... At night a most kind letter from my editor friend with a most liberal enclosure for services rendered. The nobleness and genial spirit of the man is more to me even than his liberality. It is a comfort to write for those who receive in the spirit of one’s giving. And to-day a letter from a young nephew, confiding to me his longings for a better life, and asking for suggestions and advice. This is a joy that brought tears to my eyes; not that I can do much for him, except by helping him to keep those aspirations alive; by sympathy and by living such a life as he seeks. It is like a miracle, in these days, when a young man like him really is interested in such things! An upright, moral one too, with few bad habits, and the promise of a successful worldly career. Beverly, last of July. The war moves on, but slowly. The “rallying” meetings to raise the President three hundred thousand men seem like an attempt at galvanizing patriotism into life. Blindness is come upon the people in some way, for some reason: it is not as in the old Revolutionary days; and yet this cause is greater. But we will not dare to say that we are fighting for anything but the Government. We leave God out, and all becomes confused. July 29. Another death; C----, the stray lamb so long, has been called into the upper fold. His was a wonderful change, as marked as St. Paul’s, almost, and his last letter from the camp was one that will be a lifelong comfort to his friends, so full of faith in God, submission to His will, an entire readiness to die, and yet a wish to live that the past might be redeemed. He died on the 25th of June, while his division of the army was passing from Corinth to Memphis, after having suffered much from fever, and other complaints incident to a weakened constitution in a new climate, and among the hardships of war. He had his wish; his long desire to be a soldier was gratified; once he was under fire; the air full of bullets around him, and one striking within two feet of his head. But he was not to die in battle; disease, that he dreaded more, laid him low; he longed for civilization, was weary of the great Southern forests; but there he was to lay his weary head for his last sleep. And now his mother is all alone in the world, and almost broken-hearted. One after another, husband and four children have gone, and she is a widow and childless. But to think of the thousands of homes that this war has desolated, the thousands of hearts well-nigh broken! Is it not enough? No, for the purification of the nation has not yet been wrought out; the scourge is needed yet; the gulf yet yawns for that which is dearest in all the land, and the war will not cease until it is closed. Not to a proud, self-confident people will the victory be given, but to the humble, the trustful, the nation that stays itself upon God, and lives only for the highest principles, and the highest love.