The Atlantic Monthly, page 9 by Various Authors
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re. She forgets about Dalton and poverty. She thinks about camps and honor. She has something to claim of all the world. She is the citizen of a great nation. She bears the name of one who is fighting for the Union, who has fought, and fought so well that those in authority have beckoned him up higher. Why, it is as though a crown were placed on her dear father's head.
II.
Going out of quiet and beautiful green Dalton, and into the hospital of Frere's Landing, 't is a wonderful change we make.
The silence of one place is as remarkable as the silence of the other, perhaps. That of the hospital does not resemble that of the hamlet, however. At times it grows oppressive and appalling, being the silence of anguish or of death. A stranger reaching Dalton in the night might wonder in the morning if there were in reality any passage out of it, for there the lake, on one of whose western slopes is the "neighborhood," seems locked in completely by the hills, and an ascent towards heaven is apparently the only way of egress. Yet there's another way; for I am not writing this true story among celestial altitudes for you. I returned from Dalton by a mundane road.
Out of Frere's Hospital, however, its silence and seclusion, many a stranger never found his way except by the high mountains of transfiguration, in the chariots of fire, driven by the horsemen of Heaven, covered with whose glory they departed.
Through the wards of this well-ordered hospital a lady passed one night, and, entering a small apartment separated from the others, advanced with noiseless step to a bedside, and there sat down. You may guess if her heart was beating fast, and whether it was with difficulty that she kept her gray eyes clear of tears. There were about her traces of long and hurried journeying.
Under no limitations of caution had she passed so noiselessly through the wards. Involuntary was that noiselessness,--involuntary also the surprise with which one and another of the more w