ouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for
everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to
go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which,
when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons;
when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie
down, and you shall save his life yet.'

"She did,--God bless her innocent, motherly heart!--when nothing but
motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal,
drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope,
making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent,
who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final
whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."

But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,--that
sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of
the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender
hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their
wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope
all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life,
dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten
them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life
pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common
decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them
in return--a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set
forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,--in wood and stone,
and by the aid of a charter.

In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers,
a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the
British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open
to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as
the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but
think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver,
sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to
the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and
must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that
a new spirit will spring up among us,--the spirit of that woman who,
with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their
only means of support, yet