Give me three kisses only—­
Then let the storm break o’er
The vessel beached and lonely
Upon the lonely shore.

If Aladdin’s singing ever moved anybody particularly, it was Aladdin, and that was why it moved other people.  He sang on with tears in his voice

Give me three breaths of pleasure
After three deaths of pain,
And I will no more treasure
The hopes that are in vain.

There was silence for a moment, more engaging than applause, and then applause.  Aladdin was in his element, and he wondered what he would best sing next if they should ask him to sing again, and this they immediately did.  The train was jolting along between Baltimore and Philadelphia.  There was much beer in the bellies of the sick and wounded, and much sentiment in their hearts.  Aladdin’s finger was always on the pulse of his audience, and he began with relish: 

     Oh, shut and dark her window is
      In the dark house on the hill,
     But I have come up through the lilac walk
      To the lilt of the whippoorwill,
     With the old years tugging at my hands
      And my heart which is her heart still.

There was another man in the car whose whole life centered about a house on a hill with a lilac walk leading up to it.  He was the very sick man, and a shadow of red color came into his cheeks.

     They said, “You must come to the house once more,
      Ere the tale of your years be done,
     You must stand and look up at her window again,
      Ere the sands of your life are run,
     As the night-time follows the lost daytime,
      And the heart goes down with the sun.”

There were tears in the very sick man’s eyes, for the future was hidden from him.  Aladdin sang on: 

     Though her window be darkest of every one,
      In the dark house on the hill,
     Yet I turn to it here from this ruin of grass,
      She has leaned on that window’s sill,
     And dark it is, but there is, there is
      An echo of light there still!

There was great applause from the drunk and sentimental.  And Aladdin lowered his eyes until it was over.  When he raised them it was to encounter those of the very sick man.  Aladdin sprang to his feet with a cry and went limping down the aisle.

“Peter,” he cried, “by all that’s holy!”

All the tenderness of the Celt gushed into Aladdin’s heart as he realized the pitiful condition and shocking emaciation of his friend.  He put his arm gently about him, and thus they sat until the journey’s end.  In New York they separated.

Aladdin rested that night and boarded an early morning train for Boston.  He settled himself contentedly behind a newspaper, and fell to gathering news of the army.  But it was difficult to read.  A sentence beginning like this:  “Rumors of a savage engagement between the light horse under” would shape itself like this:  “I am going to see Margaret to-morrow—­to-morrow—­to-morrow—­I am going to see Margaret to-morrow-tomorrow—­and God is good—­is good—­is good.”