She received from the hands of her maid in attendance a portfolio with which she had come provided, anticipating such requests. She then took a seat by his side, while Clara sat at the foot of the cot, where she could look in his blind, unconscious face, and wipe away her tears unseen.
“I’m ready,” said Lucy. And he dictated as follows:—
“My dear Cousin: I received last night your letter from Meade’s headquarters. ’T was a comfort to be assured you escaped unharmed amid your many exposures.
“You tell me I am put down in the reports as among the slightly wounded, and you desire to know all the particulars. Alas! I may say with the tragic poet, ‘My wound is great because it is so small.’ Don’t add, as Johnson once did, ‘Then ‘t would be greater, were it none at all.’ A cannon-ball, my dear fellow, passed before my eyes, and the sight thereof is extinguished utterly. The handwriting of this letter, you will perceive, is not my own.
“What you say of Onslow delights me. So he has behaved nobly before Vicksburg, and is to be made a Colonel! The one hope of his heart is to be with the army of liberation that shall go down into Texas. Onslow will not rest till he has redeemed that bloody soil to freedom, and put an end to the rule of the miscreant hangmen of the State.
“I said the one hope of his heart. But what you insinuate leads me to suspect there may be still another,—a tender hope. Can it be? Poor fellow! He deserves it.
“You bid me take courage and call on Perdita. You tell me she is free as air,—that the bloom is on the plum as yet untouched, unbreathed upon. My own dear cousin, if I was hopeless before I lost my eyesight, what must I be now? But, since a thing of beauty is a joy forever, was I not lucky in making her acquaintance before that cannon-ball swept away my optic sense? Now, as I rest here on my couch, I can call up her charming image,—nay, I can hear the very tones of her singing. She is worthy of the brilliant inheritance you were instrumental in restoring to her. I shall always be the happier for having known her, even though the knowing should continue to be my disquietude.
“I have just heard from my father. He and his young wife are in Richmond. His pecuniary fortunes are at a very low ebb. His slaves were all liberated last month by Banks, who has anticipated the work I expected to do myself. My father begins to be disenchanted in regard to the Rebellion. He even admits that Davis isn’t quite so remarkable a man as he had supposed. How gladly I would help my father if I could! May the opportunity be some day mine. All I have (’t is only five thousand dollars) shall be his.
“What can I do, my dear cousin, if I can’t get back my eyesight? God knows and cares; and I am content in that belief. ‘There is a special providence in the falling of a sparrow.’ Am not I better than many sparrows? ‘Hence have I genial seasons!’ ’T is all as it should be; and though He slay me, yet will I trust in him.
“Farewell,