The scene has changed.  Where is he now?  Not on the cold, damp ground. 
  Whence came this couch? and who are they who smiling stand around? 
  What friendly hands have borne him to his own free mountain air? 
  And father, mother, sisters—­every one of them is there. 
  Now gentle ministries of love may soothe him in his pain;
  Water to cool his fevered lips he need not ask in vain. 
  His mother shades the candle when she steals across the room;
  A face like hers would radiant make a very desert’s gloom. 
  The fragrant lemon cools his thirst, pressed by his sister’s hand—­
  Not one can do enough for him, the hero of their band.

  Oh, happy, convalescing days!  How full of pleasant pain! 
  How pleasant to take up the old, the dear old life again! 
  Now, sitting on the wooden bench before the cottage door,
  How many times they make him tell the same old story o’er! 
  How he fought and how he fell; how he longed again to fight;
  And how he would die fighting yet for the triumph of the right. 
  His good old mother sits all day so fondly by his side;
  How can she give him up again—­her first-born son, her pride? 
  His sisters with their worsted his stockings fashion too,
  In patriotic colors—­the red, the white, the blue. 
  If he should never wear them, a charity ’twill be
  To give them to some soldier-lad as brave and good as he. 
  They’re dreadful homely stockings; one can not well say less,
  But whosoever wears ’em—­why, may he have success!

Here are samples of the charades referred to by Miss Morse: 

ON RETURNING A LOST GLOVE TO A FRIEND.

MARCH, 1873.

  A hand I am not, yet have fingers five;
  Alive I am not, yet was once alive. 
  Am found in every house and by the dozen,
  And am of flesh and blood a sort of cousin. 
  Now cut my head off.  See what I become! 
  No longer am I lifeless, dead, and dumb. 
  I am the very sweetest thing on earth;
  Royal in power and of royal birth. 
  I in the palace reign and in the cot—­
  There is no place where man is and I’m not. 
  I am too costly to be bought and sold;
  I can not be enticed by piles of gold. 
  And yet I am so lowly that a smile
  Can woo and win me—­and so free from guile,
  That I look forth from many a gentle face
  In tenderness and truthfulness and grace. 
  Say, do you know me?  Have you known my reign? 
  My joy, my rapture, and my silent pain? 
  Beneath your pillow have I roses placed—­
  Your heart’s glad festival have I not graced? 
  Ah me!  To mother, lover, husband, wife
  I am the oil and I the wine of life. 
  With you, my dear, I have been hand and glove. 
  Shall I return the first and keep the Love?

CHARADE.

  My first was born to rule; before him stand
  The potentates and nobles of the land. 
  He loves his grandeur—­hopes to be more grand.