was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the
latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly
amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the
babies. The babies,--Ma----" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the
Potomac on an everlasting furlough.

Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week
later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when
there was the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a
knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they
preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door.
Merciful God! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation
is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"--but Mary was a
widow, and the babies fatherless.

By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the
sight of the black pine coffin was Mary's first intimation of her loss.
Her worst anticipations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a
worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.

A fortnight passed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers,
almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some
papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of
the Lieutenant, returned "approved."

Measured by poor Mary's loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied
man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic
investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case,
the workings of Red Tape!

* * * * *

Occurrences such as these, may sadden for the moment the soldier, but
they produce no lasting depression.

"Don't you think I had oughter
Be a going down to Washington
To fight for Abraham's Daughter?"

sang our ex-news-boy Birdy, on one of those cold damp evenings in early
December, when the smoke of the fires hung like a pall over the camp
ground, and the eyes suffered terribly if their owner made any attempt
at standing erect.

"And who is Abraham's Daughter?" queried one of a prostrate group around
a camp fire.

"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," continued Birdy, to another popular
air, until he was joined by a manly swell of voices in the closing
line--

"Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!"

"Not much life here," continued Birdy, seating himself. "I have just
le