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life are worth less than those of my brothers, and if they give theirs to the cause, why should not I do the same? I would starve to death cheerfully if I could feed one soldier more by doing so, but the things I eat can't be sent to camp. I think it a sin to eat anything that can be used for rations." And she meant what she said, too, as a little mound in the church-yard testifies.

Every Confederate remembers gratefully the reception given him when he went into any house where these women were. Whoever he might be, and whatever his plight, if he wore the gray he was received, not as a beggar or tramp, not even as a stranger, but as a son of the house, for whom it held nothing too good, and whose comfort was the one care of all its inmates, even though their own must be sacrificed in securing it. When the hospitals were crowded, the people earnestly besought permission to take the men to their houses and to care for them there, and for many months almost every house within a hundred miles of Richmond held one or more wounded men as especially honored guests.

"God bless these Virginia women!" said a general officer from one of the cotton States, one day, "they 're worth a regiment apiece;" and he spoke the thought of the army, except that their blessing covered the whole country as well as Virginia.

The ingenuity with which these good ladies discovered or manufactured onerous duties for themselves was surprising, and having discovered or imagined some new duty they straightway proceeded to do it at any cost. An excellent Richmond dame was talking with a soldier friend, when he carelessly remarked that there was nothing which so greatly helped to keep up a contented and cheerful spirit among the men as the receipt of letters from their woman friends. Catching at the suggestion as a revelation of duty, she asked, "And cheerfulness makes better soldiers of the men, does it not?" Receiving yes for an answer, the frail little woman, already overburdened with cares of an

unusual sort, sat down and made out a list of all the men with whom she was acquainted even in the smallest possible way, and from that day until the end of the war she wrote one letter a week to each, a task which, as her acquaintance was large, taxed her time and strength very severely. Not content with this, she wrote on the subject in the newspapers, earnestly urging a like course upon her sisters, many of whom adopted the suggestion at once, much to the delight of the soldiers, who little dreamed that the kindly, cheerful, friendly letters which every mail brought into camp, were a part of woman's self-appointed work for the success of the common cause. From the beginning to the end of the war it was the same. No cry of pain escaped woman's lips at the parting which sent the men into camp; no word of despondency was spoken when hope seemed most surely dead; no complaint from the women ever reminded their soldier husbands and sons and brothers that there was hardship and privation and terror at home. They bore all with brave hearts and cheerful faces, and even when they mourned the death of their most tenderly loved ones, they comforted themselves with the thought that they buried only heroic dust.

"It is the death I would have chosen for him," wrote the widow of a friend whose loss I had announced to her. "I loved him for his manliness, and now that he has shown that manliness by dying as a hero dies, I mourn but am not heart-broken. I know that a brave man awaits me whither I am going.”

They carried their efforts to cheer and help the troops into every act of their lives. When they could, they

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"Ah! soldiers, to your honored rest,

Your truth and valor bearing, The bravest are the tenderest,

The loving are the daring!"

Indeed, the coolness of women under fire was always a matter of surprise to me. A young girl, not more than sixteen years of age, acted as guide to a scouting party during the early years of the war, and when we urged her to go back after the enemy had opened a vigorous fire upon us, she declined, on the plea that she believed we were "going to charge those fellows," and she wanted to see the fun." At Petersburg women did their shopping and went about their duties under a most uncomfortable bombardment, without evincing the slightest fear or showing any nervousness whatever.

But if the cheerfulness of the women during the war was remarkable, what shall we say of the way in which they met its final failure and the poverty that came with it? The end of the war completed the ruin which its progress had wrought. Women who had always lived in luxury, and whose labors and sufferings during the war were lightened by the consciousness that in suffering and laboring they were doing their part toward the accomplishment of the end upon which all hearts were set, were now compelled to face not temporary but permanent poverty, and to endure, without a motive or a sustaining purpose, still sorer privations than any they had known in the past. The country was exhausted, and nobody could foresee any future but one of abject wretchedness. It was seed-time,

out the suddenly freed negroes had not yet learned that freedom meant aught else than idleness, and the spring was gone before anything like a reorganization of the labor system could be effected. The men might emigrate when they should get home, but the case of the women was a very sorry one indeed. They kept their spirits up through it all, however, and improvised a new social system in which absolute poverty, cheerfully borne, was the badge of respectability. Everybody was poor except the speculators who had fattened upon the necessities of the women and children, and so poverty was essential to anything like good repute. The return of the soldiers made some sort of social festivity necessary, and "starvation parties" were given, at which it was understood that the givers were wholly unable to set out refreshments of any kind. In the matter of dress, too, the general poverty was recognized, and every one went clad in whatever he or she happened to have. The want of means became a jest, and nobody mourned over it; while all were laboring to repair their wasted fortunes as they best could. And all this was due solely to the unconquerable cheerfulness of the Southern women. The men came home moody, worn out, discouraged, and but for the influence of woman's cheerfulness, the Southern States migh', have fallen into a lethargy from which they could not have recovered for gen

erations.

Such prosperity as they have since achieved is largely due to the courage and spirit of their noble women.

George Cary Eggleston.

THE MOTH.

POOR Moth, that, fluttering through my candle's flame, Die of your sudden passion for the light,

From the great gulf of outer dark you came,

Then flash into utter night!

J. J. Piatt.

OVER THE FOOT-LIGHTS.

THE morning after my début I was in no haste to rise from the pillow on which I had passed a dreamless and refreshing night. I felt much as one feels who, having embarked upon a voyage full of novelty and adventure, suffers himself to be borne onward by the prevailing wind, and shifts all further responsibility upon the captain.

I was no longer my own master; if it pleased the manager to summon me to rehearsal at the midnight hour, it was my duty to answer the call, provided my bodily health was equal to the task. He could cast me for any part he pleased, though I had shipped as juvenile, and by rights was subject to nothing outside of the young lover and dutiful son business.

If I declined to enact any rôle set down to the juvenile, I was liable to a peremptory and unqualified discharge from the company; it was, however, my privilege to speak my mind freely in case I found myself doomed to assume a character that seemed eminently unsuited to my peculiar talents. All this I turned over in my mind while I congratulated myself that the bill for the evening was a repetition of the last night's performance, and that it was to be succeeded by a change of programme which relieved me for a night or two from any duties whatever, save that of holding myself in readiness to answer a call in case of the sudden indisposition of any member of the company whose services were in requisition.

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slightest provocation and threaten to ruin all. I believe the litany of the profession contains this supplementary petition: "From sudden calls, good Lord, deliver us!"

It is excessively monotonous work trying to lie abed when there is no further prospect of napping. I had no rehearsal that morning, but I was getting hungry, and it occurred to me that I had not seen the morning papers. I arose, dressed, and was about quitting the room when I was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Enter the comedian from the rival theatre, whom until that hour I had known only by reputation; on the previous night he had played the first gravedigger in Hamlet, and had found time to slip over to our house and see how I was beginning my career. As a member of the profession and one having its interests at heart, he wished to congratulate me upon my success in standing still when I had nothing else to do, and in making my voice heard even to the limits of the building; two points decidedly in my favor. He proffered his sympathy and his wardrobe, and hoped we should be friends, which, by the way, we have not failed to be ever since.

This pleasant episode, though trifling, was an excellent appetizer, and I sat at breakfast that morning with uncommon composure, ordering the delicacies and the dailies of the season to the evident admiration of the youthful waiter, whose patronizing servility made me suspect that he had been one of our audience on the eventful night.

The papers were, as usual, curt, critical, and uncompromising; it was announced that "with the exception of the usual nervousness betrayed by novices, Mr. Blank did fairly, and with patience, etc., etc., . . . in the arduous, etc., etc. it was not unlikely that his future would be, etc." The

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same was probably left standing, ready for insertion on the occasion of the very next début.

It is hard to speak fairly of a novice; it is hard for the novice to know just what position he occupies in the profession; after the experiences of a few weeks he ceases to be promising, and is judged according to the actual work he does.

I was still in the chrysalis state and required careful handling; all who approached me confessed it in their manner; and though the encouragement of my friends, like sunshine, was calculated to burst my shell and dry my wings for me, I was conscious of a large proportion of suspended judgment that only waited the first feeble flutter of those wings to burst upon me like a northern blast.

Since there was no rehearsal-delicious thought, how it recurred to me again and again!-since I was free, I walked; what else can one do in a strange town where he has few or no acquaintances? At the first corner I ran against the leading man from the opposition house, an old friend and a fellow of infinite talents and versatility, and together we wended our way into the suburbs.

The morning air was glorious; the willows along the bank of the sluggish river were budding and leafing, birds flitted before us with fluttering confidence, children worked their way to school by slow and easy stages, and we strolling players footed it in the best of spirits, given up to the sensuous enjoyment of liberty and nature.

Small wayside hospices were scattered over the country, for there was much travel along the river, and poor Yorick, my comrade, having earned for himself the unenviable reputation of godfather to all liquor dispensaries, was usually greeted familiarly by the portly Teutons, who seemed to be sitting in the sun for a living, they made such a business of it.

In our morning wanderings I discovered that it is not uncommon for actors to receive smiles of recognition from

people who are utter strangers to them; men who have grown friendly with their faces over the foot-lights, and who, almost unconsciously, begin to claim acquaintance with them. This is sometimes pleasant, but it is oftener a bore, as a one-sided friendship is apt to be.

Yorick had played numerous and lengthy engagements in S, and being a comedian of the genial and persuasive order, it was rather difficult to avoid smiling as one passed him, in memory of the many hearty laughs enjoyed at his hands.

"Who was that?" asked I, when we had parted with a garrulous youth whose familiarity was by no means a matter of doubt. Yorick had n't the slightest idea who or what he was; could n't remember having seen him before; was always meeting such fellows and despaired of classifying more than one in a dozen.

I suppose we might have walked till doomsday on that narrow, grassy path by the river-side, and repeated the experiences of the first half-hour with little or no variation; but it was becoming tiresome to watch the human buttresses on the sunny sides of the tap-houses, while Yorick was invariably recognized by word or look; and we returned home after a couple of hours passed in that retreat from the town and its professional associations, with the hope of a quiet moment constantly destroyed by some unfeeling spectator who advertised my friend gratuitously, not to say indelicately.

It seemed that anything like real privacy was almost impossible in the life of an actor; his face or his manner betrayed him wherever he went; he was forced to play his part in the street as well as on the stage, and was never thoroughly au naturel save alone in his own room, or in the society of some intimate friend who had bridged over the chasm that yawns between public and private life.

I learned this lesson almost immediately and in the following manner: after my first breakfast in the profession, I like to draw a sharp line in my brief

experience and make the most of it, after breakfast I was on my way to nowhere in particular, and consequently was not progressing very rapidly, when I discovered a show-window whose at tractions were irresistible. I paused to contemplate. A couple of youngsters drew near, and one of them, recognizing me as the débutant of the previous night, nudged his companion and whispered audibly, "That feller made his first appearance last night, and he done bully!" The whole tableau was reflected in the large plate-glass of the window, and as I stood with my back to the youthful critic I was enabled to conceal my blushes, while the two regarded with some interest the breadth of my shoulders and the cut of my back hair.

I observed that the postman was more polite than formerly, so soon as I had grown somewhat familiar to the public of S; likewise that I never lacked companionship very long at a time; for if I were alone I had only to pause at a street corner or to lounge among the docks, and sooner or later some one or other would sidle up to me and begin a mild order of conversation that was not entirely disagreeable, though nothing very good can be said of it.

Had I felt at ease in my mind, all would have been well. I received much encouragement; my deficiencies in the shape of wardrobe and properties were cheerfully supplied by the various members of our company; there were some who envied me, however uncharitable it may seem, I could not envy them. My acquaintance was sought in several quarters, and I was the recipient of much attention. Probably something was the matter with me, for I remember that one evening I appeared in Hessiantops, the property of the leading-lady, who frequently assumed male attire; silk tights belonging to the soubrette, now a blonde star in the East with her own burlesque company; a hat and ostrich feather by kind permission of the heavy villain, as well as various other articles contributed from sundry sources - and yet I was not happy!

It was hard study that discouraged me; I had ever a cue in my throat, and tasted it at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even at the late supper after the play, which is almost one of the necessities of professional life.

It seemed to me that lengths never could be learned, and the worst feature of the case was that I never knew when I had mastered them. I carried about in my mind fragments of dialogue of no earthly interest to me, tail ends of speeches with my responses fitted in between them; I had little or no knowledge of the scene itself any further than was evidenced by my personal connection with it. Few who have not attempted to commit to memory page after page of dialogue can realize the tediousness of such a task. Our manuscript plays were dealt out to us in slices, and not one of us had any thorough knowledge of the plot, for we knew only such fragments of it as we had participated in; and had the play run to this hour the chances are we should have been none the wiser.

It is easy enough for histrionic aspirants to envy the actor whose lines are learned in a few hours, and whose part has only to be repeated night after night for an indefinite period. The whole day is at his disposal, and there are few admirers of the drama who would not take pleasure in entertaining him. But there comes a time when the business is bad, the houses poor, the treasury low; the bill must be changed frequently in order to retain the few regular play-goers, and perhaps attract others; a new part every day for a week or two, with a long rehearsal in the forenoon, and a slow, painful, and unsatisfactory representation at night, — all this is by no means a pleasant preparation for the study of a fresh part after midnight.

Happy the man whose negative mind seizes at once upon the body of the matter, retains it long enough to answer his purpose, and then lets it fade from his memory!

One's best study is usually done just before sleeping; I therefore found it ad

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