army, at a time when seven hundred applicants, many of them backed by
strong interest, were waiting for the same boon. The suddenness of the
thing was quite stunning; we calculated on a delay of this sore trial;
but it was done, and he was ordered to repair immediately, not to the
depot, but to his regiment, then hotly engaged in the Peninsula. The
bishop's kindness did not end here; he carried his generosity further in
other ways, and likewise gave him introductions of great value. I love
to record it of one whose public conduct as a Protestant prelate I am
compelled to lament, but whose private character was most lovely.

Upheld by the intoxicating power of senseless romance, not by confidence
in God, nor even by the reality of the patriotism that I persuaded
myself was at the root of it all, I bore to see that beloved companion
of my life depart for the scene of most bloody conflict. He was not
nearly full grown; a blooming beautiful boy, reared, and up to that time
tenderly guarded under the parental roof, in almost exclusive
companionship with me. There was indeed but one heart between us, and
neither could fancy what it would be to rejoice or to suffer alone. Of
this I had given a proof in the preceding year. He took the measles and
was exceedingly ill, and great precautions were used to preserve me from
the infection; but, unable to brook a separation from him, I baffled
their vigilance, burst into his apartment, and laying my cheek to his,
resisted for a while all efforts to remove me. To my infinite delight I
sickened immediately, and considered it an ample compensation for all
attendant suffering, that I was allowed to sit constantly in the same
room with him.

How strong, how sweet, how sacred is the tie that binds an only sister
to an only brother, when they have been permitted to grow up together
untrammelled by the heartless forms of fashion; unrivalled by alien