The 15 day Seige of Knoxville by the Southern General Longstreet and the ensuing 20 minute assault on Fort Sanders finally broke the back of the Southern domination in the area. The Northerners, as defenders, had a disadvantage in numbers of four to one. It was a very bloody assault by a brigade made up of several Mississipi divisions, and one from Georgia. The losses on the Southern side were very great. A Northern officer made the statement that "I know of no instance in history where a storming party was so nearly annihilated. It is very doubtful whether 100 men of this brigade returned unhurt to their lines".
THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
THE VOW OF WASHINGTON
THE CAPTAIN'S WELL
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION
R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC
BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
HAVERHILL. 1640-1890
TO G. G. PRESTON POWERS,
INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF
LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY,
MILTON-INSCRIPTION ON TABLET
ON MEMORIAL WINDOW
THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
THE WIND OF MARCH
BETWEEN THE GATES
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892
LOVING & LOVED
My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a
Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice
distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning
nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and
see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so
much education. But, indeed, it was not real education; it was only
show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, and by going with the children to Sunday-school and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off, and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant. And she always told him. He was never expecting this but thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one thatlooked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she.
Patrasche had been born of parents who had labored hard all their days
over the sharp-set stones of the various cities and the long, shadowless,weary roads of the two Flanders and of Brabant. He had been born to no other heritage than those of pain and of toil. He had been fed on cursesand baptized with blows. Why not? It was a Christian country, and Patrasche was but a dog. Before he was fully grown he had known the bitter gall of the cart and the collar. Before he had entered his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware-dealer, who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price, because he was so young.
A Child's Garden of Verses
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
To Alison Cunningham
From Her Boy
For the long nights you lay awake
And watched for my unworthy sake:
For your most comfortable hand
That led me through the uneven land:
For all the story-books you read:
For all the pains you comforted:
For all you pitied, all you bore,
In sad and happy days of yore:--
My second Mother, my first Wife,
The angel of my infant life--
From the sick child, now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
And grant it, Heaven, that all who read
May find as dear a nurse at need,
And every child who lists my rhyme,
In the bright, fireside, nursery clime,
May hear it in as kind a voice
As made my childish days rejoice!
R. L. S.
