The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866

Pretty well for us in so short

e credit of a very large proportion;

that had given me credit for such extraordinary industry. Afterwards I looked up at Percy Lunt, and tried to think o

two parlors, which opened into each other as no others in Barton did, were handsomely furnished with articles brought from France; though, for that matter, they did not look very different from Barton furniture generally, except, perhaps, in being plainer. Just now the chairs, lounges, and card-table were covered wit

ame to the wife, daughter, or sister who would know them to be sufferers while a finger remained on their hands to be moved! So, day by day, at soldiers' meetings, but much more at home, the army of waiters and watchers wrought cheerfully and hopefu

xty or ninety days, as the news came more or less favorable to the loyal cause. But despair of the Republic? Never. Not the smallest child in Barton. Not a woman, of course. And through these life-currents fl

he Potomac went letters from all the soldiers' families, and photographs to show how fast the children were grow

ith some directions, in as kind a voice as I could command, about the sleeves. She smiled and looked up wistfully in my face, but I tur

head and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in black, and wore over her small head a little tarlatan cap as close as a Shaker's. You might call her interesting-look

w, Robert Elliott, say that the Barton boys had chosen him for Captain, and that the

to keep up a brave outside? This was in the very beginning of the war, when word first came that blood had been shed in Baltimore; and our Barton boys were in Boston reporting to Governor Andrew in less than a week after. Now we didn'

els,-rather, send these gentry back to their ladies' chambers. But I won't say either. Only let them see that you

eason, and how slight was the struggle it anticipated. These few shuddered at the possibility that stood red and gloomy in the path of the f

Charleston. A year at the South, and you understand them a little differently.

in a month. They will begin talking and arguing, and once they begin that, there w

l events. I am sure I don't want to shoot anybody. But now I am going t

and tell me if yo

nger; for Mr. Lunt (he was Percy's cousin) had not been dead quite two years. But he said he could not go away without telling her; and when I remembered all the readin

re, and spoke no word, only stared into the fire. At length, with a pitiful attem

ftly, laying my hand on his arm. Hi

, Auntie, tell me, am I a fool and a j

did!" I answ

ught of me,-never!-and she ne

is hand in mine, and looking into the fire, and in almost as great a rage as he was. He

so brave, so heroic, so handsome?-one in ten thousand! And here was this dead-and-alive Percy Lunt, saying she never thought! "Pah!-ju

wasn't just to her. I was too angry. When I spoke to her she l

er flowers and books and pictures, and reading to her, and talking to her the whole

oth my little old hands in his. "Best of aunties! what a good hater you are! Now, if you love

d not

r could be any more than friends to each other, and I had got up to go away,-for I was very angry as well as agitated,-she stood looking so pale and so earnestly at me, as if she must make me believe her. Then she held out her hands to me, and I thought she was going

h from his breast-p

16th, 1861. She said she did not want me to remember her as she is now,

falling about her cheeks and neck, instead of the prim little widow's cap she wore now. And

; "the best thing you can do is to forget her, and the kind

was going without feeling that I had left a most affectionate friend, who would w

ight be in the future? At all events, it made him more comfortable now to have this little, unexpressed, crouching hope,

any enterprising young lawyer come here and get away all my business befo

owed to me, at the head of his hundred men. I saw his steady, heroic face, no longer pale, but full of stern purpose and streng

prejudiced, I might have pitied the poor, overcharged heart, that showed itself so plainly in the deathly pallor of the young cheek, and the eyes so weighed down with weeping. C