t always reminds me of children pulling off
flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I
should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs,
they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured
city with them than with white troops, for they would be more
subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine
sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to
blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I
think they would do it without remonstrance.

Yet their religious spirit grows more beautiful to me in living longer
with them: it is certainly far more so than at first, when it seemed
rather a matter of phrase and habit. It influences them both on the
negative and the positive side. That is, it cultivates the feminine
virtues first,--makes them patient, meek, resigned. This is very evident
in the hospital; there is nothing of the restless, defiant habit of
white invalids. Perhaps, if they had more of this, they would resist
disease better. Imbued from childhood with the habit of submission,
drinking in through every pore that other-world trust which is the one
spirit of their songs, they can endure everything. This I expected; but
I am relieved to find that their religion strengthens them on the
positive side also,--gives zeal, energy, daring. They could easily be
made fanatics, if I chose; but I do not choose. Their whole mood is
essentially Mohammedan, perhaps, in its strength and its weakness; and I
feel the same degree of sympathy that I should, if I had a Turkish
command,--that is, a sort of sympathetic admiration, not tending towards
agreement, but towards cooperation. Their philosophizing is often the
highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are
all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular,
after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel
army," in their prayer-meetings. They are certainly evangelizing the
chaplain, who was rather a heretic at the beginning; at least, this is
his own admission. We have recruits on their way from St. Augustine,
where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be
interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder
creed.

It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night, where
the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet