during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and
every national energy employed to its best purpose.

I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one
afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some
years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned
Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in
its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist,
his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He
had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been
sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where
art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back
to his home and country after the great movements of the war were
inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most
obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but
failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to
visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his
return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking
a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular
down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The
result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together
one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to
keep that promise.

I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed,
happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a
suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day
when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a
great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have
left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet
touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by
either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second
glance showed that the change was in the _eyes_. Amid the clear blue
there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that
have been turned _inward_. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes,
after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has
suffered much;' or, '_he is a spiritualist_.' By the latter expression,
we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that
meet him in the world--that he is mo