started out on a different path with a different ending.

Late in the day, J. C. Blackwell, standing by the coffined form, looking at the almost white hair of this man only in his prime, said to me: "His father, Judge Breuster, heard me plead my first case-it was my maiden effort-and to his kind, encouraging words of praise and suggestions, I owe a great deal of my after success in life. God pity his poor boy. I tell you Mrs. H., there is wrong, great wrong in the influences brought to bear upon youth by church members in their social worldly life and example, or such things would not be."

At Lawyer B.'s request and expense, Judge Breuster's only son was taken back and buried beside the honored parents.

"The men who waste their opportunities in youth,
And lay not up in store good habits, love and truth,
In their old age, when joys, and hopes no longer last,
Shall lie like broken boughs still sighing for the past."
One of Buddha's Sermons.

Some two or three weeks later John came home one day with a box and a letter from the Railroad and Express Co., and upon opening the box we found a perfect gem of a watch and chain, with a charm bearing on its face delicately traced words of thanks to H. H. D. The letter contained a

thousand mile ticket over the road, and words of commendation to the young lady who so skillfully managed the defeat.

66

'Why, what does it all mean?" said Hannah. "Mean, why you saved $85,000 to the Express Co., and ever so much trouble to the Railroad."

"Oh, I was not saving the money-I never thought of that-I went to save King John! What shall I do with a thousand mile ticket?" "I'll board it out, Hannah," said Bert.

CHAPTER XIII.

"In the prison cell I sit, thinking, mother dear,

of you,
And the bright and happy home so far away;
And the tears they fill my eyes spite of all that I can do,
Though I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.

Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching,
Cheer up, comrades, they will come,

Then beneath the starry sky we will breathe the air again,
Of the free land in our own beloved home."

Old Song.

HISTORY records somewhat of the horrors of Libby Prison and Andersonville; but in order to appreciate either of them, or to even approximate a just estimate of their miseries to the soul and body of man, we should talk with those who have had actual experience-who have suffered from the ravenous hunger; the maddening thirst; from the burning sunshine or the bleak winds and penetrating damps for want of shelter. Let one and another, and yet another tell the tale of woe; hear of the longings for home, however humble, with its comparative luxury in contrast with the filth, the vermin, the lack of pure air, the incomparable wretchedness and dearth of all those good things

which the Great Father has so bountifully provided for his children to enjoy. No matter how many different ones should repeat the tale of woe to us, each one would doubtless present some different phase, according to the habits and tastes or different temperments of the sufferers.

The first detachment of Union prisoners sent to the military prison of the Confederate States, at Andersonville, was in February, 1864, and the number rapidly increased until at one time there were over 33,000 inside the inner inclosure.

Some time in the spring following the occupation of this prison site, the good chaplain and Fred R. were taken prisoners and were forwarded to Andersonville with others, where they remained a short time until removed to a second stockade provided for the imprisonment of officers.

They were there long enough to realize the horrors of a place in which men were packed like cattle in a pen, with but an average of from seventeen to twenty square feet of space to the man. Hemmed in by the dead-line, the palisades, the stockade, and around all the cordon of earthworks with mounted pieces of artillery, guarded along the entire route, and knowing well that from six to ten blood-hounds were held in readiness, inside a hut near by, ravenously greedy for

their bloody work-to be let loose upon any who chanced to escape.

But those escapes were few. Out of the entire number, 49,485, received within those walls, history tells us only 328 escaped.

Still, with death staring them in the face if the escape was attempted, desperation forced many to choose the attempt and take its contingent risk in preference to the awful present state of affairs and its uncertainties.

With the young, possessing iron-like constitutions and elasticity of spirits, these things could be borne with a Spartan valor, and by no one with better grace than Fred R.

Almost immediately upon his arrival there he found a classmate from the same college which he had attended, and who had enlisted in a regiment made up in a different part of the country, and near his own home. Serving under a different command, they had never heard of each other or met until now, as prisoners of war, far from Alma Mater, far from loved ones at home, and with, oh, such different surroundings to those of their home lives! It was a touching meeting as they clasped hands, and yet it was a source of comfort to each to meet. They talked over the college, and forgot, for the time, the acres of mire through which they