At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 193: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

189 | AT A GIRLS MERCY. strong man’s body and heart. “I’m Just sure you mean my brother, and, of course, it will be good for me to hear of him from.some one who has been with him in the fight. I haven’t heard from him in, oh, such a long, weary time, that it will seem” grand news even to gather the little you may know. I am so proud of my brothers, Corporal Brown, as well as my brothers who are mine only by their brave fight for my country.”’ How softly she could utter these tender words that made so much easier the pain the men were bearing. Let one set their faces and steel their hearts against the sin of flattery as they will, there is still the touch of an angel’s voice in the lips that utter tender words of cheer and comfort as Nan was doing. It was sincere flattery, and it came from her heart. Who could withstand such? Not the strong man lying before her, made weak through the struggle he had made for her and her country, called as she had just said, her brother for his bra- very. The strong face, seamed and scarred by the hard struggle with hunger and suffering, lighted and deepened with a glow of the first pride he had shown since he entered the camp, as he said, gently as she could have said it: ‘Your words make the suffering lght, nurse. You would do to bea general, for not a man could refuse to charge the toughest battery with every odds against him, with you at his head and your words in his heart. Ill tell you, indeed, all that I know of this young fellow, though it isn’t much. For your sake as well as my own I wish it were more. But we were together not for many hours, any- way, and then the toughest battle was on the eve of of breaking upon us, and those things make a fellow sort of hungry for cheerful words, and the laughter that can lighten the heaviest heart, no matter how tough a battle may be upon one on the morrow. We were at Fortress Monroe, and the Confederate gun- boat was not far from us up the river, and the gen- eral had given us our words of cheer in camp that morning, when a boat load of those poor fugitives, that seem to have no fear even of the blood- comicbooks.com — of 7% cpm ae & Si te eS