the husbands and sons who will come back to them never any more, could tell us somewhat of the value to them of those mangled, crushed, mutilated bodies that are set down in the returns under the laconic heading of "losses." The day's paper is by my side, but I do not read it, its accounts turn me sick; the "special correspondent seems to relish his horrors as he writes them down. I used to read his tale of carnage, carnage, carnage! every day, until it rang in my ears like a bell, and my rest was full of blood and slaughter. . . . I never lay me down to rest or enjoy the merest common pleasure, without thinking of these poor Frenchmen fighting this losing game against terrible odds in the burning sun without discipline, proper food, or able directors. I do not know whether the Emperor of France or the King of Prussia is in the wrong; I never did understand anything about politics, and never shall; but I take the side of the French, for a woman's reason, that they are weakest. Thank Heaven, no brother or friend of mine is in the midst of the fighting. I should make so very sure that he would never come back; for to one mother or sister to whom a man will return, will there not be ninety-nine bereft?
God help you! poor mothers, and grant that your agony of waiting be a short one; better far to know that your son is numbered with the dead than be alternating in the intolerable agony of doubts and fears.
Although every tongue in even this remote Silverbridge wags from morning till night of the news of "the war," an enemy, no less fatal to some than the deadly bullets flying in such abundance yonder in la belle France, has crept in upon us and set his mark, first on one, then on another, and drawn them away out of our sight into that straight and narrow bondage that waits for us all, king or pedlar, queen or kitchenmaid, sooner or later. His name is Death, but he comes, not peacefully and naturally, but with a fiery burning breath—with a strong clutch at the throat, and a
