ions and recovered. In the war with Mexico,
assaulting Molino del Rey, he received several wounds, all pronounced
fatal, and science thought itself avenged. Again he got well, as he
said, to spite the doctors. Always a martyr to asthma, he rarely enjoyed
sleep but in a sitting posture; yet he was as cheerful and full of
restless activity as the celebrated Earl of Peterborough. Peace with
Mexico established, Walker became commandant of cadets at West Point.
His ability as an instructor, and his lofty, martial bearing, deeply
impressed his new brigade and prepared it for stern work. Subsequently
Walker died on the field near Atlanta, defending the soil of his native
State--a death of all others he would have chosen. I have dwelt somewhat
on his character, because it was one of the strangest I have met. No
enterprise was too rash to awaken his ardor, if it necessitated daring
courage and self-devotion. Truly, he might have come forth from the
pages of old Froissart. It is with unaffected feeling that I recall his
memory and hang before it my humble wreath of immortelles.

In camp our army experienced much suffering and loss of strength. Drawn
almost exclusively from rural districts, where families lived isolated,
the men were scourged with mumps, whooping-cough, and measles, diseases
readily overcome by childhood in urban populations. Measles proved as
virulent as smallpox or cholera. Sudden changes of temperature drove the
eruption from the surface to the internal organs, and fevers, lung and
typhoid, and dysenteries followed. My regiment was fearfully smitten,
and I passed days in hospital, nursing the sick and trying to comfort
the last moments of many poor lads, dying so far from home and friends.
Time and frequent changes of camp brought improvement, but my own health
gave way. A persistent low fever sapped my strength and impaired the use
of my limbs. General Johnston kindly ordered me off to the Fauquier
springs, sulphur waters, some twenty miles to the south. There I was
joined and carefully nursed by a devoted sister, and after some weeks
slowly regained health.

On the eve of returning to the army, I learned of my promotion to
brigadier, to relieve General Walker, transferred to a brigade of
Georgians. This promotion seriously embarrassed me. Of the four colonels
whose regiments constituted the brigade, I was the junior in commission,
and the other three had been present and "won their spurs" at the recent
battl