can live on bread and the newspaper.

MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN."

In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam,
my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a
telegraphic messenger. The air had been heavy all day with rumors of
battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with
throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might
bring.

We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted. I took the
envelope from his hand, opened it, and read:

HAGERSTOWN 17th

To__________ H ______

Capt H______ wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at
Keedysville
WILLIAM G. LEDUC

Through the neck,--no bullet left in wound. Windpipe, food-pipe,
carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable vessels, a
great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,--ought
to kill at once, if at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought
mortal,--which was it? The first; that is better than the second would
be.--"Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland." Leduc?
Leduc? Don't remember that name. The boy is waiting for his money. A
dollar and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen cents? Don't keep
that boy waiting,--how do we know what messages he has got to carry?

The boy had another message to carry. It was to the father of
Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was
grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough, a
town a few miles this side of Keedysville. This I learned the next
morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central Telegraph
Office.

Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the
quarter past two o'clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an
accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or
pressing emergency. I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the cars.
I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose society
would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my own, and
whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim.

It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished apart,
that I mean to give my "Atlantic" readers an account. They must let me
tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that
interested or amused me, and which a certain leisurely class of elderly
persons, who sit at