Days and
nights on the Rowanty! how you come back to me in dreams! Happy hours
at Disaways, with the cavalry, with the horse artillery! you live still
in my memory, and you will live there always! Katy Dare runs to greet
me again as in the past--again her blue eyes dance, and the happy winds
are blowing her bright curls into ripples! She smiles upon me still--as
in that "winter of discontent." Her cheerful voice again sounds. Her
small hands are held out to me. All things go--nothing lingers--but
those days on the Rowanty, amid the sunset gilded pines, come back with
all their tints, and are fadeless in my memory.
Going back thus in thought, to that winter of 1864, I recall the
friendly faces of Katy, and all my old comrades--I hear their laughter
again, touch their brave hands once more, and salute them, wishing them
long life and happiness.
"Farewell!" I murmur, "Rowanty, and Sappony, and Disaways! _Bonne
fortune!_ old companions, little maiden, and kind friends all! It has
not been time lost to gather together my recollections--to live again
in the past,--to catch the aroma of those hours when kindness smoothed
the front of war! We no longer wear the gray--my mustache only shows it
_now_! but, thank heaven! many things in memory survive. I think of
these--of the old comrades, the old times.
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