"Well, father?"
"Well, David! Very well. Go ahead, David, win her, if you can! She is a rare, good girl."
"Which one, sir?"
"Come, come! David, I am completely bewildered by this evening's discoveries. Do not bear too hard on me, for falling into a common error—mistaking the apparent for the real. This night has proved a test far more thorough than I imagined it possibly could. You may safely abide by the issue and never fear the stormy sea," answered his father.
A few months more and Vallie Fairleigh's merry voice and sweet smile resounds through, and brightens the minister's home.
David Carlton stands to-day among the best-loved and most popular of the clergy. Attributable most likely to his "wife's influence" (his father says). I well know she has soothed many an aching heart, cheered the long, weary hours of the sickroom, won the young from the path of evil, and now numberless prayers are ascending and begging God's blessing on the "minister's wife."
IN THE HOSPITAL.
BY FRANCES HENSHAW BADEN.
In the autumn of 1862 my time was constantly employed in the various hospitals of Washington. At this period of our struggle the Sanitary Commission was in its infancy, and all attentions of the kind ladies were joyfully received by surgeons and nurses, as well as by our noble, suffering boys. Immediately after the wounded from the second battle of Bull Run were assigned to the different wards in the various hospitals, I was going my rounds in the "Douglas," and after bestowing the wines, jellies, custards and books to my old friends, I began to look up the new patients.