a common man possessed by an uncommon enthusiasm.

What passed with him at this time in that undiscovered sea which we
call a man's inner life, it would not be easy to assert. So far as we
can judge, all the currents of his nature had swelled into the great,
pulsing tide of self-surrender, which swept him along. Weakness,
wrong, memory, regret, fear, grief, pleasure, hope,--all the little
channels of personal life,--ran dry. He was that most blessed of human
creatures, a man without a past and without a future, and living in a
present nobler than the one could have been or the other could become.
He continued to be a silent man, speaking little, excepting to his
patients, and now and then, very gently, to the lady, Dr. Dare. He was
always pliable to the influence of a woman's voice or to womanly
manner. He had, in the presence of women, the quick responsiveness and
sudden change of color and sensitiveness of intonation which bespeak
the man whose highest graces and lowest faults are likely to be owing
to feminine power.

This was a quality which gave him remarkable success as a nurse. He
was found to be infinitely tender, and of fine, brave patience. It was
found that he shrank from no task because it was too small, as he had
shrunk from no danger because it was too great. He became a favorite
with the sick and with physicians. The convalescent clung to him, the
dying heard of him and sent for him, the Relief Committee leaned upon
him, as in such crises the leader leans upon the led. By degrees, he
became greatly trusted in Calhoun; this is to say, that he became
greatly loved.

I have been told that, to this day, many people personally unknown to
him, whose fate it was to be imprisoned in that beleaguered town at
that time, and who were familiar with the nervous figure and plain,
intense countenance of the Northern nurse, as he passed, terrible day
after terrible day, to his post, cannot hear of him, even now, without
that suffusion of look by which we hold back tears; and that, when
his name took on, as it did, a more than local reputation, they were
unable to speak it because of choking voices. I have often wished that
he knew this.

It was the custom in Calhoun to pay the nurses at short, stated
intervals,--I think once a week, on Saturday nights. The first time
that Hope was summoned to receive his wages, he evinced marked
emotion, too genuine not to be one of surprise and repugnance.

"I had not thought,--"