Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/71

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tie my first steps were directed to Seabrook's Hospital to see some of my dear comrades who were worse wounded than I.

While sitting by the cot of a friend, who was soon to " pass over the river and rest under the shade of the trees," I witnessed a scene that I can hardly ever think of without quickened pulse and moist eye. A beautiful boy, too young to fight and die, and a member of an Alabama regiment, was dying from a terrible wound a few feet off. His mother had been telegraphed for at his request. In the wild delirium of his dying moments he had been steadily calling for her, "Oh, mother, come, do come quickly!" Then, under the influence of opiates given to smooth his entrance into eternal rest, he dozed and slumbered.

The thunders of the great guns along the lines of the immortal Lee roused him up. Just then his dying eye rested upon one of the lovely matrons of Richmond advancing toward him. His reeling brain and distempered imagination mistook her for his mother. Raising himself up, with a wild, delirious cry of joy, which rang throughout the hospital, he cried: "Oh, mother, mother! I knew you would come! I knew you would come! I can die easy now;" and she, humoring his illusion, let him fall upon her bosom, and he died happy in her arms, her tears flowing for him as if he had been her own son.

When we reflect how much our women did and suffered during the war, the wonder is that no monument has risen sooner to their memory. Were we to go into Hollywood and Oakwood, those si- lent " Cities of the dead," and see all the monuments erected to the memory of the men and none to the women, it would strike us as very strange. No less strange would it be if the heroes of our lost cause should have all the monuments and the heroines none.

The barbaric idea that woman should occupy a subordinate and inferior position in the civilization of the world has long since ex- ploded. Miss Hopkins a few weeks ago became a member of the medical staff of the Western State Hospital, and Belva Lockwood has entered the works of the Virginia Bar. As clerks, cashiers, and employees of our State and Federal Governments, and as successful teachers, novelists, and journalists they have come fully to the front, and they have come to stay. As telegraphers and 'phone-keepers their soft fingers and gentle voices send angelic sounds along the cold wires, thrilling under their magic touch like whispered music, passing from earth to Heaven. In the pulpit she has spoken with