even you are having a good time that it is at nobody's expense."
"What is expense?" asked George.
"You can have it at your own expense."
"What are you going to do to be court-martialed about!" asked the boy, returning to the risk that his father was to take.
"Well, I am going to have pencil and paper if I can get them. I would rather have pen and ink if I could."
"I will get paper and ink and pen for you," replied George.
He went out and returned with paper, a bottle of ink, a pen and a sponge. He said he tried to get some shot because he had seen it down-stairs to wipe pens on, but he did not see how it could wipe pens, for he took one and tried to wipe a pen and couldn't do it.
"Now, this is a love-letter and I don't want you to read it because you would be jealous. It is to an old sweetheart," said my Soldier, and the old twinkle came into his eyes.
On that last day he wrote a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Haxtun, dear friends at whose home I had visited in happy days. Mr. Haxtun wasboth Vice-President and Secretary of the Life Insurance Company which my Soldier represented.
"Sister," he said to the nurse, "I want this letter mailed at once."
"All right," she answered. "Would I not better ask the Doctor?"
"I want this letter mailed right at once," he repeated.
In the letter he had written:
"The marching days are over and when the train comes in and the call is 'All aboard' and I shall have started on the last journey, I want you to come and take my precious wife to your home and keep her just as long as you can have her and as she can stay. She loves music, she loves the beautiful sky, she loves the flowers, the ocean, and she loves you both. Lying here thinking about it, I feel that if she went to her own people they would remind her all the time of her grief, because it will be a grief to her, and it would be the same way if she went to mine. With you there is nothing that will make the sorrow keener."
When the letter was finished he said to little George:
"My darling boy, your Dear Mother gave you my name, George Edwards Pickett. I know you will take care of it, and now I give you myplace, too, and my darling wife, your Dear Mother. You understand, my son?"
The little head of his namesake son nestled closer to his own, the little arms crept about his neck and the child sobbed out, "Yes, sir, Dear Father."
"Bless your heart, my baby, bless your heart. Come now and kiss 'Dear Father,' good night."
After our boy had gone my Soldier said:
"Poor little man! Poor little loving heart! He does not know what death is, even though he saw his little brother go out of this earth-life; and you, my darling wife, must not let him know its meaning now. You must—you have got to take my place and be 'Dear Mother' and 'Dear Father,' too, to our boy."
The moon was rising, filling the night with radiance and casting mystic shadows on the earth.
"Turn down the lights, please, little one," he said, "and come to my arms."
Again there was silence. The Doctor came and gave him something and I have always thought there was an anodyne in it.
"How beautiful the moonlight looks and how peaceful! You will remember sometimes, my darling wife, how often in the years that are no more, I have sung to you under its silvery sheen, but my guitar is unstrung and the stringsin my voice are all broken and I can't sing to you to-night, and I want to—oh, how I want to sing just one song for, as I hold you close and feel your touch, I seem to hear again the chimes ringing out on our wedding day—our blessed marriage song, 'Believe me, if all these endearing young charms,' and I hear the choir chanting it soft and low in the distance as the minister is saying, 'Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,' and the bands playing the same song as they passed our carriage on the way to the station. I feel the hand of my wife creep into mine, and as the last faint sound of the last band dies away I feel our hand-clasp tighten and hear my own voice singing for my darling, 'Believe me, if all these endearing young charms,' and feel the thrill of our great love."
My Soldier felt my tears. I could not speak. I could only remember.
"Oh, my Lily—my little one—my precious wife! Pass over the dark days as bravely as you can till our boy is safe and then come to husband."
His thought went out to the home in which we had spent so many happy years.
"If I had been at home in our little room within the sight and the sound of the waters below us and the old packet-boat coming by, thebirds singing and my own redbird that always came and the mocking-birds, I think husband would have been a long time with you and the little boy. Maybe it is best. I think they must have given me an anæsthetic, though I asked them not to, for I feel as if floating dizzily. Now, little one, let's go to sleep."