Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/214

174 Oh! the horror of this carnage! When will the judgment come?

1em Is it possible that the year is nearly one quarter gone? Almost one season's length has passed since New Year's day, and it seems only like one of the long summer days which seemed in my childhood to be endless.

How long a year seemed then—almost an age, as it rolled slowly away, with bright, bright hours when we roamed the meadow for strawberries, and the wild wood for blossoms—when we trod with bare feet the pathway to the old school-house, and set them in the brook as we loitered on the way. And the seasons seemed to be unending.

There was an eternity of winter when the snow lay deep, and we thought it would never melt under the breath of the lagging spring.

Now spring opens, and goes, and summer flies away, leaving the sear flower-stalk a sad legacy to the fleeting autumn, and winter again slips over all her robe of purity, and the cycle ends again. Sometimes in those years we used to think of war,—what horrible scenes were upon the battle-fields of the East,—but the grim phantom seemed to be afar off from our proud land, but it came to us with hot and deadly breath.

Four weary years have dragged along, and thousands of our braves sleep in the trenches, the sleep which knows no waking. Thousands more have gone,