is there, black now with age. But where are the tears of the sad women
who stitched the red and the white and the blue together?

The regiments marched through the streets and aboard the boats, and
pushed off before a levee of waving handkerchiefs and nags. Then
heart-breaking suspense. Later--much later, black headlines, and grim
lists three columns long,--three columns of a blanket sheet! "The City of
Alton has arrived with the following Union dead and wounded, and the
following Confederate wounded (prisoners)." Why does the type run
together?

In a never-ceasing procession they steamed up the river; those calm boats
which had been wont to carry the white cargoes of Commerce now bearing
the red cargoes of war. And they bore away to new battlefields thousands
of fresh-faced boys from Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota, gathered
at Camp Benton. Some came back with their color gone and their red cheeks
sallow and bearded and sunken. Others came not back at all.

Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat,
walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided their
faces. He wrung Richter's hand on the landing-stage. Richter was now a
captain. The good German's eyes were filled as he said good-by.

"You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you," he said.
"Now" (and he shrugged his shoulders), "now have we many with no cares to
go. I have not even a father--" And he turned to Judge Whipple, who was
standing by, holding out a bony hand.

"God bless you, Carl," said the Judge And Carl could scarce believe his
ears. He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as