C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

Lii.

I felt a strange interest in this young man, whom I had left in what I supposed was his last quiet slumber; and yet I knew he would wake once more before he died. I approached his cot again. He was still sleeping, and so tranquilly I felt a little alarmed lest he might never wake, till I touched his pulse and found it still softly beating.

I let him sleep, and thought I would sit by his side till the surgeon came.—

I took a long, free breath, for I supposed it was all hopelessly over. Then I thought of his strange history:—I knew it well.

He was born not far from Trenton Falls,—the youngest son, among several brothers, of one of the brave tillers of that hard soil. He had seen his family grow up nobly and sturdily, under the discipline of a good religion and good government, and with a determination to defend both. When his country's troubles began, his first impulses thus found expression to his brothers:—‘Let me go; for you are all married; and if I fall, no matter.’

He went. He had followed the standard of the Republic into every battle-field where the struggle carried him, till, worn out, but not wounded, he was borne to this hospital in Washington, a sick boy. He seemed to have a charmed life, for on several occasions his comrades had been shot dead or wounded on either side; and when his last cartridge had done execution, he carried off two of his wounded companions [433] from the field, bearing them and their muskets to the rear,—if there were a rear in the flight from the Bull Run of July, 1861,—and nourished and watched and stood by these comrades till they died, and then got the help of a farmer to carry them with his cart, a whole day afterward, to be buried in a place which he chose.

This boy's example had inspired that farmer with such benevolence —if he were not inspired by patriotism already—that he made honored graves for them; and the writer of this work knows where their ashes rest.

When this was all over, the boy came back, as a kind of rear-guard, of one, in the flight of the army of the Potomac, and, having reached the city of Washington and reported himself to his commander, fell senseless on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was taken to a neighboring house and well cared for; and I saw him in the hospital of which I have spoken.

But this was only his life as a soldier. There was another and a deeper life than that. The great loadstone that led him away was the magnet of his nation. Another loadstone held his heart at home: it was the magnet of Love.

His wild and wayward history—wild only with adventure and wayward only with romance, he seemed to me, as I looked upon his face, so calm, and chiselled into sculptured beauty, I thought, either he looked like an Apollino with his unstrung bow, or a nautilus, cast on the turbulent ocean, to be wafted to some unknown clime, or sink forever, on the floor of the deep sea, to find a coral sepulchre.

His dark eyelashes—bent up in such clear relief against their white ground—slowly and calmly began to move.

I sprang to my feet; for it seemed to me there was a chance yet.

The surgeon was long in coming; and yet I knew he would come. He did. His sharp and experienced eye, as he approached the cot, opened with surprise. Touching my shoulder, he said, with surprise,—

‘He is still alive.’

In an instant, taking the hand of the dying or dead boy,—I scarcely knew which,—a faint smile passed over the surgeon's face.

‘I am not sure but he may come up yet. If he revives, there is one chance left for him, if it be but one in a thousand. But I will work for that chance, and see what it will come to. “ Here Art triumphs, if it triumphs at all.” ’

The pulse seemed to be coming as he took the hand. ‘It acts strangely; but I have seen two or three cases very much [434] like it. Mind you, I do not think we can do much with this case; but you stay and watch, and I will come back in half an hour.’

So, while he went through some other wards, I watched the patient. The last glimmer of life, which had given some light as this scene was being enacted, faded into what seemed to me the calmest repose of death.

But then, I thought, it is a strange sight, a heart filled with the earnest passions of youth, in the first hopes of life budding into their fruition beneath his own primeval forest-shades, where, if there be an element that ever sanctified an early life, it would have built a sanctuary —for the love he must have borne to the fair being for whom he had treasured up his boyhood's jewels, for whom he gave up everything of the earth earthy, to rescue a Republic, and then go back after this episode of suffering to inaugurate the life of a citizen farmer on the bleak hills of New York:—if all this could not sustain him, what could?—

In former visits to him he had made me his confidant in regard to these matters. He seemed to be haunted with the idea that he would, after all, return to Utica, and once more see those he loved; and yet he also seemed to me like one whose days were numbered, and the surgeon had told me, after repeated counsels with his professional brethren, that it was next to impossible to save his life, and that I must not expect it.

All the while I clung to the belief that some vitality of faith, or love, or hope, or patriotism, or divine aid, would still send that boy back to the banks of the Mohawk.

I saw another nervous twitch around the temples. I felt his pulse. It was an indication of hope, or sudden death.

The surgeon came by again.

‘That boy has wonderful vitality,’ he said, as he looked at his face. Whether it was purely my fancy, my hope, or a fact, I did not know, but twilight seemed to pass over his face.

‘Yes, yes—I—I—wait—a moment. Oh, I shall not die!’

He opened his eyes calmly, and then a glow which I shall never forget suffused his cheek, and, lifting his emaciated hands for the first time in several weeks,—feebly, it is true, but they seemed to me strong,—he exclaimed, in a natural voice, ‘How floats the old flag now, boys?’

The transition from death to life seemed like enchantment. I could scarcely believe my senses. And yet I knew that if he ever rallied this would be the way. [435]

I now feared that his excitement would carry him beyond his strength. I could not keep him from talking. I was bending over him to see if he would remember me. Looking me steadily in the eyes, his brows knit with perplexity for a few seconds, when with a smile of delight and surprise he said, ‘Yes! yes! It is you, Mr. L——. I am glad you stayed with me. I have been dreaming about you while I've been asleep; and I must have been asleep a great while. How long?’

I told him enough to let him understand how ill he had been,—how long,—and how weak he still was. He did not realize it. His eyes wandered down to his thin hands, white as alabaster, and through which the pale-blue thread-like veins wandered.

‘Oh! Is it I?—so lean? I was not so when I fell sick.’—And large tears rolled down his cheeks.

I implored him to be quiet and rest, and I promised him he should get better every day, and be able to go home in a short time. But he grew impatient the more I tried to soothe and restrain him.

He looked at me beseechingly, and asked, ‘Won't you let me talk a little? I must know something more, or it seems to me I shall go crazy. Please put your ear down to me: I won't speak loud,—I won't get excited.’

I did.—‘Have you got any letters for me?’

‘Yes, but they are at my office. You shall have them to-morrow. They are all well at home.’

‘And Bella?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, God be praised!’—

After a few moments of repose, he again opened his eyes wide.—

‘I have been gone so long from the army! It seemed as though I never could get back when I got home. I got away; and I wandered, and wandered.—Oh, how tired I was Where is McDowell?— Is General Scott dead? They said so. Did they carry off Old Abe? How did he get back? Did the Rebels get into Washington that night? How long have I been sick? What place is this?—Oh, my head! my head!’

I was frightened. He had risen from the deep ocean into the sunlight for a brief hour, and now he seemed to be going down to come up no more. The tender chord of memory had given way. In a little while the surgeon came by, and I told him what had happened.

‘I was afraid of that. But I think we can manage it. If he wakes [436] again within two hours, give him this powder on his tongue, and a sip of the liquid. If he does not, wake him gently.’

And so that anxious night wore away. In the morning he woke bright and clear; and from that hour he began to get well. But for whole days his life was pulsating in its gossamer tenement, fluttering over the misty barriers of the spirit-world.

Bella's letters, received during his extreme illness, could now be read. They were among the noblest ever written by woman.

‘Our heart-prayers for you have been answered by our Father. We now wait only for your return. When we parted, it was not with repining: you had gone to the altar of your country in solemn and complete dedication. I too was prepared for the sacrifice. I expected it, although I knew how crushingly the blow would fall. But if you had not loved your country better than Bella, it would have broken her heart. I hope now in a few weeks you will be again by my side. When your health is once more restored, I will promise in advance, as you desire, not to try to keep you from rejoining your regiment; and if the stars have written that Walter shall not be my husband, God has decreed that I shall die a widow never married.’

He did return to the Mohawk Valley. He married Bella. He returned to the war; and on the eve of the great day of Antietam he heard that his son was born, and the hero-father died by the side of Hooker.—Sic transit gloria mundi.