tremendous pressure. His friendly order to the Virginia Legislature to return to Richmond, Stanton forced him to cancel. A master hand has organised a conspiracy in Congress to crush the President. They curse his policy of mercy as imbecility, and swear to make the South a second Poland. Their watchwords are vengeance and confiscation. Four-fifths of his party in Congress are in this plot. The President has less than a dozen real friends in either House on whom he can depend. They say that Stanton is to be given a free hand, and that the gallows will be busy. This cancelled order of the President looks like it."
"I'll try my hand with Mr. Stanton," she said with slow emphasis.
"Good luck, Little Sister—let me know if I can help," the surgeon answered cheerily as he passed on his round of work.
Elsie Stoneman took her seat beside the cot of the wounded Confederate and began softly to sing and play.
A little farther along the same row a soldier was dying, a faint choking just audible in his throat. An attendant sat beside him and would not leave till the last. The ordinary chat and hum of the ward went on indifferent to peace, victory, life, or death. Before the finality of the hospital, all other events of earth fade. Some were playing cards or checkers, some laughing and joking, and others reading.
At the first soft note from the singer, the games ceased, and the reader put down his book.
The banjo had come to Washington with the negroes
