strengthen them to heroic will.  Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the fleeting aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent gaze on its eternal side.  Be not resigned, but rejoicing.  Be spontaneous and exultant.  Be large and lofty.  Count it all joy that you are reckoned worthy to suffer in a grand and righteous cause.  Give thanks evermore that you were born in this time; and because it is dark, be you the light of the world.

And follow the soldier to the battlefield with your spirit.  The great army of letters that marches Southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war.  Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe.  Write as tenderly as you will.  In camp, the roughest man idealizes his far-off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover.  But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows the end from the beginning, and whom no foreboding can dishearten.  Glory in your tribulation.  Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his undying fortitude, are your crown of rejoicing.  Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration.  Make a mock of your discomforts.  Be unwearying in details of the little interests of home.  Fill your letters with kittens and Canaries, with baby’s shoes, and Johnny’s sled, and the old cloak which you have turned into a handsome gown.  Keep him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures, the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing-schools.  Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief.  Tell every sweet and brave and pleasant and funny story you can think of.  Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare.  Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours.  Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch.  Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept the nation’s pain for penance, and commission every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum laudamus.

Under God, the only question, as to whether this war shall be conducted to a shameful or an honorable close, is not of men or money or material resource.  In these our superiority is unquestioned.  As Wellington phrased it, there is hard pounding; but we shall pound the longest, if only our hearts do not fail us.  Women need not beat their pewter spoons into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets without them.  It is not whether our soldiers shall fight a good fight; they have played the man on a hundred battle-fields.  It is not whether officers are or are not competent; generals have blundered nations into victory since