Yet, if our life be immortal, this temporary distinction is of little moment, and we may learn humility, without learning despair, from earth’s evanescent glories.  Who cannot bear a few disappointments, if the vista be so wide that the mute inglorious Miltons of this sphere may in some other sing their Paradise as Found?  War or peace, fame or forgetfulness, can bring no real injury to one who has formed the fixed purpose to live nobly day by day.  I fancy that in some other realm of existence we may look back with some kind interest on this scene of our earlier life, and say to one another,—­“Do you remember yonder planet, where once we went to school?” And whether our elective study here lay chiefly in the fields of action or of thought will matter little to us then, when other schools shall have led us through other disciplines.

* * * * *

JOHN LAMAR.

The guard-house was, in fact, nothing but a shed in the middle of a stubble-field.  It had been built for a cider-press last summer; but since Captain Dorr had gone into the army, his regiment had camped over half his plantation, and the shed was boarded up, with heavy wickets at either end, to hold whatever prisoners might fall into their hands from Floyd’s forces.  It was a strong point for the Federal troops, his farm,—­a sort of wedge in the Rebel Cheat counties of Western Virginia.  Only one prisoner was in the guard-house now.  The sentry, a raw boat-hand from Illinois, gaped incessantly at him through the bars, not sure if the “Secesh” were limbed and headed like other men; but the November fog was so thick that he could discern nothing but a short, squat man, in brown clothes and white hat, heavily striding to and fro.  A negro was crouching outside, his knees cuddled in his arms to keep warm:  a field-hand, you could be sure from the face, a grisly patch of flabby black, with a dull eluding word of something, you could not tell what, in the points of eyes,—­treachery or gloom.  The prisoner stopped, cursing him about something:  the only answer was a lazy rub of the heels.

“Got any ‘baccy, Mars’ John?” he whined, in the middle of the hottest oath.

The man stopped abruptly, turning his pockets inside out.

“That’s all, Ben,” he said, kindly enough.  “Now begone, you black devil!”

“Dem’s um, Mars’!  Goin’ ’mediate,”—­catching the tobacco, and lolling down full length as his master turned off again.

Dave Hall, the sentry, stared reflectively, and sat down.

“Ben?  Who air you next?”—­nursing his musket across his knees, baby-fashion.

Ben measured him with one eye, polished the quid in his greasy hand, and looked at it.

“Pris’ner o’ war,” he mumbled, finally,—­contemptuously; for Dave’s trousers were in rags like his own, and his chilblained toes stuck through the shoe-tops.  Cheap white trash, clearly.