What Happened to Me. La Salle Corbell Pickett

      When I was wearied with the toil incident to our extensive commercial operations and the labors and anxieties of battle we sat upon the sand and he sang to me, playing the accompaniments on his guitar. When I hear those old songs to-day they come to me with the far faint odor of the breezes that swept across the ocean in that long gone time and I hear again the golden notes of that melodious voice mingled with the soft music floating out from the touch of his fingers.

      Three years later I saw my soldier again. He had just received his commission as captain and was recruiting his company at Fortress Monroe before sailing for the unknown West. The first real sorrow came to me when I watched the St. Louis, the United States transport, go out to sea with my soldier on board. From her prow floated a flag like that which had waved over the fort we built on the sands in that time when life had lost all its troubles and the sunshine of the heart filled earth and sea and sky with radiance. I felt then as I had not before realized that this was my soldier's flag to which his life was given and to my view the stars in it shone with a new glory.

      The St. Louis was bound for Puget Sound where was the new station, Fort Bellingham, which I thought must be farther than the end of the world. Not one ship of our whole great fleet in the olden days had sailed for Puget Sound.