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Updated: October 20, 2025
Tenderly and patiently Parson Dorrance endeavored to soothe her, to convince her that his words sprung from a hasty impulse which he would be able wholly to put aside and forget. The one thing that he longed now to do, the only reparation that he felt was left for him to make to her, was to enable her, if possible, to look on him as she had done before. But Mercy herself made this more difficult.
Dorrance sees us at this moment, and longs to tell us how glad he is, and that we must be glad for him." And Mercy's eyes shone as they looked steadfastly across the room, as if the empty space were, to her vision, peopled with spirits. This mood of exalted communion did not leave her. Her face seemed transfigured by it.
I recollect, since you have spoken, that your famous quartette-club ussd to render that with much eclat, and how it was encored at the brilliant private concert you gave in behalf of some popular charity or other." Thus encouraged, Mr. Dorrance proceeded to enlarge the fragment: "Nose, nose, jolly red nose! Where got you that jolly red nose?
Each contained, moreover, allusions to "Ellis," to "Clermont," to "Julia," and to "Herbert" all family names in the Dorrance connection; spoke gratefully of her parents' kindness to his "poor Louise" in the absence of "her beloved Julius;" and was liberally spiced with passionate protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return.
"There is nothing relating to her which I desire to conceal," he rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow residing in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first at Trenton Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association with her party.
"Will you try, Mercy?" he said in a tone almost of the old affectionate authority; and Mercy again moaned rather than said, "Yes." Then Parson Dorrance kissed her hair where his hand had lain a few moments before, and said, "Now I must go. Good-by, my child."
Her house was a home to them all, and she reproduced in her own life very nearly the relation which Parson Dorrance had held to the young people of Danby. Her friend Lizzy Hunter was now the mother of four girls, all in their first young womanhood. They all strove eagerly for the privilege of living with "Aunt Mercy," and went in turn to spend whole seasons with her.
On March 3, 1862, the command was marched to Dog River Factory, a march of about fifteen miles, when we boarded the Steamer Dorrance and were carried to Ft. Gaines on Dauphin Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay. At Ft. Gaines the drudgery of camp life was experienced in mounting guns, blistering hands with shovels and crowbars and noses and ears by the direct rays of a semi-tropical sun.
Suddenly wiping her tears, she looked very steadily into his face, and said slowly, "It is not of the least use, Mr. Dorrance, for you to say this sort of thing to me. You can't deceive me. I know exactly how you love me, and how you always will love me. And, oh, I wish I were dead! It can never be any thing but pain to you to see me, never," and she wept more bitterly than before.
She had had an over-mastering presentiment from the moment when she read the telegram that she should reach Penfield too late to see Parson Dorrance alive.
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