“The Steamboat Captain and the Soldier.”  During the late war there was a steamboat, one day, in front of a flourishing town on the Ohio River.  The captain, who had charge of her was the owner of the boat.  The steam was up; and the captain was about to start on a trip some miles down the river with an excursion party, who had chartered the boat for the occasion.  While waiting for the party to come on board, a poor wounded soldier came up to the captain.  He said he was suffering from severe sickness, as well as from his wounds.  He had been in the hospital.  The doctor had told him he could not live long; and he was very anxious to get home, and see his mother again, before he died; and he wished to know if the captain would give him a passage down the river on his boat.  On hearing where his home was, the captain said that the party who had chartered his boat were going near that place; and he told the poor soldier that he would gladly take him to his home.

But, when the excursion party came on board, and saw the soldier, with his soiled and worn clothes, and his ugly-looking wounds, they were not willing to let him go; and asked the captain to put him ashore.  The captain told the soldier’s sad story, and pleaded his cause very earnestly.  He said he would place him on the lower deck and put a screen round his bed, so that they could not see him.  But the young people refused.  They said as they had hired the boat, it belonged to them for the day, and they were not willing to have such a miserable-looking object on board their boat; and that if the captain did not put him off, they would hire another boat, and he would lose the twenty dollars they had agreed to give him for the day’s excursion.

The good captain made one more appeal to them.  He asked them to put themselves in the poor soldier’s place, and then to think how they would like to be treated.  But still they refused to let the soldier go.  Then the noble-hearted captain said:  “Well, ladies and gentlemen, whether you hire my boat or not, I intend to take this soldier home to-day.”

The party did hire another boat.  The captain lost his twenty dollars.  But, when he returned the poor dying soldier to the arms of his loving mother, he felt that the tears of gratitude with which she thanked him were worth more than the money he had lost.  The gentle mother dressed the wounds of her poor suffering boy; and nursed and cared for him, as none but a mother knows how to do.  But she could not save his life.  He died after a few days; and the last words he spoke, as his loving parents stood weeping at his bedside were—­“Don’t forget the good captain.”  And he was not forgotten.  For after the soldier’s funeral was over, his father went up the river to the town where the captain lived.  He found him out.  He thanked him again for his kindness in bringing home his dying boy; and made him a present that was worth four or five times the twenty dollars he had lost for the hire of his boat.