WIPING THE TEARS FROM THEIR EYES. 99 twilight, the sight of the shattered ranks around us, produced a feeling of sadness in me not unmixed with awe; and I am sure no friend of our brother soldiers could have stood at the lonely grave, and not been a mourner, as I was there. "Lonely grave," should we say? Those graves, hidden as they may be in the shades of the forest, or remote from the homes of those whose bodies rest in them, shall not be forgotten, shall not be unvisited. Memory shall watch over them. Fathers shall point them out to their sons; they shall speak forth their mute lessons of self-sacrifice and patriotism in the ear of generations yet unborn. "How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest! By fairy hands their knell is rung, III. WIPING THE TEARS FROM THEIR EYES. Few men have had means so ample for learning the spirit of our soldiers as the Rev. Mr. Savage, agent of the American Tract Society, in the Western Department. While I have conversed (he says) with thousands of our wounded from the battle-fields of Lexington and Pea Ridge and Fort Donelson and Shiloh and Corinth and Iuka, sometimes on the field, sometimes on transports, sometimes in hospitals, I have never found the first wounded man yet that has uttered a single word of complaint, or expressed a regret at having enlisted. It is most wonderful to me. I have seen them armless and legless, pierced through every part of the body, and upon the surgeon's bench, undergoing amputation. I have seen them dying, and heard them speak of wife and children and loved ones at home; but I have never heard a word of complaint or regret at having enlisted in the army. I made a recent visit to the wounded at Vicksburg, at Arkansas Post. I found there cases of the deepest interest, one of which I will mention. There was a noble young man lying upon his cot on the hospital steamer, who, by the bursting of a shell directly in front of him, had had an arm cut off by a fragment, and another fragment had struck the right arm, and shattered it so that it had to be amputated. There he lay upon his cot, with both arms gone, and knowing that such must be his condition for life; but yet with a cheerful, happy countenance, and without a word of complaint. I ministered to his wants; and, as I put the food into his mouth, which he had no hands to convey thither, he would say, "Well, now, how good that is! How kind of you! The Lord will bless you for it. I don't see why you are so kind to me; any one could be too kind to a man who had suffered such a loss in defence of his country! دو as if When I spoke to him of his religious feelings, he said, "When I had my arm shattered, I was no professed Christian; but as I lay upon that battle-field at Hurdman's Post, I felt, as I never felt before, the importance of immediately making preparations for another world; and I cried mightily to God that he would have mercy upon me, and I believe Jesus heard my prayer, and granted me forgiveness, and that I did there consecrate myself, on that battle-field, THE SOLDIER'S FAREWELL. 101 to his service." And his soul seemed to be resting peacefully upon Jesus amid all his great sufferings. One thing touched me exceedingly. As he spoke of his feelings, the tears coursed down his cheeks and lay upon them. He had no hands with which even to wipe away the tears from his own cheeks. And as I took a handkerchief and tenderly performed this office, that beautiful passage from the Book of Revelation occurred to me with a force it never had before: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." After the battle of Williamsburg, a soldier mortally wounded was lying on the field at night, dying. So severe were his sufferings that one of his comrades, who was also wounded, dragged himself near to him so as to be able to converse with him, and, if possible, speak a word of comfort to him. The dying man looked up to him and said, "It is of no use, William,—I must die. I had hoped when I died to be surrounded with the friends of life's early morning; but here, far from them, with the cold, damp ground for my bed, I must go. And now, William, if you survive the war, I have a message for you to carry home. I have a wife, two lovely children, and an aged mother. When I came away, my dear wife gave me this, her picture. Open it; I want to look at it once more before I and if you will read this, her last letter to me concerning herself and go, the children, it will seem as though she was speaking to me." He then drew from his side-pocket a little pocket Bible. "This," said he, "is the last gift of my poor aged mother. Oh, how mother will mourn when she hears I have fallen! When I was coming away, she came to the door, and trembling with emotion and grief, put this little volume in my hand. She could not utter a word, but I knew what she wanted; and tell her, William, that I have read it constantly. And tell her, too, that through it I was led to pray, and, as she already knows, found acceptance in Christ. Tell her it kept me from vice, and the evil influences of the camp; that it cheered me and consoled me, and brought me down to my death in peace. "And now, good-by, my dear absent wife and children! I commit you to God. Good-by, aged mother! - goodby, William, an everlasting farewell to long marches, lonely rounds as sentinel, hardships, dangers of the field, and bloody battles. I am going to the home of which I read yesterday, where 'the former things are passed away' -to die no more. And he closed his eyes, and, stepping into the chariot of love, he ascended the skies; and, amidst the acclamations of the shining hosts on the other shore, he reached his home. V. TRUE TO THE FLAG. The sea-fight between the rebel, iron-plated Virginia, formerly the Merrimac, and the Cumberland and Congress, aided at the last and critical moment by the Monitor, took place in Hampton Roads, the eighth and ninth of March, 1862. The wooden vessels were no match for the iron-clad. The Cumberland was sunk, and went down, leaving nothing visible but her pennant still flying from the topmast above the waves. The Merrimac then turned to the Congress, and a contest between them, almost hopeless from the outset, was kept up for nearly an hour. The steamer raked the doomed vessel fore and aft with her broadsides, swept TRUE TO THE FLAG. 103 away nearly all the gunners, with a shot killed her commander, Lieutenant Joseph Smith, set her repeatedly on fire, and then, having driven her aground, compelled her to hoist the white flag and surrender. But the Monitor, which came up so suddenly on the morning of the second day, turned the scales of victory, drove back and disabled the Merrimac, and saved to us Fortress Monroe and our fleet in those waters. The father of the brave commander of the Congress, who lost his life on that fatal Saturday, is Commodore Joseph Smith, of Washington. It appears that the elder Smith had exerted himself specially to finish the work on the Monitor, and hasten her departure to the scene of action. The son, too, had written repeatedly to the naval authorities at Washington, expressing his fears for the consequences of an attack from the Merrimac, and urging plans for guarding against it. The father knew the spirit of his son, and that the only issue of a battle for him was death or victory. When he saw, therefore, by the first despatch from Fortress Monroe that the Congress had raised the white flag, he only remarked quietly, “Joe is dead!" No Roman father ever paid a nobler or more emphatic tribute of confidence to a gallant son than is contained in the words so uttered, nor ever gave that son to his country with more cheerful and entire devotion. The sad assurance was well founded. The flag was not struck until his son had fallen.1 1 This incident is from the Boston Daily Advertiser. |