"I have withdrawn the Brigade across Duck Lake. The position of the Confederacies is impregnable. It was a Military Necessity to attack the enemy or retire. I have done both.
"Wobert Wobinson."
Just as the spectacled veterans gained this side of Duck Lake again, my boy, the Mackerel Chaplain was accosted by a Republican chap from Boston, and says he: "This really looks like action at last my friend. Our troops are evidently all enthusiasm to be led once more against the foe."
The Chaplain shaded his eyes with his hand, to look at the speaker, and says he:
"They are indeed enthusiastic, my friend. So enthusiastic, in fact, that at least half of them would not come back to this side at all."
"Ah!" says the Republican chap; "the noble fellows."
"Yes," says the Chaplain, as softly as though he were speaking in a sick-room; "they remain there sleeping upon their arms. And, oh, my friend, they will never come back again."
He spoke truly, my boy: and may a kind Heaven see naught in the blood welling from their loyal hearts but the blush of a soldier's honor; the glow of a patriot fire in which all their human errors went up to God as the smoke of a glorious sacrifice. They sleep their last sleep upon the arms of their Country; and whether those arms, with which she folds them into her heart, be white with the ermine of winter, or green with the drapery of summer, the clasp shall be none the less strong with all a Mother's immortality of love.
Yours, gravely,
Orpheus C. Kerr.