children, would nerve the soldier's wife to bear with fortitude the
misery to which she had been reduced.

And thus she toiled on, until the last source of support had vanished.
The Quartermaster from whom she received work, having completed all
the clothing he required, had no further use for her services, and she
then saw nothing but a blank and dreary prospect, looming up before
her. She had no means of purchasing food for her children. Piece by
piece her furniture was sold to supply their wants, until nothing was
left in the room but a solitary bedstead. Starvation in its worst form
stared her in the face, until at last she sold what clothing she had
brought out from New Orleans. This relieved her necessities but a
short time, and then her last resource was gone.

If her present was dark, the future seemed but one black cloud of
despair. Hope, that _ignis fatuus_, which deceives so many on earth,
left the soldier's wife, and she was indeed wretched. The blooming
woman had become a haggard and care-worn mother. She had no thought
for herself. It was for her children alone she felt solicitous, and
when the day arrived that saw her without the means of purchasing
bread, her long filling cup of misery overflowed, and she wept.

Yes, she wept. Wept as if her whole life had been changed in a moment,
from one of joy and happiness, to that of sadness and misery.

Her children in that dark hour clustered around her. _They_ could not
cry. A fast of over twenty-four hours had dried all tears within them.
They only wondered for awhile, until the sharp pangs of hunger
reminded them of another and greater woe. They too had been changed.
The bloom of youth had departed from their little cheeks, while in the