Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/38

 Orleans,—the former in search of health, the latter to bear him company. Stuart Ruysdale was not a general in rank; but the loss of his strong right arm in the war had won for him that title with his fellow-townspeople. He had lost more than his right arm in that terrible struggle,—he had lost his health and strength; and he remained for the rest of his days a broken, disappointed man.

When at the breaking out of the Civil War he had been given the commission of captain in a volunteer regiment, Ruysdale had already made some reputation as a sculptor. He had loved his profession with all the passion of a fervent artistic nature springing up in a community where art exists only in its embryonic phase. He had deemed it his mission to nourish that love of the beautiful which is latent in the hearts of men, and to develop sculpture, the greatest of the arts, in his native country, from which he held that all that is best must be evolved, and into which it cannot be imported.

His good right arm had been smitten off, his whole body was maimed and disabled, when, four years later, he came back to Woodbridge at the head of his broken regiment. In his deserted studio he found the tools he could never use again; but in the bitterness of that hour he made a resolve that the power within him should