THE CRIPPLE AT THE GATE.*

Look! how the hoofs and wheels to-day
Scatter the dust on the broad highway,
Where Beauty and Fashion, and Wealth and Pride
On saddle and cushion serenely ride!
The very steeds have a conscious prance
Of pride in their elegant freight!

Love and laughter like jewels slip

From the sparkling eye and the merry lip;
You never would think that the Nation's life
Hung on the thread of a desperate strife,
Unless from these you should turn, by chance,
To the Cripple at the Gate.

Weary and footsore, and ragged and soiled,
Through the summer glare he has slowly toiled
Along the edge of the broad highway,
Since the early dawn of the westering day;
His rags are flecked with the dusty foam
That flew from the gilded bits

Of the champing steeds that passed him by ;
And a haggard shadow is in his eye,

But it is not the gloom of an envious pain!
He has left a limb on the battle-plain,
And to win his way to his distant home
At my gate, a Beggar, he sits!

*We all remember one of the sad evidences of the unavoidable insufficiency of our War Department to the demands made upon it by a gigantic and protracted struggle which spread over such vast distances and employed so many men, -the sight of discharged soldiers, sometimes wounded or enfeebled by disease, without the means of reaching their homes, which often were hundreds of miles away. From this seeming reproach we were at last relieved by the efforts of that noble organization, the Sanitary Commission.

THE CRIPPLE AT THE GATE.

He tells me his tale in a simple way:
"I had nothing," he says, "except my pay,
And a wife and four little girls, and so
I sent all my money to them, you know!
When I lost my limb, Sir - but that I'm lame,
I do not complain, for, you see,

'Tis the fortune of war, and it might be worse;
And I'd lose the other to stop the curse
Of this terrible strife!- But I meant to say,
When I left the hospital t' other day,

I did think I had a kind of a claim
To be sent to my village free.

"Don't you think it hard yourself, Sir? There's a hundred dollars of bounty due

True,

In three years, or when the war's ended; but how
Long may that be -
can you tell me now?
I did not enlist for bounty, I trust,
My conscience I never have sold;

But how does it look for a soldier to 'tramp,'
Begging his way like a vagabond scamp,

From the fields where he often risked his life,
To the home where he left his babes and wife,
In a uniform made of tatters and dust
Instead of the blue and gold?'

"Whose fault this is, Sir, I do not know," Said the wayworn man as he rose to go; "But of this, alas! I am sure —

the sight Of a soldier returning in such a plight

To the home whence, a few short months ago,

He marched in a gallant band,

With music, and banners, and shining steel,
Will dull more ears to the battle-peal,

And cause more bosoms with doubt to swell,
Than the secret traitor's deadliest spell.
Do'nt you see yourself, Sir, it must be so?”
And he sighed as I held out my hand.

133

Lofty carriage and low coupé

Still whirl the dust on the broad highway;
Beauty and Fashion, and Wealth and Pride
Still through the roseate twilight ride,
With love, and laughter, and prancing steed,
As if Pleasure were all life's fate.

But I gaze no more on the joyous train,
For my eye is fixed with a steadfast strain
On the tattered soldier's halting stride,

Till his tall form sinks down the dark hill-side;
Then I cry,
"Thank God! he hath now no need

To beg at the stranger's gate!"

Harpers' Weekly.

WANTED A MAN.

BY EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

BACK from the trebly crimson'd field
Terrible words are thunder-tost;
Full of the wrath that will not yield,
Full of revenge for battles lost!
Hark to their echo as it crost
The Capital, making faces wan:
"End this murderous holocaust;
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"Give us a man of God's own mould,
Born to marshal his fellow-men;
One whose fame is not bought and sold
At the stroke of a politician's pen;
Give us the man of thousands ten,
Fit to do as well as to plan;

Give us a rallying-cry, and then,
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

WANTED-A MAN.

"No leader to shirk the boasting foe,

And to march and countermarch our brave,
Till they fade like ghosts in the marshes low,
And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave;
Nor another, whose fatal banners wave
Aye in Disaster's shameful van;

Nor another, to bluster, and lie, and rave;-
Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"Hearts are mourning in the North,

While the sister rivers seek the main, Red with our life-blood flowing forth, Who shall gather it up again? Though we march to the battle-plain Firmly as when the strife began,

Shall all our offering be in vain? Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!

"Is there never one in all the land,
One on whose might the Cause may lean?
Are all the common men so grand,
And all the titled ones so mean?
What if your failure may have been

In trying to make good bread from bran
From worthless metal a weapon keen?
Abraham Lincoln, find us a MAN!

"Oh, we will follow him to the death,
Where the foeman's fiercest columns are!

Oh, we will use our latest breath,
Cheering for every sacred star!
His to marshal us nigh and far,

Ours to battle, as patriots can

When a Hero leads the Holy War!Abraham Lincoln, give us a MAN!" SEPTEMBER 8, 1862.

135

New York Tribune.

That is the number of wounded men Who, if the telegraph's tale be true,

Reached Washington City but yester e'en.

And it is but a handful, the telegrams add,
To those who are coming by boats and by cars;
Weary and wounded, dying and sad ;

Covered - but only in front with scars.

Some are wounded by Minié shot,

Others are torn by the hissing shell,
As it burst upon them as fierce and as hot
As a demon spawned in a traitor's hell.

Some are pierced by the sharp bayonet,

Others are crushed by the horses' hoof; Or fell 'neath the shower of iron which met Them as hail beats down on an open roof.

Shall I tell what they did to meet this fate?
Why was this living death their doom?

Why did they fall to this piteous state

'Neath the rifle's crack and the cannon's boom?

Orders arrived, and the river they crossed;
Built the bridge in the enemy's face;

No matter how many were shot and lost,

And floated — sad corpses away from the place.

-

Orders they heard, and they scaled the height,
Climbing right "into the jaws of death;"