“General De Banyan, we meet again!” exclaimed Somers, as they joined hands, after several months of separation.
“Glory, Hallelujah!” shouted the general. “The war is over! The Union is saved! Rebellion is forever crushed! Somers, my dear fellow, I would hug you if it were dignified for a lieutenant colonel to do such a thing.”
“Never mind your dignity, general. I feel like being silly, now that ‘this cruel war is over.’ I am delighted to see you. Do you remember Columbia? Do you remember the blood-hounds?”
“Shall I ever forget them?” replied De Banyan, feelingly.
“Do you remember that night when we reached the Augusta road?”
“I could not forget that any more than I could forget you,” answered the general, as he again wrung the hand of his devoted friend. “Somers, our country is saved. We have fought it through to the end.”
“We have had a hard time of it. Do you suppose, De Banyan, if it were to be done over again, you would be willing to go through with it once more?” asked Somers.
“Upon my soul, I should!” replied the general, warmly. “If I knew I had to die on the cold, wet ground, by the side of the Augusta road, after three years of hard service, I would go in as cheerfully as I would eat my dinner when I am hungry. Somers, if there is any man that loves his country, I do. I am willing to fight for her, and willing to die for her. This was a most infernal rebellion, and I thank God I have lived to see the end of it.”
“So do I,” responded Somers, fervently.
With the end of the war ends our story, though a few months later, an interesting event occurred in Boston, which we have not the heart to withhold from our readers, who have patiently followed our hero through his career of duty and suffering. As they have seen him in the carnage of battle, in the toils of the foe, in the loathsome prison camps of the rebels, so should they now see him in the hour of his greatest earthly joy. The event to which we allude was chronicled in the papers of the city as follows:—