Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/30

2 the chances of battle threw them helpless from the ranks. I found it was a place for woman. All of man's boasted ingenuity had been expended to devise terrible engines with which to kill and maim God's own image; and if war was right, it was right for woman to go with brothers, and husbands, and sons, that in the time of peril the heart might not faint with the thought of an untended death-bed in the crowded hospitals, where no hand but the rough soldier's should close the dead staring eyes.

It was something to brave popular opinion, something to bear the sneers of those who loved their ease better than their country's heroes, and who could sit down in peace and comfort at home, while a soldier's rations, and a soldier's tent for months and years made up the sum of our luxurious life.

Had there been more women to help us, many a brave man, whose bones moulder beneath the green turf of the South, would have returned to bless the loved ones left in the dear old home behind him. But all alone, while the shadow of the valley of death was fast stealing over the numbing senses, his spirit went back, and his white lips murmured words which the beloved so far away would have given worlds to hear; and we heard them, but could not repeat them from the dying lips.

It is past and gone. The long agony is over, and the nation breathes free. Yet hardly a heart or home but holds the remembrance of some brave one, near and dear, who gave his life to save his country's honor.