to do in California, and to some extent also in England. For though
my adventures might not have been as strange as many I myself have heard
of (especially from Suan Isco), nevertheless they had comprised enough
of teaching and suffering also to make me careful about having any more.
And so for a long time I kept at the furthest distance possible, in
such a war, from the vexing of the air with cannons, till even Colonel
Cheriton's daughters--perfectly soft and peaceful girls--began to
despise me as a coward. Knowing what I had been through, I indulged
their young opinions.

Therefore they were the more startled when I set forth under a sudden
impulse, or perhaps impatience, for a town very near the head-quarters
of the defeated General Hooker. As they were so brave, I asked them
whether they would come with me; but although their father was known to
be there, they turned pale at the thought of it. This pleased me, and
made me more resolute to go; and in three days' time I was at Falmouth,
a town on our side of the Rappahannock.

Here I saw most miserable sights that made me ashamed of all trifling
fear. When hundreds and thousands of gallant men were dying in crippled
agony, who or what was I to make any fuss about my paltry self? Clumsy
as I was, some kind and noble ladies taught me how to give help among
the sufferers.

At first I cried so at every body's pain, while asking why ever they
should have it, that I did some good by putting them up to bear it
rather than distress me so. And when I began to command myself (as
custom soon enabled me), I did some little good again by showing them
how I cared for them. Their poor weak eyes, perhaps never expecting
to see a nice thing in the world again, used to follow me about with a
faint, slow roll, and a feeble spark of jealousy.

That I should have had such a chance of doing good, onefold to others
and a thousandfold to self, at this turn of life, when I was full of
little me, is another of the many most clear indications of a kind hand
over me. Every day there was better than a year of ordinary life in
breaking the mind from its little selfish turns, and opening the heart
to a larger power. And all this discipline was needed.

For one afternoon, when we all were tired, with great heat upon us
suddenly, and the flies beginning to be dreadful, our chief being rather
unwell and fast asleep, the surgeons away, and our beds as full as they
could be, I was called down to re