rings, but relieved their pain;
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sate by the fire, and talked the night away;
Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;
Careless their merits or their faults to scan,
His pity gave ere charity began._

IV

I have lived a long life--rather a happy and a busy than a merry
one--enjoying where I might, but, let me hope I may fairly claim,
shirking no needful labor or duty. The result is some accretions to
my credit. It were, however, ingratitude and vanity in me to set up
exclusive ownership of these. They are the joint products and property
of my dear wife and myself.

I do not know just what had befallen if love had failed me, for as far
back as I can remember love has been to me the bedrock of all that is
worth living for, striving for or possessing in this cross-patch of a
world of ours.

I had realized the meaning of it in the beautiful concert of affection
between my father and mother, who lived to celebrate their golden
wedding. My wife and I have enjoyed now the like conjugal felicity
fifty-four--counted to include two years of betrothal, fifty-six years.
Never was a young fellow more in love than I--never has love been more
richly rewarded--yet not without some heartbreaking bereavements.

I met the woman who was to become my wife during the War of
Sections--amid its turmoil and peril--and when at its close we were
married, at Nashville, Tennessee, all about us was in mourning, the
future an adventure. It was at Chattanooga, the winter of 1862-63,
that fate brought us together and riveted our destinies. She had a fine
contralto voice and led the church choir. Doctor Palmer, of New Orleans,
was on a certain Sunday well into the long prayer of the Presbyterian
service. Bragg's army was still in middle Tennessee. There was no
thought of an attack. Bang! Bang! Then the bursting of a shell too close
for comfort. Bang! Bang! Then the rattle of shell fragments on the roof.
On the other side of the river the Yankees were upon us.

The man of God gave no sign that anything unusual was happening. He did
not h