The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-12-06

~SSA@As Nes@% $8AA9%A frsm whose headless neck the hlood was dripping. Othess had other horrible looking things which they had been com pelled by their captors to bring with them as pieces de conviction, and all wore snllen look ot defiance such as a tiger cat might wear when mortaliy stricken by the hunter and lying helpless to defend itself.
 How Mary w morAhxed upon the contrast between this scene and the brilliant one we had just left. need not tell you Soon afserward she leit us for her home in Kentucky, and alter few letters from Louisville, and then a few from Washington, in which she spoke of the festivities Of the capital during the session of congress, did not hear from her again until hes wedding cards-she had received miRe a month previously came to tell ot her union with lieutenant B., an ofhcer of the army.
 This was my first visit 10 the spot where the exposition is to be held, and my second was brought abou, by letter rom Ma R-, my old friend Mary W, many years afterwar3.
 "It was the summer before the close of the war. My soh had been mercifully spared through all the battles ID Virginia, and we had had letters tsonf @him al irregular intervals, sometimes twe or three in a month. and again not bearing from him for a long time. Sometimes his letters weie brought into the city by some one who had run the blockade, and sometimes they were mailed, as occasion offered, inside the fedef al lines and came to us through the postofice. One day, when we had been so long without hear ing any news, that we had begun to grow more anxious than usual, a letter came bearing the postmark oi Boston, addressed not in my sons handwriting. which startled me at first, but in ladys hand that seemed strangely familiar. opened 1t with mingled emohsns of fear and curiosity. lt was from the friend of my girlhood, Mrs. B.. She appealed to me, by the old love which we had borne each other, to forget that there was q war between our people, and to visit her son, an officer iu the federal army, who was lying sick with fever in the Sedkewick hospital. She could not come to New Orleans. as she had been for more than a year helpless invalid, and knew of no one else 10 the city to whom she could appeal with confidence. She feared that 1t was yellow fever with which her son had been attacked, and that the hospital attendants would be incompetent and careless, and begged that would see that he was provided with experienced nurses, who, for q promise of large re- ward, would doubtless take every care of him.
 "You can imagine the mental struggle l underwent. My bitterness as a south ern woman, and my repugnance at hay ing anything to do with the Yankees. almost overcame my love for my friend and my duty as . christian, but after reading and re-reading her letter many times, and passing sleepless night in thinking over ir felt that my plain duty was to answer her prayer. So arose early to make such preparations as were necessary for the mplishment of my mission.
 My first inquiry was, of course, where is the Sedgewiok hospital? And when learned that 1t was on the old Boucher place, the singularity of the coincidence, that Mary's son was lying sick on the very spot where l had last seen her, in her youth and beauty, thirty years be- fore, dispelled all my better feeling, and became almost impatient to see him. procured a carriage, and reached the place about 9 o'clock.
 "The old residence had been tern down, and on its site the light, temporary buildings of the hospital had been erected. As the carriage approached the gate it was compelled to turn aside 10 allow a large army wagon to pass on its way to the cemetery loaded with the cohined bodies of those who had died during the previous day. shuddered as the thought occurred to me that perhaps enc of those cofins might contain the remains of him for whom my visit was intended. My worst fears were realized, for though his coffin was not among those in the wagon, l soon learned that he had died of typhoid fever two days previously, and his body had been sent home to his Sorrowing mother.
 "I hurried away from the place, shocked beyond measure, and finding it difficult to believe, after all the changes time and war had made in their sur roundings, that those were the. same old oaks under which we had danced thirty years before. In answer to my letter of confidence Mary wrote that, while it was melancholy satisfaction to her to know exactly where her sor had died, not even his death had so impressed her with the horrors of war as the circumstance that 1t had occurred on that peaceful, rural spdt where once she had spent a night in youthful gayety.
 Yesterday, after several days expecta- ton and disappointment, our trip having been put of two or three times for one reason or another, took the children, or rather they took me to see the exposition buildings. We went up in the Tchoupi. toulas car and entered the grounds, as I had done twice before, from the frout. As l stood upon the levee, against which our boat had landed fifty years ago, but which now has two or three hundred yards of batture in froat of it, the events of the fete were more vividly brought to Al