who love animals, and
those who do not. I have seen them both, I have known both; and if sick
or oppressed, or borne down with dreadful sympathies for a groaning
nation in mortal struggle, I should go for aid, for pity, of the relief
of kindred feeling, to those I had seen touched with quick tenderness
for the lower creation,--who remember that "the whole creation
travaileth in pain together," and who learn God's own lesson of caring
for the fallen sparrow, and the ox that treadeth out the corn. With men
or women who despise animals and treat them as mere beasts and brutes I
never want to trust my weary heart or my aching head; but with Dely I
could have trusted both safely, and the calf and the cat agreed with me.

So, in this happy, homely life, the sweet centre of her own bright
little world, Dely passed the first year of her wedded life, and then
the war came! Dreadful pivot of almost all our late lives! On it also
this rude idyl turned. George enlisted for the war.

It was not in Dely or his mother to stop him. Though tears fell on every
round of his blue socks and sprinkled his flannel shirts
plentifully,--though the old woman's wan and wrinkled face paled and
saddened, and the young one's fair throat quivered with choking sobs
when they were alone,--still, whenever George appeared, he was greeted
with smiles and cheer, strengthened and steadied from this home armory
better than with sabre and bayonet, "with might in the inner man."
George was a brave fellow, no doubt, and would do good service to his
free country; but it is a question with me, whether, when the Lord calls
out his "noble army of martyrs" before the universe of men and angels,
that army will not be found officered and led by just such women as
these, who fought silently with the flesh and the Devil by their own
hearth, quickened by no stinging excitement of battle, no thrill of
splendid strength and fury in soul and body, no tempting delight of
honor or even recognition from their peers,--upheld only by the dull,
recurrent necessities of duty and love.

At any rate, George went, and they stayed. The town made them an
allowance as a volunteer's family; they had George's bounty to begin
with; and a friendly boy from the farm near by came and sawed their
wood, took care of the garden, and, when Dely could not go to pasture
with the heifer, drove her to and fro daily.

After George had been gone three months, Dely had a little baby. Tiny
and bright