Mr. Dubois, son-in-law of Bishop McIlvaine of
Ohio, who had been leader of the good people at Chillicothe in
providing a supper for the Eleventh Ohio as we were on our way from
Camp Dennison to Gallipolis. He had burned to have some part in the
country's struggle, and became a model chaplain till his labors and
exposure broke his health and forced him to resign. The presence of
two such men gave some hours of refined social life in the intervals
of rough work. One evening walk along the Kanawha has ever since
remained in my memory associated with Whittier's poem "The River
Path," as a wilder and more brilliant type of the scene he pictured.
We had walked out beyond the camp, leaving its noise and its warlike
associations behind us, for a turn of the road around a jutting
cliff shut it all out as completely as if we had been transported to
another land, except that the distant figure of a sentinel on post
reminded us of the limit of safe sauntering for pleasure. My
Presbyterian and Episcopalian friends forgot their differences of
dogma, and as the sun dropped behind the mountain tops, making an
early twilight in the valley, we talked of home, of patriotism, of
the relation of our struggle to the world's progress, and other high
themes, when
"Sudden our pathway turned from night,
The hills swung open to the light;
Through their green gates the sunshine showed,
A long, slant splendor downward flowed.
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