or to question your
prospects; but toil on bravely, silently, surely....'

"Such are the words of wise and kindly counsel, which, if we attend
rightly, we may all hear in the winds and read in the skies of Spring.
Nowhere, however, does she speak with so eloquent a voice or so pathetic
an effect as in this ruined town. She covers our devastated courts with
images of renovation in the shape of flowers; she hangs once more in our
blasted gardens the fragrant lamps of the jessamine; in our streets
she kindles the maple like a beacon; and from amidst the charred and
blackened ruins of once happy homes she pours, through the mouth of her
favorite musician, the mocking-bird, a song of hope and joy. What is the
lesson which she designs by these means to convey? It may be summed in a
single sentence,--forgetfulness of the past, effort in the present, and
trust for the future."

Such was the lofty creed and last hopeful, but dying message to his
brothers of the South, whose war songs he had written, and the requiem
of whose martyred hosts he had chanted.

Such was the tragedy that ended in October, 1867, with the hero at the
age of thirty-seven; glory, genius, anguish, tears, but unconquerable
faith and heroic fortitude. His larger life scarce begun, his full power
felt, but only half expressed, he realized deeply--

"The petty done, the vast undone!"

He yearned with passionate longing and hope and conscious might to
fulfill an even greater mission; but in the infinite providence of God
the full fruitage of this exquisite soul was for another sphere. He was
indeed "one of those who stirred us, a friend of man and a lover. In no
country of this earth could he long have been an alien, and that may now
be said of his spirit. In no part of this universe could it feel lonely
or unbefriended; it was in harmony with all that flowers or gives
perfume in life."

The story of his last days, as given by his poet-friend, Paul Hayne,
at the latter's cottage among the pines, is of tender and peculiar
interest, and we quote it here, as it was written in 1873:--

... In the latter summer-tide of this same year (1867), I again
persuaded him to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are
the memories of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67!

We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, watching
together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which floated slowly
and vaguely through the sky, suggesti