Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/50

22 flames rioted upon them. I visited it only the day before it was burned.

The Patent Office bewildered and amazed me—so much brain had been expended in fashioning those implements of useful industry. In their perfect finish, they told so many tales of years of privation and toil, when the soul, still confident of success, and sure of its powers, kept the hand at its cunning, rising above the want which perchance looked in at the window, and now the object was obtained. Was it the worker who reaped the reward—who saw his name enrolled on the list of benefactors to the human kind?

Many sad thoughts peopled those buildings for me; yet I am glad to remember that I too have been under the shadow of the Republic's glory, as expressed in the Capitol and other public buildings at Washington.

I wondered if the silken and velvet robes which trailed down the white steps covered hearts which beat like mine. After all, does the golden glint from piles of wealth throw any softer light out unto the world around for those who look over it? does any stronger throb of patriotism urge those pulses when all the world holds the name on its tongue? had those hands any potent power for healing which was denied us, who passed in lowly garb?

Who could tell? But I had no envy for the ease which had rusted its lines into those once fair faces, shaded now in their wan waxen whiteness by folds of soft, costly laces. I felt only a pity that those jewelled hands would not find a work as I had, into which