The weekly Shasta courier., 1873-08-16
Gen. Canby's Wife.

More than thirty years ago, in the
little town of Charlottesville, Ind, there
was merry, old-fashioned wedding,
and Capt. Z. r. S. Candy and Louise
Hawkins where married. Both were
young, the bride was beautiful, gifted
with a reed-like grace of movement,
and rich and exquisite voice that still
haunts my ear with the echo of its re-
membered music. The old people shook
their heads that night and said she was
too tender for soldiers wife i; it would
not do for her to brave the hardships
and dangers of the new countries. His
calm, earnest way of loving had won
her whole soul, and throughout the
shifting changes of all this tract of years
she has gone with him, and where he
was there has been her home-her very
home. Along the lonely frontier at
desolate outposts, in Florida, in New
Mexico, in California, even on the
rough edge of the battle, that gentle,
delicate woman, has lowered near her
husband, and the banner over her head
was love.
In the fruitless march to Utah, under
Buchanan's administration, her tent
was pitched among the mountains where
the troops wintered. And l recollect
letter written to kindred at home, de-
scribing their camp, and how gladly she
ate the wild garlic, as a preventive to
scurvy, when it started under the melt
ing SHOWS of late coming spring.
What the husband gained in moral
height by the championship of the
Christian wife, how much he owed to
her, and we through him, has not been
recognized. His inherited tendency to
gloom was charmed away in that serene
and gracious presence. There was
healing in the wings of the guardian
spirit, and through her ceaseless vigil
lance, whatever could harrass and annoy
was smoothed from before him as by
the unseen agency offairy hands. Part
ly to this unfailing care is due that even
poise of brain which kept his judgment
so finely balanced that, as has been
said of Washington in action, ''He never
failed to observe all that was possible,
and at the same time to bound his as
pirations by that which was possible. -
Nothing could exceed the knightly
tenderness, the courtly Difference, of his
manner to her. He early learned-as
sooner or later we all must learn-that
little love is much better than fame,
and those who knew him merely as the
silent, inhexible officer, could not guess
how the loneliness of her life was blend
ed with his, and filled it with an under
song of wonderful sweetness.
1t is pleasant in this age of individu-
atty and self-assertion, to find woman
like her of whom ] write, who has ever
considered the question of rights, is
content to vest an ambition in another,
and be simply wife. She has not
lived like the lilies who toll not, but
has ever been an active, earnest worker,
mindful of others, forgetful of nothing
but self. Her household was directed
with wise and elegant thrift more
abundant than any waste, and once,
when the General laughingly complain
ed of being kept on short allowance,
she surprised him with sum saved
from his pay sufficient for the purchase
farm in Missouri. This, too, was for
others. In Richmond she made our
enemies love her, and in New Orleans
said, 81 can scarcely keep any thing,
there is such suffering about u.s. How
many she has warmed, and cheered,
and comforted, only the recording angel
has written.
l write of Mrs. Candy in the past, be-
cause the light of her life is gone out,
and she lies sorely smitten, yearning
for rest near the sunny hill-slope, to
which she is drawn by such strong and
subtle tess. E. Wallace, IN the IN
dianapohs journal.