A fair man-boy of fifteen summers tossed His wasted limbs upon a cheerless couch. Ah! how unlike the downy bed prepared By his fond mother's love, whose tireless hands No comforts for her only offspring spared From earliest childhood, when the sweet babe slept, Soft--nestling in her bosom all the night, Like a half-blown lily sleeping on the heart Of swelling summer wave, till that sad day He left the untold treasure of her love To seek the rude companionship of war. The fiery fever struck his swelling brain With raving madness, and the big veins throbbed A death-knell on his temples, and his breath Was hot and quick, as is the panting deer's, Stretched by the Indian's arrow on the plain. "Mother! Oh, mother!" oft his faltering tongue Shrieked to the cold, bare wall, which echoed back His wailing in the mocking of despair. Oh! angel nurse, what sorrow wrung thy heart For the young sufferer's grief! She knelt beside The dying lad, and smoothed his tangled locks Back from his aching brow, and wept and prayed With all a woman's tenderness and love, That the good Shepherd would receive this lamb, Far wandering from the dear maternal fold, And shelter him in His all-circling arms, In the green valleys of Immortal rest. And so the angel passed from scene to scene Of human suffering, like that blessed One, Himself the man of sorrows and of grief, Who came to earth to teach the law of love, And pour sweet balm upon the mourner's heart, And raise the fallen and restore the lost. Bright vision of my dreams! thy light shall shine Through all the darkness of this weary world-- Its selfishness, its coolness, and its sin, Pure as the holy evening star of love, The brightest planet in the host of heaven. CHAPTER III THEIR TRIALS OLD MAIDS [J. L. Underwood.] This would be a dark world without old maids--God bless them! No one can measure their usefulness. Many a one of them has never married because she has never found a man good enough for her. The saddest mourners the world ever saw were some of our Southern girls whose hearts and hopes were buried in a soldier's grave in Virginia or the Far West. For four years the daughters of the South waited for their lovers, and alas! many waited in a life widowhood of unutterable sorrow. After the seven days' battles in front of Richmond a horseman rode up to the door of one of the houses on ---- street in Richmond and cried out to an anxious mother: "Your son is safe, but Captain ---- is killed." On the opposite side of the street a fair young girl was sitting. She was the betrothed of the ill-fated captain, and heard the crushing announcement. That's the way war made so many Southern girls widows without coming to the marriage altar.