smile was still on his face. I wrapt him in his tent, spread
my pocket-handkerchief over his face, wrote his name on a piece of
paper, and pinned it on his breast, and there we left him: we could
not find pick or shovel to dig a grave." There it is!--a history
that is multiplying itself by hundreds daily, the substance of what
has come to so many homes, and must come to so many more before the
great price of our ransom is paid!

What can we say to you, in those many, many homes where the light has
gone out forever?--you, O fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, haunted
by a name that has ceased to be spoken on earth,--you, for whom there
is no more news from the camp, no more reading of lists, no more
tracing of maps, no more letters, but only a blank, dead silence! The
battlecry goes on, but for you it is passed by! the victory comes,
but, oh, never more to bring him back to you! your offering to this
great cause has been made, and been taken; you have thrown into it
_all_ your living, even all that you had, and from henceforth your
house is left unto you desolate! O ye watchers of the cross, ye
waiters by the sepulchre, what can be said to you? We could almost
extinguish our own home-fires, that seem too bright when we think of
your darkness; the laugh dies on our lip, the lamp burns dim through
our tears, and we seem scarcely worthy to speak words of comfort, lest
we seem as those who mock a grief they cannot know.

But is there no consolation? Is it nothing to have had such a treasure
to give, and to have given it freely for the noblest cause for which
ever battle was set,--for the salvation of your country, for the
freedom of all mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of
common life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident,
then might his most precious life seem to be as water spilled upon the
ground; but now it has been given for a cause and a purpose worthy
even the anguish of your loss and sacrifice. He has been counted
worthy to be numbered with those who stood with precious incense
between the living and the dead, that the plague which was consuming
us might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs shall be the seed
of the future church of liberty, and from every drop shall spring up
flowers of healing. O widow! O mother! blessed among bereaved women!
there remains to you a treasure that belongs not to those who have
lost in any other wise,--the power to say, "He died for his countr