of the male sex, and in the freshness or the prime of their strength.
Though they tramped so wearily along, yet there was rest and kind nursing
in store for them. These wounds they bore would be the medals they would
show their children and grandchildren by and by. Who would not rather
wear his decorations beneath his uniform than on it?

Yet among them were figures which arrested our attention and sympathy.
Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or pale
with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary limbs
along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of strength. At
the roadside sat or lay others, quite spent with their journey. Here and
there was a house at which the wayfarers would stop, in the hope, I fear
often vain, of getting refreshment; and in one place was a clear, cool
spring, where the little bands of the long procession halted for a few
moments, as the trains that traverse the desert rest by its fountains.
My companions had brought a few peaches along with them, which the
Philanthropist bestowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers with a
satisfaction which we all shared. I had with me a small flask of strong
waters, to be used as a medicine in case of inward grief. From this,
also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to a poor fellow who
looked as if he needed it. I rather admired the simplicity with which he
applied my limited means of solace to the first-comer who wanted it more
than I; a genuine benevolent impulse does not stand on ceremony, and had
I perished of colic for want of a stimulus that night, I should not have
reproached my friend the Philanthropist, any more than I grudged my other
ardent friend the two dollars and more which it cost me to send the
charitable message he left in my hands.

It was a lovely country through which we were riding. The hillsides
rolled away into the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the sun, as