EXHIBITIONS OF MOTHER-LOVE.
To What Lengths Affections would carry Women in the War.
WAR brought heavy burdens of anxiety and sorrow to the women on both sides of the lines during the terrible struggle of 1861-1865. The anxious waiting for news from the battle-field, the heart-breaking scrutiny of the list of wounded and killed, cannot, with their sorrows, be measured by words and phrases.
One Philadelphia mother, whose husband and son were in the war, received news that her son had been killed in one of the smaller battles of Virginia. She determined to recover the body, and bring it home for burial. After many delays and hindrances, she reached the regiment of which he was a member. She had walked three miles to get there, and had left the casket she had brought down at the station, where fire had destroyed everything but the track.
The soldiers brought up the coffin, and the next morning exhumed the body. They had wrapped him carefully in his blanket, and marked the spot with a rough board, on which they had carved his name and regiment and company with their knives. When they lifted him out, and laid him at her feet, she recognized him at once.
“Yes, this is my boy,” she said, pushing the damp hair back from his fair young face.
The soldiers, who were glad to render the heart-broken mother any service they could, carried the coffin down to the railroad track, where the station had once stood, and instructed her how to “flag a train;” and assuring her that “a train might come at any time,” they left her there with her dead.
There was no human dwelling in sight. She seated herself on her son’s coffin, beside the charred timbers and ashes, to await the coming of the train. Behind her was the little valley where the Union troops were stationed to guard an important pass. On either side of her were mountains that rose majestically, that might be infested with wild beasts and creeping things. Before her was a little brook and the bands of iron along its banks that rendered it possible to make the journey through that mountain gorge by rail. The afternoon wore away, but no train came; the shades of night closed her in, but no sound of wheels greeted her ears.
She built a little fire so as to signal the train. The sharp notes of the night birds, the fighting of the wildcats on the side of the mountain, the mysterious noises in the air, the sound of stealthy footsteps near her,—all fell with fearful distinctness on her ears; for every nerve was strained to its utmost tension. But no train came to relieve her weary vigil. Her garments were wet with the dews of night; and she added wood to the smouldering fire, for the cheerful blaze comforted her.