Page:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu/143

136

", Sept. 27th— 30th.

" It is a very gloomy day, the sky black and lowering, and the rain descending in torrents. I was meditating just now on this bleak scene of cheerless solitude — my only companion a little quail?—and thinking over the strange and often appalingappalling [sic] sights my eyes have looked upon, in the realities of death and the grave, since God called me here. As these ideas floated through my mind, the train of my thoughts suddenly changed, and the dismal view without, and the cold and dreary room I occupy, brought before me the Man of Sorrows' — Jesus — who once weathered the stormy tempest for you and for me, and of whom it may be said, from the manger to the grave, that He had not 'where to lay his head.' It is soothing to the soul, in seasons of cloud and distress, to know that Jesus has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and to rest on the tender kindness of Him who has said, 'As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.'

"Oh! dearest Mary, it is well to have the love of Jesus Christ in its reality in our hearts. What solid peace and rich enjoyment we obtain by 'looking unto Jesus!' Where else shall we behold the boundless love of our Heavenly Father?

"What else could have led me to the side of men dying of pestilence, for how could I have spoken to