hem those long thin fingers toiled with; the slippers a world too wide for the thin, faltering feet; a dish of fruit a left hand is slowly working at, his right laid upon our Federal altar at Chickamauga, never to be lifted more. Your tree, my sister, bore that fruit; your fingers wrought, your heart conceived. "What do the women say about us boys at home?" slowly asked a poor wreck of a lad, as I sat by his side. That brow of his ached, I know, for the touch of a loving hand, and the "sound of a voice that is still." At the moment he asked the question, he was turning over a little silken needle book that one of you laughing girls made some day, and tucked in a corner of a bag labeled "United States Sanitary Commission.” On the cover of that book you had wrought the words— playfully, perhaps "My bold soldier boy." I silently pointed to the legend; the reply struck home to his heart; and he burst into tears. I assure you they were not bitter tears he shed, and as he wiped them away, with a fine film of a handkerchief you girls had hemmed for him, his question was twice answered, and he was content. His eyelids closed down, and his breathing was regular; he had fallen asleep, and I thought it was the picture of the "Soldier's Dream" over again. You hear of the mal-appropriation of your gifts, but never fear; one grain may fail, but two will spring up and blossom into "forget-me-not." Your work is everywhere. Go with me to that tent standing apart; it is the dead-house tent. Four boys in their brown blankets, four white wood coffins, four labels with four names on four still breasts. Two of the four garments the sleepers wear are of linen from your stores, stitched by your fingers. Verily, the Ladies' Soldiers' Aid Societies should be named "Mary," for are they not like her of old, "last at the cross and earliest at the grave?" 9 Comfort and light throw Receive the last message. Pale lips have uttered God and man aid us In work to be done, THE WESTERN SOLDIER. THE prairie type of the human race is an interesting study of Natural History! We have long watched its development under the working of our country's progress. It is very sketchily portrayed here : "If there are men in the world gifted with the most thorough self-reliance, western soldiers are the men. To fight in the grand anger of battle seems to me to require less manly fortitude, after all, than to bear without murmuring the swarm of little troubles that vex camp and march. No matter where or when you halt, there they are at once at home. They know precisely what to do first, and they do it. I have seen them march into a strange region at dark, and almost as soon as fires would show well, they were twinkling all over the field, the Sibley cones rising like the work of enchantment everywhere, and the little dog-tents lying snug to the ground, as if like the mushrooms, they had grown there, and the aroma of coffee and tortured bacon, suggesting creature comforts, and the whole economy of a life in canvas cities moving as steadily on as if it had never intermitted. The movements of regiments, you know, are as blind as fate. Nobody can tell tonight where he will be to-morrow, and yet with the first glimmer of morning the camp, is astir, and the preparations begin for staying there forever; cozy little cabins of red cedar, neatly fitted, are going up; here a boy is making a fire-place, and quite artistically plastering it with the inevitable red earth; he has found a crane somewhere and swung up thereon a two-legged dinner-pot; there a fellow is finishing out a chimney with brick from an old kiln of secession proclivities; yonder a bower-house closely woven of evergreens is almost ready for the occupants; tables, stools, bedsteads are tumbled together by the roughest of carpenters; the avenues between the lines of tents are cleared and smoothed-'policed,' in camp phrase-little seats with cedar awnings in front of the tents give a cottage look; while the interior, in a rude way, has a genuine home-like air. The bit of a looking-glass hangs against the cotton wall; a handkerchief of a carpet just before the 'bunk' marks the stepping-off place to the land of dreams; a violin case is strung up to a convenient hook, flanked by a gorgeous picture of some hero of somewhere mounted upon a horse rampant and saltant, and what a length of tail behind!' Every wood, ravine, hill, field, is explored; the productions, animal and vegetable, are inventoried, and one day renders these soldiers as thoroughly conversant with the region round about as if they had been dwelling there a lifetime. They have tasted water from every spring and well, estimated the corn to the acre, tried the water-melons, "gagged" the peaches, knocked down the persimmons, milked the cows, roasted the pigs, picked the chickens; they know who lives here and there and yonder, the whereabouts of the native boys, the names of the native girls. If there is a curious cave, a queer tree, a strange rock anywhere about, they know it. You can see them with the chisel, hammer and haversack, tugging up 66 the mountain or scrambling down the ravine in a geological passsion that would have won the right hand of fellowship from Hugh Miller, and home they come with specimens that would enrich a cabinet. I have in my possession the most exquisite fossil buds just ready to open, beautiful shells, rare minerals, collected by these rough and dashing naturalists. If you think the rank and file have no taste for the beautiful, it is time you remembered of what material our armies are made. Nothing will catch a soldier's eye quicker than a patch of velvet moss, or a fresh little flower, and many a letter leaves the camp enriched with faded souvenirs of these expeditions. "The business of living has fairly begun again. "But at five o'clock some dingy morning, obedient to sudden orders, the regiments march away in good cheer; the army wagons go streaming and swearing after them; the beat of the drum grows fainter; the last straggler is out of sight; the canvas city has vanished like a vision. On such a morning and amid such a scene I have loitered till it seemed as if a busy city had passed out of sight, leaving nothing behind for all that life and light, but empty desolation. Will you wonder much if I tell you that I have watched such a vanishing with a pang of regret; that the trampled field looked dim to me, worn smooth and beautiful by the touch of those brave feet whose owners have trod upon thorns with song-feet, alas, how many, that shall never again in all this coming and going world make music upon the old thresholds! And how many such sites of perished cities this war has made; how many bonds of good-fellowship have been rent to be united no more!" PHILOSOPHY OF A CONTRABAND. AN elderly darkey, with a very philosophical and retrospective cast of countenance, was squatting upon his bundle on the hurricane deck of one of the Western river steamers, |