656 NortH Caro.ina Troops, 1861~’65.

them as gratefully as they graciously inspired and helped
me. The hospitality for some days extended to me by my old
college-mate, Hon. George M. Rose, nephew of Colonel Me-
Neill, and his charming wife, at their home in Fayetteville,
was a most beneficial blessing and assistance in our work and
my heart’s best benediction is theirs.

Hon. Walter Clark, the self-sacrificing, patriotic editor of
these histories, cheered me “forward” by kind words, ‘when
I was sick,’ and aided me when whole “battalions of trouble”
came upon me by getting the publishers of these histories to
kindly extend my expired time. And but for him this sketch
could not have appeared in this volume, but out of place later
on. I will not attempt to write of gratitude to him. I will
try to show it by acts hereafter.

And my little wife encouraged and aided me in sickness
and depression as only a loving wife can. No words can tell
my thanks to her. God bless her always.

But above and over and more than all, there was Another
Helper. When, at times, “amid the encircling gloom,” dif-
ficulties appeared, which are absolutely insurmountable by
me alone, “Our Heavenly Father in Heaven” banished them
all and a “Kindly Light” led me on and the “spirit of truth
guided me in all truth” that I have tried to tell. Every de
fect of what is told, and there are many, is all mine alone and
the result of my imperfect vision to see aright the guidance of
my Guide. I am now “a soldier of the cross and shall I fear
toown His name? As such soldier I have a command with a
glorious promise attached—‘‘In all thy ways acknowledge him
and he shall direct thy paths.” In love and in illimitable
gratitude I obey. The truest test of every soldier and Christ’s
only measure and standard of love for Him is obedience.

And now, as my farewell: By my work I have tried to
show my love; please pardon all faults of that work with the
forgiveness due our common frailty. The picture I have
tried to paint of our great regiment is done and it is yours.
Would that it were better done. Its many glaring defects,
especially of omission, nobody will ever see as I do. Deplor-
ingly right now and most sorrowfully I realize, in heart and
soul, what Lessing makes “Conti,” his great painter, say in

Srxty-Tairp Recimenr. 657

“Emilia Galotti,” when that painter was presenting his last
glorious picture of Emilia Galotti to the prince who loves her.
Conti says: “Oh! how unfortunate that we do not paint

with our eyes. On the long road from the eye through the
arm to the brush how much is lost.”

Comrades of the Sixty-third, Good-bye.
Paut B. Means.

Concorp, N. C.,
3 Ocrossr, 1901.

 

 

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