s.

Ah, what times they were! It is well that flowers can spring up on a
battlefield. The little girl keeps track of her heroes. Kearny, who has
seen Magenta and Solferino, meets his fate at Chantilly. Many another
one who has come up to fame, many new ones, who are on the march to win
or die.

John is wounded, patched up in a hospital, and honorably discharged,
lamed for life. But he has done good work. Ben has a slight mishap, and
Delia sends her two babies and their nurse to her sister's, and goes to
the hospital, and remains. Women of brains and kindly impulses are much
needed.

And one night some wounded are brought in. There has been a fateful
reconnoisance, but it has saved the regiment from destruction on the
next day. This limp figure in a captain's uniform is laid tenderly on a
cot; but the surgeon, after a brief examination, shakes his head. Oh,
surely, she knows that handsome face with the clustering dark curls!

He opens his eyes, and after an instant says in a faint voice, "Oh,
Dele, is that you?" then lapses into insensibility. There is nothing to
be done; that is the cruelest of all. Once again, after a long while, he
moves his head, and opens his eyes again, brave and clear even in death.

"Delia," in a strange, strong voice that surprises her, "kiss them all
good-night for me;" and James Odell Underhill has gone to the land of
everlasting morning.

The war ends; and Ben comes home none the worse. He has reached his
ambition, and is a "newspaper man" in every sense of the word. Delia
sets up housekeeping, takes home the babies, and in the course of time
adds two more to them.

But there is another ferment, and women are coming to the fore. There
are clubs and suffrage meetings, lectures; women have even invaded
churches, and preach; and colleges for higher education are springing up
everywhere. There are poets and philosophers, there are teachers and
orators; some of them ill-judged, because they are fond of notoriety;
but there are always some wry sheep in the best of flocks. Have men
always been honest and wise and honourable and grand?

Delia lectures and writes, and is one of the able women of the day. Mrs.
Hoffman on her serene heights _is_ mortified. Mother Underhill is sure
Ben has to go to a restaurant, that his stockings are never mended, his
buttons always off. But patent buttons are invented, and collar-buttons
that cannot be ironed off by the "washerwoman," supply a long-felt want.