ave to let her off" (this with a
sigh). Then, with a brighter look, "Maybe she'll stick, anyhow." How
he watched for the answer to that letter! His restlessness was pitiful
to see. I tried to help him by reading to him and by relating to him
instances of women who only loved more because the object of their
affection had been unfortunate. Among other things, I told him of the
noble English girl who wrote to her mangled lover that she still loved
and would marry him "if there was enough of his body left to contain
his soul." Afterward I felt sorry that I had encouraged him to hope,
for it was my misfortune to read to him a very cold letter from his
lady-love, who declined to marry "a _cripple_." She wanted a husband
who could support her, and as some man who lived near was "mighty fond
of her company and could give her a good home," she reckoned she would
take his offer under consideration.

For a few days my poor young friend was inconsolable; but one morning
I found him singing. "I've been thinking over that matter," said he,
"and I reckon I've had a lucky escape. That trifling girl would never
have made me a good, faithful wife." From that day he seemed to have
recovered his cheerfulness. I have never forgiven that faithless girl.

All over the South, wherever "pain and anguish wrung the brow" of
their defenders, women became "ministering angels."

Even those who had been bereft of their own suppressed their tears,
stifled the cry of bleeding hearts, and, by unwearied attention to
living sufferers, strove to honor their dead. Self-abnegation was,
during the war, a word of meaning intense and real. Its spirit had its
dwelling-place in the souls of faithful women, looked out from the
bright eyes of young girls, whose tender feet were newly set in a
thorny pathway, as well as from the pale, stricken faces of those
whose hearts the thorn had pierced.

Among the tender and true women with whom I have corresponded since
the war is the mother of Colonel Robadeaux Wheat, the noble
Louisianian who fell at Gaines's Mill. I have several of her letters
by me, written in the tremulous hand of one who had passed her
seventy-ninth birthday, but glowing with love for the _cause_, and
fondest pride in the sons who died in its defence. It is touching to
see how she clings to and cherishes the record, given by his
companions in arms, of "Robadeux's" last hours on earth, when, in the
early morning, before going forth to battle, his h