“Well, in erboutin free monfs Mars Torm, de scout, jined us. He looked fat an’ slick, an’ Gen’l Forrest lubbed an’ ’spected him so he kissed him. He didn’ kiss me, but I wud uh kissed him.”
Between you and me, kind reader, after greeting General Forrest, “Mars Torm” hurried to his humble hammock. His thoughts were more of “Black Creek” than the tented field. From a pocket in his gray jacket he pulled out and fondly kissed a daguerreotype. When he opened it a pressed rose leaf fell out. It may have been the rose leaf which a dear kind hand had placed between the pages she loved to read to him, and the mate to the one he had. He sank into his hammock, and the tranquil twilight saw him weeping, and then reciting:
MARS TORM.
(From a time-worn photograph.)
His thoughts were more of “Black Creek” than the tented field.
“Between two songs of Petrarch,
I’ve a purple rose leaf prest,
More sweet than common rose leaves,
For it once lay in her breast.
When she gave me that her eyes were wet,
The rose was full of dew;