guarded and critical interest. He held it at arm's length for philosophic consideration. Of course life was nothing; but after all, might not the whole game, about which the nation was excited, prove as valueless as the particular pawn which was all he could contribute if he took part? Even when he had actually enlisted, he was very willing to let it be supposed that it was only from ennui, or because he was tired of being asked whether he were not going. One of his intimates told me that he only once ventured to put the question to Stephen point-blank, why he went into the army, and then he only replied, with his accustomed shrewd, meditative smile, that "it was an ancient and honorable profession." But one of his female relatives has since said that at the outbreak of the war, on her remarking to him, rather heedlessly, that the war was not likely to come home to their two lives, for instance, in any immediate way, he answered, with an unwonted seriousness that was almost sternness, "I do not know that it will make any difference in your life, but it is likely to make a very great difference to mine." In a few days he had enlisted.

In passing to the sequel of the story, it would be easy for a stranger to conjecture that this proved one of the cases where the war gave the needed fulness and completion to a life otherwise incomplete. But I do not think it was so with Stephen Perkins. With his rare powers, and his sensitive, haughty nature, the course of development was not to be so easily rounded. On the 8th of July, 1861, he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Second Massachusetts (Infantry); was promoted First Lieutenant in the same month of the following year, and was killed within a month after his promotion. The intermediate period was the most tedious epoch of the war, and he was engaged in its most tedious service, in the Army of the Potomac. Danger and exertion would have seemed to him worthy the sacrifice they brought; but he chafed under a forlorn and monotonous routine, and amid a seemingly aimless waste of resources. Life, which had appeared of little value at home, seemed utterly valueless there, and the secret languor of the blood increased rather than diminished. His

letters showed much of his accustomed philosophy, but no enthusiasm and little enjoyment. None of them are now accessible to quote from, and I speak of them from memory alone. He complied with forms which he detested, fulfilled a routine which he undervalued, and saw a seemingly useless campaign draw its slow length along. It will always remain uncertain what influence active service might have had in concentrating his powers of action and developing the latent enthusiasm of his nature. But it is certain that inactive service, under generals in whom his shrewd sagacity put no faith, and with noble companions whose lives he saw wasted, gave neither joy nor tonic to his nature.

The disastrous battle of Cedar Mountain, the first important engagement of the Second Massachusetts, took place on the 9th of August, 1862. The regiment was under fire but half an hour, yet of twenty-two officers who went in only eight came out unhurt; five were killed, five wounded, three others wounded and captured, and one captured while attending a wounded comrade. Of the five killed, three stand recorded in these volumes, Abbott, Goodwin, and Perkins, besides Savage, who died of his wounds. Of those five killed, moreover, three went into battle almost too ill to stand, of whom Stephen Perkins was one. "All our officers behaved nobly," wrote Robert Shaw after this battle, in a letter which will be found elsewhere in full. "Those who ought to have stayed away did n't. It was splendid to see those sick fellows walk straight up into the shower of bullets as if it were so much rain; men who, until this year, had lived lives of perfect ease and luxury."

In a contest so hot, individual casualties pass for a time unnoticed, and often the precise facts can never be established. Robert Shaw says: "The men were ordered to lie down until the enemy came nearer. Almost all the officers kept on their feet, though." This readily explains the fearful loss among those thus prominent. It is stated by Colonel H. S. Russell, then Captain in the Second, that when the regiment had been in position about twenty minutes, Stephen Perkins received a

wound in his right hand, but refused to go to the rear, saying that a handkerchief was all he wanted, and this was given him. Ten minutes afterwards, Russell noticed him again, and in a few minutes more, when the regiment was withdrawn, he was not in his place. The body was found a little way to the rear, pierced with three bullets.

His remains were identified on the next day by General Gordon and Captain Shaw, and were, after due preparation, sent to Washington, and thence to Oakhill Cemetery, Georgetown. There took place on the 25th of September that simple and touching funeral ceremony, the narrative of whose pathetic loneliness has touched many hearts; while it was yet more consonant with the nature of Stephen Perkins than would have been any priestly or military splendor. The services were performed by Rev. John C. Smith of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, who thus describes the scene:

"There were but four of us, the father, Dr. Francis H. Brown, Surgeon of Judiciary Square Hospital, and a young ministerial friend, Mr. D. R. Frazier, from the Union Theological Seminary, New York. As we were about to leave the Superintendent's house, I beckoned to three wounded convalescents near by, and said to them, 'Boys, I have come here to bury a young officer; we have no guard, fall in and act for us.' They obeyed promptly, giving the usual military sign. We went to the vault and received the body; then moved in the following order, namely, Superintendent and convalescents in front, myself and the young minister; the body carried by hand; the father leaning on the arm of Dr. Brown (also a Boston man). . . . .

"Reader, if you visit the metropolis and desire to see the grave marked by the marble placed there by the father's love, go to the monument of the Russian Ambassador, M. de Bodisco, and a few yards eastwardly you will see the spot where lie the remains of the gallant young Lieutenant of the Second Massachusetts."

Thus closed the brief earthly life of one whose slow and large development would alone seem enough to guarantee immortal

To Stephen

ity, in a universe where nothing runs to waste. Perkins, with his haughty humility, the accidents of place and fame were nothing, and the most unnoticed funeral and briefest record would have appeared most fitting. And he who, with no steady hand, has woven this slight tribute to the noble promise that he loved, may now gladly let the garland drop, and leave the rest to silence.

1857.

HOWARD DWIGHT.

First Lieutenant 24th Mass. Vols. (Infantry), September 1, 1861; First Lieutenant 4th Missouri Cavalry, October 4, 1861; Captain, September 4, 1862; Captain and A. A. G. (U. S. Vols.), November 10, 1862; killed by guerillas, Bayou Boeuf, La., May 4, 1863.

H

OWARD DWIGHT, fourth son of William and Elizabeth A. Dwight, and grandson, on the mother's side, of Hon. D. A. White of Salem, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, October 29, 1837. His characteristics in boyhood were great sweetness of disposition, accompanied by a spirit which would suffer no encroachment upon his rights; great simplicity and ingenuousness, with straightforward honesty of purpose, manly resolution to persevere in whatever he undertook, and excellent mental powers. His father said of him while he was a school-boy, that it was an intellectual treat to study a lesson with him, his mind was so clear and so true in its operations. He was affectionate, but undemonstrative. Refined and gentlemanly in his bearing, he was reserved, even to those of his own household, who were accustomed to say of him, that he spoke only when he had something to say worth saying, and when he did speak it was always to the point. In the year 1850 he entered Phillips Exeter Academy. Mr. Soule, the respected Principal of the Academy, thus writes of him :

:

"I remember him as a lad of thirteen, full of health and joyous activity, frank, impulsive, and attractive to his classmates and companions. In his intercourse with his instructors he was always trustworthy and manly in his bearing. During his last term here, his habits of study improved so rapidly, and his progress was such in exact scholarship, that I regretted his leaving. His character and general deportment were unexceptionable."

He was prepared for college by Thomas G. Bradford, Esq., of Boston, for whom he always expressed great affection and