III.

The Work of the Pen in this War.

A THOUSAND books will be written about this Rebellion. Let them all come: the world will need them. Let every scene worth remembering be recorded by each looker-on. Let each man tell how the battle which he saw raged,—how his comrades fought and fell,-how each battalion answered to the order, Charge!-how each regiment closed in solid. column, and each division formed its last line of defence or attack. Let no well-authenticated fact be lost. For we must not forget-least of all should the men who hold the penthat, while we are straining our vision with these strange sights, we become the sacred depositaries of materials from which the artists of a later age will mature their sublime and finished pictures.

But, fully as the incidents of the war have photographed themselves through the press, countless facts and scenes worthy of record may never get their place in history. We have been making history faster than all the pens could write it.

This conflict has had to pass in review before the honest face of the Daguerrean lens: thus it has, in a certain sense, been compelled to write its own annals. But what would otherwise, at best, be only a lifeless and meaningless mass of material, has with the magic touch of the pen been instantly made instinct with life and radiant with significance. The empire of the pen can never be broken. The long line of its masters shows no interregnum. In leaping some chasm in the Dark Ages, we find the light of one great author flashing from one side of the gulf, and the light of an earlier

writer streaming in to meet it. We who are humbler members of the great Republic of Letters must look for no exemption from the great law: the lesser must yield to the greater. The working million cannot hope to be remembered as units. They toil, and think, and fight, and write, as armies. They weep and exult, they forge and produce; but they can have no place in far-off history. They march through the desert; but they must leave the glory of eternal remembrance to Moses, who leads them through.

Authors form no exception. There are only a few books of much value long after they are written. A thousand historians wrote about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, during fourteen centuries, till Gibbon constructed from the bewildering mass his imperishable work. Away into oblivion that host of authors floated,-beyond the reach of all but the learned and the curious. But their labors

were not lost. It was a long stretch of Time's river in its sluggish passages. But it bore on its bosom the slowly accumulating records of the centuries, and they poured their treasures into Gibbon's hands. He saved them forever.

****

IV.

Heroism in the Hospital.

THE surgeon said, "He can hardly live." He laid the hand down softly, and left this patient, to pass through the ward.

It seemed to say that all that earth could do had been done, to save the life of the gallant young soldier. I followed the surgeon a few steps on the routine of duty. We stopped, and looked each other in the face. He knew I wanted to know the whole truth.

"Must this boy die?"

"There is a shadow of a chance. I will come again after midnight."

I went back, with a heavy heart, to the cot we had left, and, knowing something of hospitals and dying men, I sat down to wait and see what new symptoms would occur, with the full directions of the surgeon in any event.

The opiate, or whatever it may have been, which I had last administered, could not take effect at once; and, somewhat worn out with the day's labors, I sat down to think. To sleep, was out of the question; for I had become so deeply interested in this young man it seemed to me I could not give him up.

*

*

*

*

It was nearly midnight. The gas had been turned off just enough to leave the light needed, and twilight was grateful to the sick-room; for in this vast chamber there were more than two hundred sick men. Now and then came a suppressed moan from one couch, or a low plaint of hope

less pain,-while at intervals thrilled from the high ceiling the shrill scream of agony. But all the while the full harvestmoon was pouring in all the lustrous sympathy and effulgence it could give, as it streamed over the marble pile called the Patent Office, the unfinished north wing of which had been dedicated to this house of suffering.

Almost noiselessly, the doors of this ward opened every few moments, for the gentle tread of the night nurses, who came, in their sleepless vigils, to see if in these hours they could render some service still to the stricken, the fallen, and yet not comfortless.

Leaving my young friend for a few moments, I walked through the north aisle; and it seemed to me-so perfect was the régime of the hospital, so grand were its architectural proportions-more like walking through some European cathedral by moonlight, than through a place for sick soldiers. The silence greater than speech, the suffering unexpressed, the heroism which did not utter one complaint, the completeness of the whole system of care and curative process, made one of those sights and scenes which I would not tear away from my memory if I could; for they have mingled themselves with associations that will link each month and year of time to come with all the months and years gone before them.

I felt a strange interest in this young man, whom I had left in what I supposed was his last quiet slumber; and yet I knew he would wake once more before he died. I approached his cot again. He was still sleeping, and so tranquilly I felt a little alarmed lest he might never wake, till I touched his pulse and found it still softly beating.

I let him sleep, and thought I would sit by his side till the surgeon came.—

I took a long, free breath, for I supposed it was all hopelessly over. Then I thought of his strange history:-I knew it well.

He was born not far from Trenton Falls,-the youngest son, among several brothers, of one of the brave tillers of that hard soil. He had seen his family grow up nobly and sturdily, under the discipline of a good religion and good government, and with a determination to defend both. When his country's troubles began, his first impulses thus found expression to his brothers:-"Let me go; for you are all married; and if I fall, no matter."

He went. He had followed the standard of the Republic into every battle-field where the struggle carried him, till, worn out, but not wounded, he was borne to this hospital in Washington, a sick boy. He seemed to have a charmed life, for on several occasions his comrades had been shot dead or wounded on either side; and when his last cartridge had done execution, he carried off two of his wounded companions from the field, bearing them and their muskets to the rear,― if there were a rear in the flight from the Bull Run of July, '61,—and nourished and watched and stood by these comrades till they died, and then got the help of a farmer to carry them with his cart, a whole day afterward, to be buried in a place which he chose.

This boy's example had inspired that farmer with such benevolence-if he were not inspired by patriotism already— that he made honored graves for them; and the writer of this work knows where their ashes rest.

When this was all over, the boy came back, as a kind of rear-guard, of one, in the flight of the army of the Potomac, and, having reached the city of Washington and reported himself to his commander, fell senseless on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was taken to a neighboring house and well cared for; and I saw him in the hospital of which I have spoken.

But this was only his life as a soldier. There was another and a deeper life than that. The great loadstone that led him away was the magnet of his nation. Another loadstone held his heart at home: it was the magnet of Love.