Five minutes’ time with you, and God only knows what that five minutes might be worth to the--may be--doomed thousands sleeping around me. It is the night before a “battle.” The enemy, Fredericksburg, and its mighty entrenchments lie before us--the river between. At to-morrow’s dawn our troops will essay to cross and the guns of the enemy will sweep their frail bridges at every breath. The moon is shining through the soft haze with a brightness almost prophetic; for the last half-hour I have stood alone in the awful stillness of its glimmering light gazing upon the strange, sad scene around me striving to say, “Thy will, O God, be done.” The camp-fires blaze with unwonted brightness, the sentry’s tread is still but quick, the scores of little shelter tents are dark and still as death; no wonder, for, as I gazed sorrowfully upon them, I thought I could almost hear the slow flap of the grim messenger’s wings as one by one he sought and selected his victims for the morning’s sacrifice. Sleep, weary ones, sleep and rest for to-morrow’s toil! Oh, sleep and visit in dreams once more the loved ones nestling at home! They may yet live to dream of you, cold, lifeless, and bloody; but this dream, soldier, is thy last; paint it brightly, dream it well. Oh, Northern mothers, wives, and sisters, all unconscious of the peril of the hour, would to Heaven that I could bear for you the concentrated woe which is so soon to follow; would that Christ would teach my soul a prayer that would plead to the Father for grace sufficient for you all! God pity and strengthen you every one. Mine are not the only waking hours; the light yet burns brightly in our kind-hearted General’s tent, where he pens what may be a last farewell to his wife and children, and thinks sadly of his fated men. Already the roll of the moving artillery is sounding in my ears. The battle draws near and I must catch one hour’s sleep for to-day’s labor. Good-night, and Heaven grant you strength for your more peaceful and terrible, but not less weary, days than mine. CLARA All her apprehensions were less than the truth. It was a terrible battle, and a disheartening disaster. The Union army lost 1284 in killed, 9600 wounded, and 1769 missing. The memories of Fredericksburg remained with her distinct and terrible to the day of her death. She described the battle and the events which followed it in her war lectures: We found ourselves beside a broad, muddy river, and a little canvas city grew up in a night upon its banks. And there we sat and waited “while the world wondered.” Ay, it did more than wonder! It murmured, it grumbled, it cried shame, to sit there and shiver under the canvas. “Cross over the river and occupy those brick houses on the other shore!” The murmurs grew to a clamor!