Page:Tenting on the plains.djvu/726

702 My little valise was filled long before it was necessary for us to take the return train that evening. With the joy, the relief, the gratitude, of knowing that God had spared my husband through an Indian campaign, and averted from him the cholera; and, now that I was to be  given reprieve from days of anxiety, and nights  of hideous dreams of what might befall him, and  that I would be taken back to camp—could more be crowded into one day? Was there room for a thought, save one of devout thankfulness, and such happiness as I find no words to describe ?

There was in that summer of 1867 one long, perfect day. It was mine, and—blessed be our memory, which preserves to us the joys as well as the sadness of life !—it is still mine, for time and for eternity.