The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1883-10-29

| every kind of cake. When thew were ready
town meeting vas held. and it was decid-
ca that somebody must go with the boxes to
S georgetown, where they were in camp.
WIN one accord Uncle Abel was named as
Tue proper messenger. at would seem like
1arrytown itself coming to them, poor fell
lows" said the Widow Bassett, sobbing.
80 Abel went. and the town met together
once week to read his letters, which usu
ally covered twenty pages of letter paper,
and were full of details concerning every
boy Aunt Sarah and Hannah then became
pro I'D castodians, and were never tired of
reading them to all who came. or talking
them over line by line.
The regiment was ordered into Virginia,
but Abel remained in Washington. Month
after month passed. aud yet be did not
come home. Every week came letter,
cheerful, even joking, full of the news and
gossip of the Capital. Squire Plunkett was
beginning to ease Aunt Sarah about the
frisky propensities which Uncle Abel had
developed at this late day, when one morn
ing letter in a strange hand arrived, ad-
dressed to "The Minister of the Presbyteri-
an Church at Tarrytown."
1t was from the surgeon of a hospital in
Washington, and stated that three months
before an old man named Dowrex had been
brought in, suffering from lingering dis
ease, which threatened to end fatally. He
endured agonies of pain, and, the surgeon
had discovered, had resolved to remain in
the hospital and to die there. in order to
spare his sister the sight of his suffering.
''There is but one chance in hundred of
his recovery, and that depends on careful
nursing" the letter continued. "Here he
has neither the care and comfort which is
necessary, the hospital being only tempo
rary one intended for wounded soldiers in
transitu' Dowrex refused to give me his
sisters address, and hence l am forced to
direct as have DONE"
Never had such thunderbolt descended
on Tarrytown. There was not a man in the
town who would not gladly have set off to
Washington that night; but a committee of
five, headed by Squire Plunkett, finally took
the management of the affair on themselves,
and actually started on this tremendous ex-
pedition by shutdown. After they were gone
a strange waiting hush fell on the village.
We understood for the first time what
large share old Abel had held in or lives.
The coarsest boy in the hamlet seemed to
appreciate the story of sacrifice brought in
the letter, and to know what illness and
death among strangers in the bare wards
of an army hospital would be to the old
man whose life lay SO deep rooted among
his home and old neighbors. In the five
days that passed before he came, every one
of those old neighbors was busy in prepare
ton for him. Every comfort which house
keepers in Tarrytown had accumulated
for generations was carried down to
the Dowrex house, and, without Aunt Sa-
rah's knowledge, sum was raised sufficient
to bring the most skilful surgeon in Phila-
delphia up to meet him on his arrival. Aunt
Sarah, as the tension on her grew extreme,
only became more quiet. She moved about,
onptlv rro hic ahoir nd ho nj, ha-
side it, for the thousandth time, saying:
''Only let him get into his own chair, and it
will be all right. It's home, Abel wants.
When they carried him in and placed him
on the old sheep-skin cushion, he looked at
Sarah, then at the pigeon-hoes, and then at
the crowd of kind faces around him, and
nodded, closing his eyes with smile of I'M
speakable content.
''It's the first look of real life that he's
given," said Squire Plunkett. 81 shouldn't
wonder if we kept him after all''
We did keep him. Whether it was the
skill of the great surgeon, or the care of his
old neighbors, or the mere air of home that
cured him, do not know. But at the end
OF six months he was going up and down
the shady streets, hale and happy as ever.
But all this was twenty years ago. Uncle
Abel and Aunt Sarah hong ago have ''gone
on' to join their old friends, who live be-
yond the silence
Since then | have seen the workings of
Christianity in large communities, and
among people of culture and powerful intel
lect But whenever on Sunday hear that
canticle which tells of the 'holy and hum
BILE men of heart, who praise the Lord, and
magnify him forever" | go back to igno-
rant old Abel Dowrex, and the irrevocable
tie with which he bound together the peo-
pie Of his native village.