ther again, before
he died; and he wished to know if the captain would give him a
passage down the river on his boat. On hearing where his home was,
the captain said that the party who had chartered his boat were
going near that place; and he told the poor soldier that he would
gladly take him to his home.
But, when the excursion party came on board, and saw the soldier,
with his soiled and worn clothes, and his ugly-looking wounds, they
were not willing to let him go; and asked the captain to put him
ashore. The captain told the soldier's sad story, and pleaded his
cause very earnestly. He said he would place him on the lower deck
and put a screen round his bed, so that they could not see him. But
the young people refused. They said as they had hired the boat, it
belonged to them for the day, and they were not willing to have such
a miserable-looking object on board their boat; and that if the
captain did not put him off, they would hire another boat, and he
would lose the twenty dollars they had agreed to give him for the
day's excursion.
The good captain made one more appeal to them. He asked them to put
themselves in the poor soldier's place, and then to think how they
would like to be treated. But still they refused to let the soldier
go. Then the noble-hearted captain said: "Well, ladies and gentlemen,
whether you hire my boat or not, I intend to take this soldier home
to-day."
The party did hire another boat. The captain lost his twenty
dollars. But, when he returned the poor dying soldier to the arms of
his loving mother, he felt that the tears of gratitude with which she
thanked him were worth more than the money he had lost. The gentle
mother dressed the wounds of her poor suffering boy; and nursed and
cared for him, as none but a mother knows how to do. But she could
not save his life. He died after a few days; and the last words he
spoke, as his loving parents stood weeping at his bedside
were--"Don't forget the good captain." And he was not forgotten. For
after the soldier's funeral was over, his father went up the river to
the town where the captain lived. He found him out. He thanked him
again for his kindness in bringing home his dying boy; and made him a
present that was worth four or five times the twenty dollars he had
lost for the hire of his boat.
But this was not the end of it. For not long after this, the captain
and his wife were taken suddenly ill with a fatal disease that was
prevail
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