ended by its head, and I proceeded to inquire for wounded
officers at the various temporary hospitals.

At the United States Hotel, where many were lying, I heard mention of an
officer in an upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieutenant Abbott,
of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, lying ill with what looked
like typhoid fever. While there, who should come in but the ubiquitous
Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, often confounded with his
namesake who visited the Flying Island, and with some reason, for he
must have a pair of wings under his military upper garment, or he could
never be in so many places at once. He was going to Boston in charge of
the lamented Dr. Revere's body. From his lips I learned something of the
mishaps of the regiment. My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave
than at first thought; but he mentioned incidentally having heard
a story recently that he was _killed_,--a fiction, doubtless,--a
mistake,--a palpable absurdity,--not to be remembered or made any
account of. Oh, no! but what dull ache is this in that obscurely
sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the nervous centre
called the _semilunar ganglion_ lies unconscious of itself until a great
grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the non-conductors
which isolate it from ordinary impressions? I talked awhile with
Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but soldier-like and
uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent lady, a
captain's wife, New-England-born, loyal as the Liberty on a golden
ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that
goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick through the Rebel
inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it would be safe, to
unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the
town.

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small
chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,
I know he will forgive me, if I confess that I could not help smiling
in the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man,
he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his
acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.
He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him
querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a
thin voice with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism a