of box
or roses would bring into his mind the wonderful face of her, and the
music of her voice.

In the delirium which was upon him all that night, he harped to the
surgeon of Ellen, and in the morning fell asleep.

"Haec olim meminisse juvabit," said the surgeon, as rain-clouded dawn
rose whitely in the east.

XXVII

Aladdin was jolted miserably down the Peninsula in a white ambulance,
which mules dragged through knee-deep mud and over flowing, corduroy
roads. He had fever in his whole body, anguish in one leg, and hardly a
wish to live. But at Fort Monroe the breezes came hurrying from the sea,
like so many unfailing doctors, and blew his fever back inland where
it belonged. He lay under a live-oak on the parade ground and once more
received the joy of life into his heart. When he was well enough to limp
about, they gave him leave to go home; and he went down into a ship,
and sailed away up the laughing Chesapeake, and up the broad Potomac to
Washington. There he rested during one night, and in the morning took
train for New York. The train was full of sick and wounded going home,
and there was a great cheerfulness upon them all. Men joined by the
brotherhood of common experience talked loudly, smoked hard, and drank
deep. There was tremendous boasting and the accounting of unrivaled
adventures. In Aladdin's car, however, there was one man who did not
join in the fellowship, for he was too sick. He had been a big man and
strong, but he looked like a ghost made of white gossamer and violet
shadows. His own mother would not have recognized him. He lay back
into the corner of a seat with averted face and closed eyes. The more
decent-minded endeavored, on his account, to impose upon the noisy a
degree of quiet, but their efforts were unavailing. Aladdin, drumming
with his nails upon the windowpane, fell presently into soft song:

Give me three breaths of pleasure
After three deaths of pain,
And make me not remeasure
The ways that were in vain.

Men grew silent and gathered to hear, for Aladdin's fame as a maker of
songs had spread over the whole army, and he was called the Minstrel
Major. He felt his audience and sang louder. The very sick man turned
a little so that he, too, could hear. Only the occasional striking of
a match or the surreptitious drawing of a cork interrupted. The stately
tune moved on:

The first breath shall be laughter,
The second