Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/194

 The place of her residence had furnished many of those veterans who, during a war of eight years, had rarely tasted the "charities of home, and sweet domestick life." Some had fallen while the fields were sown with blood, others had returned to share the blessings of their harvest. A few survived with broken frames, and debilitated constitutions, living spectacles of woe to their disconsolate families. To these that charitable Lady extended her unwearied friendship. Medicine for their sicknesses, food for their tables, and condescending kindness to their sorrowful spirits, she distributed with that judgment which accompanies a discriminating mind.

One of these unfortunate beings, who frequently came to sit an hour with her when she was at leisure, used to style himself the Captain of her band of pensioners. He was a man of powerful frame, strong features, and ardent character. His good right hand which had so often toiled to procure bread for the lambs of his household, had been cleft from his body by a sabre, as he raised it to ask for quarter in an unsuccessful combat. A crutch, which his left hand had painfully wrought out, and inscribed with the date of his last battle, supplied the loss of a limb, which had been amputated in consequence of a neglected wound. Pain, sickness, and the untold miseries of a prison-ship, had destroyed the vigour of a muscular frame, and given the wrinkles of age to one who had not seen half a century.