“On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.”
A thick undergrowth had sprung up in the woods. I noticed, stooping among the bushes along by the breastworks, an old woman and two young girls.
“Dey ’re chincapinnin’,” said Richard.
But I observed that they gathered the nuts, not from the bushes, but from the ground. Curiosity impelled me to follow them. The woman had a haversack slung at her side; one of the girls carried an open pail. They passed along the intrenchments, searching intently, and occasionally picking something out of the dirt. Pressing into the bushes, I accosted them. They scarcely deigned to look at me, but continued their strange occupation. I questioned them about the battle; but their answers were as vague and stupid as if they then heard of it for the first time. Meanwhile I obtained a glance at the open mouth of the heavily freighted haversack and the half-filled pail, and saw not chincapins, but several quarts of old bullets.
Wandering along by the intrenchments, I observed the half-rotted fragments of a book on the ground. They were leaves from a German pocket Testament, which doubtless some soldier had carried into the fight. I picked them up, and glanced my eye over the mildewed pages. By whom were they last perused? What poor immigrant’s heart, fighting here the battles of his adopted country, had drawn consolation from those words of life, which lose not their vitality in any language? What was the fate of that soldier? Was he now telling the story of his campaigns to his bearded comrades, wife and children; or was that tongue forever silent in the dust of the graves that surrounded me? While I pondered, these words caught my eye:—
“Die du mir gegeben hast, die habe ich bewahret, und ist keiner von ihnen verloren.”—“Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost.”
I looked round upon the graves; I thought of the patriot hosts that had fallen on these fearful battle-fields,—of the households bereft, of the husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, who went down to the Wilderness and were never heard of more; and peace and solace, sweet as the winds of Paradise, came to me in these words, as I repeated them,—