Some were gay, if many were
sorrowful--laughter mingled with the sighs. But to return to the past
is nearly always sad. As I rode through the waste land now, it was with
drooping head. All the old days came back again, the cannon sent their
long dull thunder through the forests; again the gray and blue lines
closed in, and hurled together; again Jackson in his old dingy coat,
Stuart with his floating plume, Pelham, Farley, all whom I had known,
loved, and still mourned, rose before me--a line of august phantoms
fading away into the night of the past.
Once more I looked upon Pelham, holding in his arms the bleeding form
of Jean--passing "Camp-no-camp," only a desolate and dreary field now,
all the laughing faces and brave forms of Stuart and his men
returned--in the Wilderness I saw Jackson fight and fall; saw him borne
through the moonlight; heard his sighs and his last greeting with
Stuart. A step farther, I passed the lonely old house in the
Wilderness, and all the strange and sombre scenes there surged up from
the shadows of the past. Mordaunt, Achmed, Fenwick, Violet
Grafton!--all reappeared, playing over again their fierce tragedy; and
to this was added the fiercer drama of May, 1864, when General Grant
invented the "Unseen Death."
Thus the journey which I made through the bare and deserted fields, or
the mournful thickets, was not gay; and these were only a part of the
panorama which passed before me.
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