It was no formal letter which she penned in that sad hour. Into its words and sentences went the glowing sympathy of a mother’s heart. But it is only an example of thousands of others. When the letter was finished, the face of the young man betokened the most perfect satisfaction. His work was done. He was ready to depart. I prayed with him. I left him with a smile on his face. He was so cheerful that I began to think that the surgeon had made a mistake; but when I returned a few hours afterwards, “he was not, for God took him.” In addition to the above it is with no little pleasure that I give one incident among many that vividly reveal the patriotic devotion of the rank and file of our army. Near the beginning of the war, I was called one night to marry a volunteer cavalry soldier. Immediately after, he rode away under the command of Zagonyi, to Springfield, Missouri. In entering that city a charge was made between two lines of Confederate soldiers, and my friend was shot. For several hours he lay on the frosty ground, slowly bleeding; and then, faint and exhausted, he was put into an army wagon which went jolting over rough roads to Rolla, and from there he was sent by the cars to St. Louis. I found him in the hospital, so changed that I did not at once recognize him. But when all doubt as to his identity was brushed away, he pathetically told me the story of his suffering. He had been shot through the shoulder; the bone had been shattered; pieces of it had protruded from the wound and had been removed. He had preserved them. They were more precious to him than diamonds. He kept them neatly wrapped in a paper under his pillow. With his trembling, emaciated hand he took them out slowly and carefully unwrapped them and showed them to me. Then wrapping them up again, he put them back under his pillow, and looking up, his eye began to gleam as he said: “The doctors say that I cannot recover. I think that they are mistaken. I shall get well. You see that it is the left shoulder that is wounded. When it heals it will be stiff, but I can still hold the reins of my horse in my left hand; and then, sir,” with great emphasis for an apparently dying man, he added, “I have one more shoulder for my country.” He did live to fight many a hard battle thereafter. But I could never forget those brave, burning words, words instinct with self-sacrifice: “Then, sir, I have one more shoulder for my country.”