might have said that there are a great many who give the oil and the two pence as gladly and readily as their great parabolic. prototype; and it was a fine illustration of the sort of life we live almost unconsciously in these distant centres of a new civilization, that a great meeting should gather itself together without effort, provide the oil and the two pence in a wonderful plenty, find a great company of surgeons and others ready to leave every sort of indispensable work that they could not possibly have left the day before, and see them away on the very first train that started in the direction of the battle-field after we got the news of the victory.

Let me here point out the striking fact in our human nature, that while we are constantly inventing excuses why we will not do this thing or that, and putting the yoke of oxen or the piece of land we have just bought, or the wife we have just married or are about to marry, in the way of all sorts of divine things, there comes some great sweeping sorrow or joy, with its consequent duty, once and again in our life, before which our excuse goes down like a wall of cards. We can resist the marriage-supper; but a city afire, a great victory that will tell on the fate of the nation for all time to come, our own child in a fever, or a man buried in a well just as we are going past, flames over all excuses to the soundhearted man or woman. God seems to deal with us at such moments as we deal with our children after a long perversity. He sets us down in some place with a touch we know it is impossible to resist; and seems to say to us, "Now, sir, stand just there, and do just so.”

of you.

It seems a trifle to mention, and I would pass it over, if I thought that reading about it would give you the sense of it; but it was not so with me, and I suppose is not with the most You go down Lake Street, over a deep, solid ice, take your seat in the cars, race over great, dreary reaches of snowclad "prairie" and ice-bound waters, to step at last from the car into deep, soft mud, at the end of this wonderful iron road, and not a vestige of ice or snow is to be seen. It was the first time in my life that I got a clear realization of parallels of latitude. Our great desire, of course, was to get, to Fort

Donelson and to our work in the shortest possible time and I am sure you will not thank me for a full account of Cairo, historical and descriptive. I will merely say, when you want to solicit a quiet place of retirement in the summer, do not even go to look at Cairo. I assure you, it will not suit. It is notable here only for being the first point where we met with traces of the great conflict. The first I saw were three or four of those long boxes, that hold only and always the same treasure; these were shells nailed together by comrades in the camp, I suppose, to send some brave man home. As I went past one lying on the sidewalk in the dreary rain and mud, I read on a card the name of a gallant officer who had fallen in fight; and, as I stood for a moment to look at it, the soldier who had attended it came up, together with the brother of the dead man, who had been sent for to meet the body. It seemed there was some doubt whether this might not be some other of the half-dozen who had been labelled at once; and the coffin must be opened before it was taken away.

I glanced at the face of the living brother as he stood and gazed at the face of the dead; but I must not desecrate that sight by a description. He was his brother beloved, and he was dead; but he had fallen in a great battle, where treason bit the dust, and he was faithful unto death. He must have died instantly; for the wound was in a mortal place, and there was not one line or furrow to tell of a long agony, but a look like a quiet child, which told how the old confidence of Hebrew David, "I shall be satisfied when I wake in Thy likeness," was verified in all the confusion of the battle. God's finger touched him, and he slept; and—

"The great intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state,

In circle round the blessed gate,

Received and gave him welcome there."

One incident I remember, as we were detained at Cairo, that gave me a sense of how curiously the laughter and the tears of our lives are blended. I had hardly gone a square from that touching sight, when I came across a group of men

gathered round a soldier wounded in the head. Nothing would satisfy them but to see the hurt; and the man, with perfect good nature, removed the bandage. It was a bulletwound, very near the centre of the forehead; and the man declared the ball had flattened and fallen off. "But," said a

simple man eagerly, "why didn't the ball go into your head?" -"Sir," said the soldier proudly, "my head's too hard: a ball can't get through it!"

A journey of one hundred and sixty miles up the Ohio and Cumberland rivers brought us to Fort Donelson; and we got there at sunset. I went at once into the camp, and found there dear friends who used to sit in these pews, and had stood fast through all the thickest battle. They gave us coffee, which they drank as if it were nectar, and we as if it

were senna.

A body of men drew up to see us, and demanded the inevitable "few remarks: and we told them through our tears how proud and thankful they had made us, and what great tides of gladness had risen for them in our city, and wherever the tidings of victory had run; and how our hands gave but a feeble pressure, our voices but a feeble echo, of the mighty spirit that was everywhere reaching out to greet those that were safe, to comfort the suffering, and to sorrow for the dead.

The " own correspondents" of the newspapers describe Fort Donelson just as if a man should say that water is a fluid, or granite a solid. I have seen no printed description of it that will make a picture in the mind. I think there is a picture graven on some silent soul, that will get itself printed some time. But it took years to get a word-picture of Dunbar, and it may take as long to get one of Donelson. If you take a bow, and tighten the string until it is very much over bent, and lay it down on a table, with the string toward you, it will give a faint idea of the breast-works; the river being to them what the cord is to the bow. At the right hand corner, where the bow and cord join, is the famous water-battery, commanding a straight reach in the river of about a mile, where

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the gunboats must come up; and at the other end of the cord up the river, lies the town of Dover.

It was my good fortune to go over the entire ground with a number of our friends, and to wander here and there alone at rare moments beside. The day I spent there was like one of our sweetest May-days. As I stood in a bit of secluded woodland, in the still morning, the spring birds sang as sweetly, and flitted about as merrily, as if no tempest of fire and smoke and terror had ever driven them in mortal haste away. In one place where the battle had raged, I found a little bunch of sweet bergamot, that had just put out its brown-blue leaves, rejoicing in its first resurrection; and a bed of daffodils, ready to unfold their golden robes to the sun and the green grass in sunny places was fair to see. But where great woods had cast their shadows, the necessities of attack and defence had made one haggard and almost universal ruin,-trees cut down into all sorts of wild confusion, torn and splintered by cannon-ball, trampled by horses and men, and crushed under the heavy wheels of artillery. One sad wreck covered all.

Of course, it was

not possible to cover all the ground, or to cut down all the trees. But here and there, where the defenders would sweep a pass, where our brave men must come, all was bared for the work of death; and, where the battle had raged, the wreck was fearful.

Our ever-busy Mother Nature had already brought down great rains to wash the crimson stains from her bosom; and it was only in some blanket cast under the bushes, or some loose garment taken from a wounded man, that these most fearful sights were to be seen. But all over the field were strewn the implements of death, with garments, harness, shot and shell, dead horses, and the resting places of dead men. Almost a week had passed since the battle, and most of the dead were buried. We heard of twos and threes, and in one place of eleven, still lying where they fell; and, as we rode down a lonely pass, we came to one waiting to be laid in the dust, and stopped for a moment to note the sad sight. Pray, look out from my eyes at him as he lies where he fell. You see by his garb that he is one of the rebel army; and, by the peculiar

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marks of that class, that he is a city rough. There is little about him to soften the grim picture that rises up before you, as he rests in perfect stillness by that fallen tree; but there is a shawl, coarse and homely, that must have belonged to some woman; and—

"His hands are folded on his breast:

There is no other thing expressed,
But long disquiet merged in rest."

Will you still let me guide you through that scene as it comes up before me? That long mound, with pieces of board here and there, is a grave; and sixty-one of our brave fellows rest in it, side by side. Those pieces of board are the gravestones, and the chisel is a black-lead pencil. The queer, straggling letters tell you that the common soldier has done this, to preserve, for a few days at least, the memory of one who used to go out with him on the dangerous picket-guard, and sit with him by the camp-fire, and whisper to him, as they lay side by side in the tent through the still winter night, the hope he had before him when the war was over, or the trust in this comrade if he fell. There you see one large board, and in a beautiful, flowing hand, "John Olver, Thirty-first Illinois:" and you wonder for a moment whether the man who has so tried to surpass the rest was nursed at the same breast with John Olver; or whether John was a comrade, hearty and trusty beyond all price.

And you will observe that the dead are buried in companies, every man in his own company, side by side; that the prisoners are sent out after the battle to bury their own dead; but that our own men will not permit them to bury a fellow-soldier of the Union, but every man in this sacred cause is held sacred even for the grave.

And thus, on the crest of a hill, is the place where the dwellers in that little town have buried their dead since ever they came to live on the bank of the river. White marble and gray limestone and decayed wooden monuments tell who rests beneath. There stands a gray stone, cut with these home-made letters, that tell you how William N. Ross died on the 26th day of March, 1814, in the 26th year of his age; and right