"SAMUEL RAYMOND."

The boy went forth to real service, and to successive battles at
Kingston, at Whitehall, and at Goldsborough; and in all did his duty
bravely and faithfully. He met 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 16th 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 mon