, and
rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and
on a sudden a shout,--such a one as the children of Israel gave, when
the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and
thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,--for there, high up in
heaven, streaming out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn,
blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red, white, and blue,
waving over the enemy's works; and then the telegraph flashed out the
brave news over the exulting country, and the press took up the story,
and women said, with kindling faces, "My son, or my brother, or my
husband may be dead, but, oh, our boys have done glorious things at
Lookout Mountain!"--and History will tell how a grander charge was never
made, and calmly note the loss in dead and wounded,--so many
thousands,--and pass on.

But we are not History, and our dead,--well, we will give them graves
that shall be ever green with laurels, and their swords shall be our
most precious legacy to our children, and their memories shall be a part
of our household; but our wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may
yet live,--the cry goes up from Wisconsin, and Maine, and Iowa, and New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Where are they, and how cared
for? We are all, as I said, bound by the heartstrings in a common
interest. The Boston woman with her boy in the Army of the Cumberland,
and the Maine mother with one in New Orleans or Texas, and the Kansas
father with a son in the Army of the Potomac, all clamor, "Is mine among
the wounded, and do care and science for him all that care and science
should?"

The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission are prompt on the
battle-field, reaching the groaning sufferers even before their own
surgeons. Said one man, lying there badly wounded,--

"And what do they pay yez for this? What do you get?"

"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldier's 'God bless you.'"

"And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of the coin, fresh minted! God
bless you! God bless you! and the good Lord be good to you, and remember
yez as you have remembered us, and love yez and your children after you;
and sure, if that is all, it's plenty of that sort of pay the poor
soldier has for you!"

God bless such men! we echo; but after that, what then? Our beloved are
taken to the hospitals, and we know, in a general way, that hospitals
are buildings containing long rows of beds, and that science i