On this evening, as a kind woman bent over the stalwart figure of a noble Georgian, and washed from his hair and beard the stiffened mud of the Chickahominy, where he fell from a wound through the upper portion of the right lung, and then gently bathed the bleeding gash left by the Minie ball, as he groaned and feebly opened his eyes, he grasped her hand, and in broken whispers, faint from suffering, gasping for breath, "I could-bear-all-this-for-myself-alone-but my-wife and my-six little-ones," (and then the large tears rolled down his weather-beaten cheeks,) and overcome he could only add, "Oh, God! oh, God!-how will-they endure it?" She bent her head and wept in sympathy. The tall man's frame was shaking with agony. She placed to his fevered lips a cooling draught, and whispered: "Think of yourself just now; God may raise you up to them, and if not, He will provide for and comfort them." He feebly grasped her hand once more, and a look of gratitude stole over his manly face, and he whispered, "God bless you! God bless you! God bless you! kind stranger!" BURIAL OF LATANE ["The next squadron moved to the front under the lamented Captain Latane, making a most brilliant and successful charge with drawn sabres upon the enemy's picked ground, and after a hotly-contested, hand-to-hand conflict put him to flight, but not until the gallant captain had sealed his devotion to his native soil with his blood."--Official Report of the Pamunkey Expedition, Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, C. S. A., 1862.] [From a private letter.] Lieutenant Latane carried his brother's dead body to Mrs. Brockenbrough's plantation an hour or two after his death. On this sad and lonely errand he met a party of Yankees, who followed him to Mrs. B.'s gate, and stopping there, told him that as soon as he had placed his brother's body in friendly hands he must surrender himself prisoner. * * * Mrs. B. sent for an Episcopal clergyman to perform the funeral ceremonies, but the enemy would not permit him to pass. Then, with a few other ladies, a fair-haired little girl, her apron filled with white flowers, and a few faithful slaves, who stood reverently near, a pious Virginia matron read the solemn and beautiful burial service over the cold, still form of one of the noblest gentlemen and most intrepid officers in the Confederate army. She watched the sods heaped upon the coffin-lid, then sinking on her knees, in sight and hearing of the foe, she committed his soul's welfare and the stricken hearts he had left behind him to the mercy of the "All-Father." "And when Virginia, leaning on her spear, _Victrix et vidua_, the conflict done, Shall raise her mailed hand to wipe the tear That starts as she recalls each martyred son, No prouder memory her breast shall sway, Than thine, our early lost, lamented Latane!" MAKING CLOTHES FOR THE SOLDIERS [In Our Women in the War, pages 453-454.]