e
small-pox quarters, about two miles across the bay. It is too bleak for
the open-boat conveyance, and so he must be jolted six miles round in an
ambulance. On his bed, buried in blankets and stupefied with fever, he
starts for his new abode, not without a plentiful supply of oranges,
lemons, and bay-water.

The plaintive, whining tones of William Cutlep, a boy of sixteen, who is
a picture of utter woe, with mind enough only left to know that he is in
"awful pain," detain me too long; and when I must leave him, it is with
the promise of coming up soon again, for he says he always did like to
see "women folks around." His home is in Southern Virginia, whence he
escaped to join the Union army; and he will never hear from his home
again, for thirty-six ounces of brandy daily will not keep him alive
much longer. He has already taken a ring from his finger, to be sent
home with a dying message after the war is over.

The lower ward is not reached too soon, for the manly, gentle Mason is
near his end. He faintly presses my hand, begging me not to leave him
again, for it will soon be all over. An attack of pneumonia has proved
too much for his reduced system to resist, and, meekly submitting to its
ravages, he lies at last upon his death-bed. A saintly fortitude
sustains him, as in broken accents these sentences come from his lips:
"It is a country worth dying for." "Others will enjoy in coming years
what I have fought for." "I can trust my Saviour. He is lighting me
through the valley of death." "All is well." Low words of prayer commend
the departing soul to the God who made it, and the sweet hymn,

"O sing to me of heaven,
When I am called to die,"

breaks the stillness of the ward.

"It is growing dark,--I can't see you any more,"--he whispers; and then,
as the bugle notes strike his ear, "Before that sound is heard again, I
shall be far away." His heavy breathing grows thicker and shorter, until
that radiance which comes but once to any mortal face, streaming through
the open portal of eternity, tells of the glory upon which his soul is
entering, as his eyelids are quietly closed on earth. The men in the
beds around mutely gaze upon him, wishing that they may die like him
when their last summons comes. The tender-hearted McNally, the faithful
nurse, tearfully laments the loss of the first patient who has died
since he took charge of the ward, and is sure that he could not have
done more for him had he been