oing, must have six to
return, and one to visit friends at Pittsburg, yet in the time left,
sold _The Democrat_, closed my home, and met Gen. Lowrie for the first
and last time.

He called and we spent an hour talking, principally of the war, which he
thought would result in two separate governments. His reason seemed to
be entirely restored; but his prestige, power, wealth and health were
gone. I tried to avoid all personal matters, as well as reference to our
quarrel, but he broke into the conversation to say:

"I am the only person who ever understood you. People now think you go
into hospitals from a sense of duty; from benevolence, like those good
people who expect to get to heaven by doing disagreeable things on
earth; but I know you go because you must; go for your own pleasure; you
do not care for heaven or anything else, but yourself." He stopped,
looked down, traced the pattern of the carpet with the point of his
cane, then raised his head and continued: "You take care of the sick and
wounded, go into all those dreadful places just as I used to drink
brandy--for sake of the exhilaration it brings you."

We shook hands on parting, and from our inmost hearts, I am sure, wished
each other well. I was more than ever impressed by the genuine greatness
of the man, who had been degraded by the use of irresponsible power.

We reached Washington in good time, and I soon realized the great
advantage of rest. Six hours of office work came so near nothing to do,
that had I been in usual health I should probably have raised some
disturbance from sheer idleness; but I learned by and by that the close
attention demanded to avoid mistakes, could not well have been continued
longer.

Several ladies continued distributing hospital stores for me all that
fall and winter, and next spring I still had some to send out. When able
I went myself, and in Carver found a man who had been wounded in a
cavalry charge, said to have been as desperate as that of "the Light
Brigade;" and who refused to take anything from me, because he had "seen
enough of these people who go around hospitals pretending to take care
of wounded soldiers."

I convinced him it was his duty to take the jelly in order to prevent my
stealing it. Also, that it was for my interest to save his life, that I
might not have to pay my share of the cost of burying him and getting a
man in his place. Nay, that it was my duty to get him back into the
saddle as fast as p