A War-Time Wooing | Page 2

the adjutant would answer. He did, and sent, moreover, a photographic group of several officers taken at regimental headquarters. Each figure was numbered, and on the back was an explanation setting forth the names of the officers, the item which each had received as his share, and, where it was known, the name of the fair manufacturer. The really useful items, it would seem, had been handed to the enlisted men, and the officers had reserved for themselves only such articles as experience had proved to be of no practical value. The six in the picture had all chosen "Havelocks," and opposite the name of Bessie Warren was that of Second Lieutenant Paul Revere Abbot. Reference to the "group" again developed the fact that Mr. Abbot was decidedly the handsomest soldier of the party--tall, slender, youthful, with clear-cut and resolute features and a decidedly firm, solid look about him that was distinguishable in a group of decidedly distinguished-looking men. There followed much laughing talk and speculation and theory among the girls, but the secretary was instructed to write another letter of thanks, and did so very charmingly, and mention was made of the circumstance that several of their number had brothers or cousins at the front. Then some of the society had happened, too, to have a photograph taken in the quaint uniform, with cap and apron, which they had worn at a recently given "Soldiers' Fair," and one of their number--not Miss Warren--sent a copy of this to the camp of the--th Massachusetts. Central figure in this group was Bessie Warren, unquestionably the loveliest girl among them all, and one day there came to her a single photograph, a still handsomer picture of Mr. Paul Revere Abbot, and a letter in a hand somewhat stiff and cramped, in which the writer apologized for the appearance of the scrawl, explained that his hand had been injured while practising fencing with a comrade, but that having seen her picture in the group he could not but congratulate himself on having received a "Havelock" from hands so fair, could not resist the impulse to write and personally thank her, and then to inquire if she was a sister of Guthrie Warren, whom he had known and looked up to at Harvard as a "soph" looks up to a senior; and he enclosed his picture, which would perhaps recall him to Guthrie's mind.
Her mother had been dead many years, and Bessie showed this letter to her father, and with his full consent and with much sisterly pride wrote that Guthrie was indeed her brother; that he, too, had taken up arms for his country and was at the front with his regiment, though nowhere near their friends of the--th Massachusetts (who were watching the fords of the Potomac up near Edward's Ferry), and that she had sent the photograph to him.
One letter seemed to lead to another, and those from the Potomac speedily became very interesting, especially when the papers mentioned how gallantly Lieutenant Paul Abbot had behaved at Ball's Bluff and how hard he had tried to save his colonel, who was taken prisoner. Guthrie returned the photograph to Bess, with a letter which the doctor read attentively. He remembered Paul Abbot as being a leader in the younger set at Harvard, and was delighted to hear of him "under the colors," where every Union-loving man should be--where, as he recalled him, he knew Abbot must be, for he belonged to one of the oldest and best families in all Massachusetts; he was a gentleman born and bred, and would make a name for himself in this war. Guthrie only wished there were some of that stamp in his own regiment, but he feared that there were few who had the stuff of which the Abbots were made--there were too many ward politicians. "But I've cast my lot with it and shall see it through," wrote Guthrie. Poor fellow! poor father! poor loving-hearted Bessie! The first volley from the crouching gray ranks in those dim woods back of Seven Pines sent the ward politicians in mad rush to the rear, and when Guthrie Warren sprang for the colors, and waved them high in air, and shouted for the men to rally and follow him, it was all in vain--all as vain as the effort to stop the firing made by the chivalric Virginia colonel, who leaped forward, with a few daring men at his back, to capture the resolute Yankee and his precious flag. They got them; but the life-blood was welling from the hero's breast as they raised him gently from the silken folds. The Virginians knew a brave man when they saw one, and they carried him tenderly into their lines and wrote his last messages, and that night they