suffer great losses, and be forced to
retreat,--indeed, I think that consequence a natural inference from the
situation,--- but it cannot be badly defeated; it cannot be
disorganized. It would take mouths to overcome it."

"Then you really believe that we shall retreat?"

"Yes; I believe we shall fight, and we shall fight hard, and have
losses, but the enemy will be very cautious of attack, and those of us
who are able to march shall see Virginia again."

"Those who are able to march? Could we leave our wounded here?"

"I was thinking only of the fallen. If ever the history of this war is
truly written, the greatest honours of all will be paid to the common
soldiers, men who, without a particle of interest in slaves, give their
lives for independence--- the independence of their States. Yet it is
useless to grieve in anticipation."

"A soldier's death should not be a thing to grieve over," said I; "at
least, so it seems to me. I think I should prefer death in battle to
death by disease."

"True; and death must come, sooner or later, to all of us.

"'On two days it steads not to run from the grave,
The appointed and the unappointed day;
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.'"

"Who is that, Captain?"

"The Persian Omar Khayyam, followed by Emerson."

"How do you spell that Persian's name, Captain?"

"K-h-a-y-y-a-m."

"And you pronounce it Ki-yam?"

"That is the way I pronounced it; is it not correct?"

"I don't know. I never heard of him before, but the name seems not
unfamiliar. Is he living?"

"Oh, no; dead centuries since. Were you hoping to find one of your old
personal friends?"

"Don't laugh, Captain. Somehow the name seems to carry me back
somewhere."

"Maybe you knew him in a previous existence."

"Don't laugh, Captain. It is not the words, but merely the name that
strikes me. You don't believe the words yourself."

"I do and I do not. I believe them in a sense."

"In what sense, Captain?"

"In the sense in which the poet taught. The religion of the East is
fatalism. A fatalist who endeavours to shun death is inconsistent."

"But you are not a fatalist."

"No, and yes. Another poet has said that divinity shapes the ends that
we rough-hew; I should reverse this and say that life is blocked out in
the large for us by powers over which we can have no control, but that
within certain limits we do the shap