t the temptations and dangers of a
soldier's life with the pure-hearted firmness of a Christian child,
neither afraid nor ashamed to remember his baptismal vows, his
Sunday-school teachings, and his mother's wishes.

He had passed his promise to his mother against drinking and smoking,
and held it with a simple, childlike steadiness. When in the midst of
malarious swamps, physicians and officers advised the use of tobacco.
The boy writes to his mother: "A great many have begun to smoke, but I
shall not do it without your permission, though I think it does a
great deal of good."

In his leisure hours, he was found in his tent reading; and before
battle he prepared his soul with the beautiful psalms and collects for
the day, as appointed by his church, and writes with simplicity to his
friends:--

"I prayed God that he would watch over me, and if I fell, receive my
soul in heaven; and I also prayed that I might not forget the cause I
was fighting for, and turn my back in fear."

After nine months' service, he returned with a soldier's experience,
though with a frame weakened by sickness in a malarious region. But
no sooner did health and strength return than he again enlisted, in
the Massachusetts cavalry service, and passed many months of constant
activity and adventure, being in some severe skirmishes and battles
with that portion of Sheridan's troops who approached nearest to
Richmond, getting within a mile and a half of the city. At the close
of this raid, so hard had been the service, that only thirty horses
were left out of seventy-four in his company, and Walter and two
others were the sole survivors among eight who occupied the same
tent.

On the sixteenth of August, Walter was taken prisoner in a skirmish;
and from the time that this news reached his parents, until the 18th
of the following March, they could ascertain nothing of his fate. A
general exchange of prisoners having been then effected, they learned
that he had died on Christmas Day in Salisbury Prison, of hardship and
privation.

What these hardships were is, alas! easy to be known from those too
well-authenticated accounts published by our government of the
treatment experienced by our soldiers in the Rebel prisons.

Robbed of clothing, of money, of the soldier's best friend, his
sheltering blanket,--herded in shivering nakedness on the bare
ground,--deprived of every implement by which men of energy and spirit
had soon bettered their lot,--