To this kind stranger, William Florence, I was indebted for my first taste of the pleasures of the theater. Almost every evening he joined us on the veranda, shared our play with baby, cheered and entertained the General, and kindly took us afterward to see the play. Yet, during the whole of his stay—four days—he never once, in the most remote way, intruded himself upon our confidence; and though he knew there was some mystery, in his innate delicacy he made no allusion to it.
On Saturday evening, when his engagement was over and he came to say good-bye, after lingering over the pleasant evenings we had passed together, and putting great stress upon the benefit they had been to him, he stopped abruptly, saying:
"Confound it all! Forgive me, if I put my foot in it—but here is something to buy a rattle for the youngster. I swear I absolutely have no use for it. In fact, I never had so much money at one time before in my whole life, and it belongs by rights to the young rascal; for, if it had not been for the 'cat's in the fiddle,' the 'cow jumping over the moon,' 'getting the poor dog a bone,' and 'Our Father who art in heaven,' I should have spent every red cent of it on the fellows. Please—I insist," he said, as my husband refused. "I know you have had more money than you seem to be bothered with now; take this."
Though we were both very much touched by the kind generosity of this stranger in a strange land, my Soldier was firm in his refusal.
"Well, good-bye and good luck to you," he said. "You are as obstinate as an 'allegory on the banks of the Nile.' Here it goes," putting the fifty dollars back into his pocket, and turning to me, with a tone I so well remembered, he wished me happiness.
"Good-bye," I said; "may 'Our Father' who art in heaven and his little ones of whom he says 'suffer to come unto me,' keep your heart thoughtful for others, and gentle and kind all through this life. Believe in soul and be very sure of God."
In all the years that came afterward the friendship formed then between my husband and our first "Left-hander" was never broken—and to me it was a legacy.
The following week I noticed his rooms were taken by a lady and gentleman whose actions were very strange. I saw there were two of them this time. The second evening, as I was putting baby, who was unusually restless and fretful and would not be amused or comforted, to sleep, the queer lady, with a "Banquo-is-buried-and-can-not-come-out-of-his-grave" tone and manner, came in and said, "The child—is't ill, or doth it need the rod withal!" Whether the child needed "the rod withal?" or Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup, he stopped crying at once and, while she talked on, he never took his startled eyes from her face till he wearily closed them, hypnotized to sleep.
"Hast thou a nurse—one that thou call'st trustworthy?" she asked, after I had put the baby in his little bed.
"Yes, madam," I answered, "one whose love makes her so."