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NEWS
FROM THE FRONT.
"Holm there, courier, what news
from the front? Go not so fast on your galloping way! Have the armies met, has a
battle been fought? Tell us which side has won the day,
And who is living, and who lie
low;
We all have friends in the ranks,
you know."
" The armies met but a few days
since, And a terrible battle has been fought; We are the victors, thank the
Lord!
But the victory, oh, it was
dearly bought,
For the ground is littered with
Union dead,
And the trampled grass with their
blood is red."
" Tell me, courier, say if you
can
How it has fared with my own
brave boy? He was the last of five gallant sons,
His mother's only remaining joy."
Thus spoke a woman wrinkled and
gray, As the courier paused a while by the way.
"Your boy, good woman ? Alas ! he
is killed; In the front of battle I saw him fall, With his face to the enemy he
lay,
Shot through the heart by a
rifleman's ball; But tell me, mother, was your boy's life
More dear than our cause in this
deadly strife?"
"Courier, I have already said
He was the child of my later
years; I have given five to our noble cause
And the Lord will wipe away these
tears ; 'Tis hard with one's flesh and blood to part,
But I yield them all with a
willing heart."
" Courier," said a young wife
then,
"Is my husband living, and is he
well?" "My Captain, lady, was wounded at first, Close by my side in the fight he
fell ;
And asked that this token to you
I'd give, For he knew himself that he could not live."
"O God, he is dead! 'tis my
picture this; I bade him wear it on every field Close to his heart, where I
placed it then, Praying his precious life it might shield;
And I strove to keep the tears
from my eyes
When I gave him to God a
sacrifice!"
" And, courier, what of Walter
Holt?
Pray tell me if of him you know
aught"-
This from the lips of a fair
young girl.
"I know how bravely and well he
fought, And I know as well that he lost an arm, But otherwise he is safe from
harm."
"Oh, courier, tell him when you
return
How that of one thing he may be
sure: That I am his whenever he will ;
And 'though he has lost an arm,
and is poor, Bid him remember that I have two,
And will prove what a Yankee girl
can do."
Then the courier spurred his
foaming steed, Thinking aloud as he rode away:
" Oh, when will the night of
battle clear, And show us the dawn of a brighter day,
When these groans of anguish and
grief shall cease
In the golden sunrise of perfect
peace?"
HUMORS OF THE DAY.
GARIBALDI'S HYMN.—Nonsense !
Speak grammatically, and say Garibaldi''s He.
Why is the top of a bald man's
head like the North Pole?—Because it is a great bear (bare) place.
PUTTING YOUR FOOT IN IT.—"
Putting your foot in it,"
it seems, is a term of legitimate
origin. According to the " Asiatic Researches," a very curious mode of trying
the title to land is practiced in Hindostan. Two holes are dug in the disputed
spot, in each of which the lawyer on either side put one of their legs, and
there remain until one of them is tired, or complains of being stung by in-sects
; in which case his client is defeated. In our country it is generally the
client, and not the lawyer, who "puts his foot in it."
When is a woman like a watch
?—When she is capp'd and jeweled.
THE GIRL I LOVE.—Oyster Patty.
Dr. Mead, calling one day on a
gentleman who had been severely afflicted with the gout, found, to his surprise,
the disease gone and the patient rejoicing on his recovery over a bottle of
wine. "Come along, doctor," exclaimed he, "you are just in time to taste this
bottle of Madeira; it is the first of a pipe that has just been broached." "Ah
!" replete the doctor, shaking his head, "these pipes of Madeira are the cause
of all your suffering." " Well, then," rejoined the gay incurable, "fill your
glass; for now we have found out the cause, the sooner we get rid of it the
better."
TURNIPS.—A farmer, by chance a
companion in a coach with Sydney Smith, kept boring him to death with questions,
in the jargon of agriculturists, about crops. At length he put a poser: "And
pray, Sir, how are turnips t'year?" " Why, that, Sir," stammered out Smith,
"will depend upon the boiled legs of mutton."
A drunken fellow, sitting on the
steps of St. Paul's church, the cold wind blowing chillingly round the corner,
thus soliloquized, "If Heaven (hic) tempers the Wind to the (hic) shorn lamb, I
wish the lamb (hic) was on this corner."
There is an anecdote of an honest
Irishman, whose mingled sense of the duty of gratitude and the awkwardness of
obligation found vent in the characteristic aspiration, " Oh, that I could see
your honor knocked down in a fight! Sure, and wouldn't I bring a faction to the
rescue!"
A vendor of hoops was recently
extolling his wares in presence of a customer's husband. "No lady should be
without one of these beautiful skirts," said the vendor.
Well, of course not," dryly
remarked the husband," she should be within them."
A countryman was shown
Gainsborough's celebrated picture of " The Pigs." " To be sure," said he, " they
be deadly like pigs; but there is one fault—nobody ever saw three pigs feeding
together but what one on 'em had a foot in the trough."
A few days since a dunner called
on a young gentleman and presented him a bill, when he was somewhat taken aback
by the gent taking him aside and blandly saying: "My dear Sir, call next
Thursday, and I'll tell you when to call again."
The late Lord Petersham, a great
dandy, possessed a collar of snuff, arranged in jars, said to have been worth
three thousand pounds. He had the finest collection of boxes in England, and had
a box for every day in the year. On a beautiful old light blue Sevres box being
particularIv he would lisp out affectedly, " Yes, it's a nice summer box ; but
it doesn't do for winter wear."
Partly fulfilling a promise is
like breaking your word and offering some of the bits.
A. neglected wife declares that
she and her husband are like two mile-stones, because she may say that he and
she are never seen together.
People who have never been in
Italy form very macaronious ideas about it.
Why is a vine like a
soldier?—Because it is 'listed and trained, and has ten-drills and shoots.
"It's all stuff," as the lady
said to her husband, who was complaining of dyspepsia after a public dinner.
An eminent divine preached one
Sunday morning from the text, "Ye are the children of the devil," and in the
afternoon, by funny coincidence, from the words, "Children, obey your parents."
A northern English rector used to
think it polite not to begin service before the arrival of the squire. A little
while ago he forgot his manners, and began, "When the wicked man—" "Stop, Sir!"
called out the clerk, "he ain't come yet."
A young gentleman from the "rooral
districts," who advertised for a wife through the newspapers, received answers
from eighteen husbands, informing him that he could have theirs.
THE ANCIENTS OUTDONE.—Talk of
Daedalus and Icarus ! A man made wings to his house, and had a fly in it!
VERBUM SAP.---Time is never in a
hurry, but never idles.
Were a second deluge to occur the
best place to retreat to would, of course, be New-ark.
GENERAL HORATIO GATES
WRIGHT.
GENERAL HORATIO GATES WRIGHT, of
whom we give a portrait on our first page, now commanding the Sixth Corps of the
Army of the Potomac, entered West Point from Connecticut in the year 1837. In
July, 1841, he was appointed Second Lieutenant of Engineers, and in January,
1842, became Acting Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Military Academy,
holding the position to August of the following year. In July, 1844, he was
appointed Assistant Professor, and in the spring of 1848 was made a First
Lieutenant, becoming subsequently Captain, in the Engineer Corps. In 1861 he was
promoted to Major, and in September of the same year was made Brigadier-General
of Volunteers, and placed in command of the Third Brigade of
SHERMAN'S forces,
which participated in the Port Royal expedition. When the Army of the South was
reorganized, under
General HUNTER, General WRIGHT was, on the 23d of May, 1862,
placed in command of the Third Brigade of General BENHAM'S First Division.
Subsequently he was ordered North with his brigade, and participated in
McCLELLAN'S Peninsular Campaign. In July, 1862, he was appointed a Major-General
of Volunteers, and ordered to the Military Department of the Ohio, with
head-quarters at Cincinnati. He held this command during the advance of BRAGG'S
army through East Tennessee and
Kentucky to the Ohio River, and by his ability
aided in organizing forces for the protection of Cincinnati. He retained this
position until March 26, 1863, when, in consequence of the Senate refusing to
confirm his appointment of Major-General, he was relieved by
General BURNSIDE, and ordered to report to head-quarters for assignment.
For a short time General WRIGHT
was kept unemployed, but was at last assigned to the command of the First
Division of the Sixth Corps. During the passage of the Rappahannock in November,
1863, General WRIGHT was placed in command of the Sixth Corps, which was
attached to
General SEDGWICK'S right wing of that army. At the storming of the
works the command of General WRIGHT particularly distinguished itself, and
General MEADE, in his general order of November 9, 1863, complimented not only
General WRIGHT as corps commander, but particularly mentioned the division so
recently under his charge.
When the Army of the Potomac was
reorganized; during March, 1864, under General MEADE, for the present campaign,
General WRIGHT was assigned to the command of the First Division of the Sixth
Army Corps. Upon General SEDGWICK'S death he succeeded to the command of the
corps, and has just been renominated as a Major-General.
THE
STATION-MASTER'S
DAUGHTER.
I HAD lost sight of my old
college chum, Fred Pepper, for several years, till I accepted an invitation from
him last autumn to stay a week with him at his home in one of the midland
counties. According to arrangement, he met me at Wallington Junction, a station
about twenty miles from his house, the remainder of the journey having to be
performed on a branch line of railway.
"You will have to take a fresh
ticket here," said Fred, after I had alighted from the train, and we had greeted
each other with a hearty shake of the hand. "You will find the booking-office at
the upper end of the platform."
I went to the window indicated by
my friend, and obtained the needful ticket ; nothing at the same time that I was
waited upon by a young woman—rather an unusual case in England, I believe,
though not so unfrequent in Scotland ; quite a mite of a young woman, so
slenderly proportioned was she, so slight of figure ; with large, shy, brown
eyes, and brown hair ; with small, pale, clearly cut features ; hardly to be
called pretty, but with an expression of candor and good temper that was
infinitely pleasing. Whatever touches of adornment the otherwise dingy office
had received were due to her busy little fingers; to her evidently belonged the
three pots of scarlet geraniums, and the box of mignonnette in the window ; the
canary, lively and loud voiced, in its circular wire cage ; the elaborate piece
of embroidery on the desk ; and a green backed volume of poems.
"Are all your booking-clerks in
this part of the country as charming as the one who has just waited on me ?"
inquired I of Fred.
"Ah, you have seen little Madge
Carliston, I suppose," said he ; " but you must not expect to find another like
her. Have you never heard of her before ? Well, then, I must relate to you a
little circumstance which happened three or four years ago, and which made Madge
quite a heroine in these parts. Let us secure a compartment to ourselves, and
then you shall have it."
My friend was well known on the
line, and the guard civilly locked the door at his bidding, and secured us from
intrusion. Having fixed ourselves, therefore, comfortably in opposite corners,
Fred proceeded to favor me with the following narrative :
" Two years ago," commenced he, "
old David Carliston, the father of Madge, was station-master at Birkwood, a
little road-side place about fifteen miles from Wallington Junction. David had
been j a soldier in his younger days, could show two or three medals, and had
probably obtained his post on the line through the interest of some friendly
director, rather than from any particular aptitude he himself displayed. He had
been a widower for many years, and his small household was managed by his
daughter Margaret, or Madge, as she was generally called by her father and every
one else.
"There was very little traffic,
either goods or passenger, at Birkwood; so that the life led by David and his
daughter was a very lonely one ; the village of Birkwood itself, which contained
only about a couple of hundred inhabitants, lying a mile and a half away down
the main road.
" It thus fell out that Madge,
having much leisure time on her hands, gradually initiated herself into the
duties of a clerk at a small station ; being, indeed, very nimble with her pen,
and in that respect the reverse of David. His duties were over by eight o'clock
in the evening, there being no train which stopped at Birkwood between that hour
and seven in the morning ; and having seen that his night-signals were all
right, the old soldier would, if the weather were fine, generally trudge down
into the village, to smoke his pipe and drink an evening glass at the Farriers'
Arms, at which place, by virtue of his military experiences and his two medals,
he was looked upon as a hero whose dictum was in no case to be disputed. These
nightly visits to the Farriers' Arms were a source of no small disquietude to
Madge, for it not unfrequently happened that David, rendered forgetful by the
excitement of congenial company, and by the rude but genuine applause which
always greeted his stories of war-like adventure, would imbibe more of the
Farriers' heady home-brewed than he could conveniently carry, and would reach
home at a late hour in a state which permitted no recollection next morning of
how he got there.
" It was hardly likely that such
a girl as Madge Carliston could have reached the age of seventeen, even in a
remote place like Birkwood, without having suitors for her hand. Of the
unfortunate rejected ones who had been sent about their business, with no
measure of hard words, but with a gentle refusal, uttered half reluctantly, as
though she were unwilling to inflict so much pain, the only one known to me by
name was young Will Ferguson, a guard on the line. Will had tried his fortune,
and had been rejected, like others before him ; but whether there was something
in Madge's soft refusal which would not permit him to despair of success, or
whether it was owing to the constancy and true nature of his affection, he still
went on loving as before, and would by no means take his rejection as final. `
It's a woman's privilege to change her mind,' he would say ; `and who knows but
that Madge may change hers !'
" Will's most formidable rival
was handsome black-eyed Dick Carradus, son of Lord Alfreton's bailiff—a village
scapegrace, who had been turned out of doors by his father some years before;
had then gone to Australia, and had come back, after being five years away,
quite as poor as he went, and was now living at home on sufferance, till
something should turn up likely to suit his lazy abilities.
" Dick had not been back long
before he singled out little Madge Carliston as the object of his attentions. He
began by paying court to her father, and would lounge up to the station of a
morning, having no work of his own to engage him, and smoke and chat with the
old man between trains, listen with respectful attention to his long-winded
stories, retail the latest village news, and give him now and then a
helping-hand with his garden; so that, after a time, the morning seemed long and
dull which was not enlivened by a visit from laughing, good-tempered Dick. To
Madge he made no open profession of his love, being quick enough to perceive
that she was one of those who are not to be won in a day ; but he let her see in
twenty different ways how constantly she dwelt in his thoughts. To what extent
he succeeded in winning her affections no one ever knew, but that she was
inclined to favor his suit seems certain; indeed it would have been strange if a
girl of her limited experience and slight knowledge of the world, without any
previous liking for another, had remained insensible to the manifold attractions
of Dick.
" Matters had progressed thus for
some months without seeming to progress at all, when, one autumn forenoon, Dick
lounged up to the station accompanied by a stranger, whom he presented to David
as his friend Mr. Kulp, from Australia. Madge, who was looking on unseen from
behind the blind that shaded the open window, thought she had never seen a more
sinister and ill-looking visage than that of Mr. Kulp. He was dressed in a new,
shiny suit of black, in which he looked very awkward and ill at ease, his great
horny hands being especially difficult to dispose of, and wandering incessantly
into his pockets and out of them again; he would evidently have felt more at
home in the red shirt and highlows of a digger. His face and neck were the color
of a brick, and his shaggy red hair and long red beard, rudely trimmed by some
country barber, did not add to the attractiveness of his appearance. His
features were bold and sufficiently well-shaped ; but the expression of his eyes
was so thoroughly bad, that it was impossible to be
mistaken as to the nature of the
soul that gazed loweringly out of their treacherous depths. Madge could not help
wondering to herself how it happened that laughing, careless Dick had come to
choose such a man as this Kulp for his companion.
"David went into the house, and
presently re-turned with a jug of ale and some glasses; and Mr. Kulp having
produced some cigars, the three sat down on one of' the benches outside the
station, and proceeded to enjoy themselves after their own fashion.
" We had Lord Alfreton's family
here yesterday afternoon,' said David, after a while. `There was three
truck-load of luggage and things, besides eight horses, and a lot of dogs ; and
a rare lot of money it came to. Fact is,' continued the old soldier, `I never
was so busy since I came here as I've been this morning ; for Baylis, the
cattle-drover, sent me word a week ago to get him twenty wagons ready by this
morning ; and sure enough, by five o'clock he was here with a lot of staring,
half-mad bullocks; and rare and cold it was too at that hour ; but we got them
all safe into the trucks, and the engine fetched them at eight o'clock—quite a
little train of themselves. And then Baylis came into the house, and had a bit
of breakfast with me, and paid me for the carriage of the cattle. Why, lads, I
shall have over a hundred and fifty pounds to send to bank in the morning. I'll
warrant such a thing never happened before since Birkwood was a station ;' and
the old man chuckled to himself as he emptied his glass, and seemed to look upon
the whole matter as an excellent joke.
"Shortly afterward Dick and Mr.
Kulp took their leave, the former depositing on the window-sill a little bunch
of' flowers for Madge, who still kept resolutely within doors. The two walked
slowly down the road, conversing earnestly together, Mr. Kulp apparently
endeavoring to impress some important point on the attention of the
half-reluctant Dick; and in a few minutes the latter came hastily back, and
going up to David, who was busy digging in his garden by this time, said:
"`You'll be down at the Farriers'
to-night, won't you, governor? There's to be a bit of a dahlia-show among the
villagers, and they'll be sure to want you to act as one of the judges.'
"`I'll drop down, had, after the
eight o'clock train has gone, and that's as soon as I can leave ; not that I
know much about dahlias, but I can give my opinion, I dare say, as well as
another man.'
"So, with a renewed good-morning,
Dick finally departed, and having rejoined Mr. Kulp, who was lounging over a
gate waiting the ,return of his friend, the two went on their way together, and
were quickly lost to view.
" All these proceedings had been
witnessed by Madge from her eyrie, but she had been too far away to hear the
conversation between Dick and her father in the garden. When she was certain
that the two were finally gone she stole down stairs, and taking possession of
the flowers, kissed them and put them carefully into water. Then she went about
her work, humming an old song to herself; but she could not get rid of the idea
that the malignant eyes of Mr. Kulp were furtively watching her wherever she
went.
" When David had attended to the
eight o'clock train he went into the house and changed his bat and coat, telling
Madge that he was going down into the village, but that he should not be late
home. Madge was too much accustomed to her father's evening absences to think
any thing of this, and had learned from experience that when he announced his
intention of being home at an early hour he was pretty sure to be later than
corn-men. Having arranged his neck-tie to her satisfaction, and given him a
parting kiss, she made up the fire, lighted the candle, and sat down to her
sewing, quite content to pass the long evening all alone in the solitary
station-house.
"Having sewn till she was tired,
she put her work away, and then got out her hymn-book, and marked one or two
hymns to be sung by her scholars at school on the following Sunday; then she
read a while; and then, all unconsciously to her-self, her eyes softly closed,
and she knew nothing more.
"She was roused by the clock
close above her head striking eleven, and at the moment she opened her eyes she
was startled by seeing, or believing that she saw, the handle of' the door on
the opposite side of the room slowly and noiselessly turned, as though some one
were trying to open it from the outside. The door in question led on to the
plat-form, but fortunately she had shot the bolt into its place after seeing her
father down the road. The blood thrilled through her heart as she gazed with a
sort of horrible fascination on the revolving handle, and in a moment she was as
thoroughly awake as ever she had been in her life. She listened, with all her
senses on the alert, but the silence remained unbroken save by the ticking of
the clock and the faint singing of the telegraph wires in the breeze outside.
She kept her eyes fixed intently on the door for what seemed to her an
intolerably long time, but there was no movement, nor any sign of life other
than her own beating heart; so, with a sigh of relief, she at length wrenched
her eyes away, and persuaded herself that, in the confusion of that first waking
moment, her senses must have misled her. The hour was late, and her father could
not be long now ; so she would just make every thing secure below stairs, and
then go and lie down on her bed without undressing, in readiness to run down at
his first knock.
"It was hardly pleasant going
about the house after seeing that strange movement of the door-handle ; but she
nerved herself to the effort; al-though the eyes of Mr. Kulp seemed to stare out
at her with baleful intensity from every dusky- corner, and to lie in wait for
her behind every doer. But the task, after all, was only a short ono; and when
she had seen that all the doors and windows were properly secured, and that
there was nothing to be feared from the lire, she took up her candle, and walked
slowly and steadily up the short flight of stairs which led to her own and her
father's bed-rooms on the upper floor. After glancing into the
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