Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/162

126 and would talk like a child which had been long homesick, and was again sitting under the old roof by his mother; then again he realized his position, and would question me if I believed he would ever see home, and children, and the old wife again.

I waited upon him most of the time, and the tears would often come to my eyes when he would speak of the comfort which they should take when the cruel war was over. I knew that when that time came, he would be a heap of mouldering dust, somewhere under the sods of the ground.

A neighbor came all the long distance between him and his roof-tree, to be with him in the last, and take back, with his cold clay, the messages of love to his family. When he came in and took his hand, and he heard the sound of his familiar voice, new life seemed to flow into his lagging pulses—his eyes brightened, and the neighbor thought hope was not yet dead. He said it seemed to him an angel had come from heaven to take him home, and clung to him with the tenderness of a babe to its mother till he died.

I remembered him sadly for many weeks, and the picture of the silver-haired old man is photographed in my gallery of brave men who died to save their country's honor.

I had charge of one ward in which lay seven little boys, all under seventeen years of age, and all ill with fever. I was thoroughly at home there. When I had washed their faces and combed their hair, and