The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-07-13
ITO

with q haH-deflant expression, which could not
fail to tell the fearful warfare of the soul Within
Philip Reide gifted with wonderful talent,
and noble, but erratic nature, full of impulse
and waywardness, such as the world calls genius.
Orphaned in infancy, and the inheritor of vast
wealth. his life had been one of self-will and the
indulgence of every .whm and caprice that
impressive nature could dictate. A childhood
thus sown with the seeds of evil and selfgratifi-
cation, could not fail to reach sad fruitiOn in
his manhood Yet through all this, his innate
nobility of SOUL like pure gold, shone through
the dross of habit and the results of such fearful
training in youth. He had early perfected him
self by foreign study and close application in his
profession artist, and in city remote from
that in which our story opens, he had won a
name honored by those of older and wider repu-
utaton. This course was the more laudable, from
the fact that it was the qualification of his own
elevated aims and inclinations rather than the
necessity of labor, which lent the zeal that had
marked his whole career. Gifted with those
brilliant powers of fascination which render
their possessor desirable companion to the
devotees of pleasure, he had fallen by slow and
almost imperceptible degrees, from his high
position, to the terrible destiny of the drunkard.
To those who have watched the fearful progress
of these gifted ones through their temptation,
who have seen the struggles of the wretched,
yet yielding soul have listened to their solemn
pledges in their hours of shame, sorrow and re-
morse their is no need to tell the slow misery of
years that found Philip Reide where we have
presented him to the readers eye. When the
fearful revelation of his bondage broke upon his
naughty soul, when he knew it was the smile of
q fiend that glowed in the red wine, and could
not choose but worship, then began that terrible
warfare through which he struggled miserably,
hopelessly, through many dreadful years. Lost
to his friends, penniless, despairing, without one
kindly voice to strengthen him in better mo-
ments, meeting the cold, dersive stare of pitt
less world, he was a careless, reckless wanderer.
Yet through all his misery and shame, the true
refinement of his nature withheld him from
those lower vices which are frequently the vile
concomitants of the drunkards course. His was
not the constant intoxication of the beastly de-
bauchee day succeeding day in senseless inc
briefly but in an evil hour the dreadful craving
would come upon him. to be followed by weeks
and months of terrible remorse 1t was thus
when he had wrestled for life with the fiend
within, when the burning, maddening thirst was
haunting his every STEP THAT following his still
earnest love for the beautiful, he had hoped to
lose his wretched consciousness in the glorious
visions of the ideal.
Standing thus before the Returning PrOdi-
GAL" all the misery of his fallen soul came crowd
ING before his mental eye like the imagery of
some fearful dream. "Forsaken and degraded,
alone and tempted was the cry ofanguish
and desolation that went up from the inner life
of Philip Reide Was it strange then, that the
words of Edith Graham held breath and pulses
still or that her face shownlike that of an angel?
Little dreamed the noble girl, as her rich yet
simple robes swept by him, that the thin bag