Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/228

878 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS query succeeding query with characteristic impetuosity. Suddenly the martial fire faded ashily, his eyes dulled into mournfulness. "I don't know. I can't tell " as if groping for thought or words, "TeU General Stuart to do what he thinks best." The " resolve " he and others had thought invincible, the iron nerve that had not quivered in the shock of fifty engagements, failed him. Yet he rallied as the cannonading jarred his bed and insisted upon receiving reports from hour to hour. " Good ! good ! " he ejaculated, when told how his own brigade was behaving. " The men will some day be proud to say to their children, ' I was one of the Stonewall brigade.' The name belongs to them, not to me. It was their stead- fast heroism at First Manassas that earned it. They are a noble body of men." His wife and child were recalled in season to be with him for two days im- mediately preceding his death. Although confident up to the dawn of his last day on earth, that God still had work for him to do, and would raise him up to do it, he received the news of his approaching dissolution with perfect calmness. " He preferred the will of God to his own ; " he " would be infinitely the gainer by the translation from earth to heaven." He gave his wife instructions as to his burial and her future home ; smiled radiantly, in murmuring " Little dar- ling! sweet one !" as the baby he had named for his mother was lifted for the father's last kiss. "Jackson must recover," General Lee had exclaimed upon hearing of his con- dition. " God will not take him from us now that we need him so much. Say to him that he has lost his left arm, / my right ! " Men who had not blenched when brought face to face with death that men- aced themselves, bowed to the earth, weeping like women, as mortal weakness stole upon the strong right arm of the Confederacy. Without the tent "the whole army was praying for him," while incoherent sentences of command and inarticulate murmurings fell from his lips fainter with each utterance. The watchers thought speech and consciousness gone forever, when the voice that had pealed like the blast of Roland in charge and rally, sounded through the hushed chamber, sweet, distinct, and full of cheer, but in dreamy inflections : " Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees ! " Forced march, and midnight raid, and mad rush of battle were over. Victori- ous Greatheart slept upon the field.