“Chaplain, hurry over quick! The old woman is dying!”
The chaplain hurried over the rickety bridge as rapidly as possible; the surgeon soon followed. As the chaplain came round to the open door he saw at a glance that it was a trick, and he passed on around the house, so as to allow the surgeon to come on and bear a full share of the joke.
The woman was dyeing. She was over a kettle of butternut juice dyeing a lot of yarn.
When the two came back over the bridge the whole camp was in a roar of laughter over the joke.
But what could be done? The men had reported a truth—the woman was dyeing; so there was no redress.
GENERAL GRANT’S KINDNESS.
ONE morning during the war, coming down on the packet boat that plied between Cairo, Ill., and Columbus, Ky., I noticed a woman weeping as though her heart would break. Her calico dress and coarse blanket-shawl betokened abject poverty, and her face was hidden; and she sobbed out her anguish in a coarse bandanna handkerchief.
Laying my hand gently on her shoulder, I said,—
“My dear woman, what is the matter?”