, and asked him significantly, "Jim, do you feel
_all right_?"

Falling into that characteristic whine, Jim said, "Yes, sir, I am well
and strong, but, Doctor, all the time, now, I feel the strangest
hankering after grass."

That was the sheep's liver telling. Our theory was that all of those
fellows had sheep's livers, and that accounted for the insatiable
"hankering after grass."

I told this story in an after-dinner speech at a banquet some time ago
to a company of twenty-nine female doctors of medicine--trained, and
practicing physicians. They made no protest; listened with unbroken
gravity; accepted it as a narrative of actual occurrence, and looked at
me with wide-eyed interest. When I finished I thought it best to tell
them that it was all a joke. Then they laughed themselves into a fit.

Well, this little account of our doings, and our life in the winter camp
at Morton's Ford--1863-1864--is done. Out of its duties, and
companionships; its pleasures, and its deeper experiences, we Howitzers
were laying up pleasant memories of the camp for the years to come. And
often in after years, when some of us comrades got together we would
speak of the old camp at Morton's Ford.

The spring was now coming on. We knew that our stay here could not last
much longer. How, and when, and where we should go from here, we did not
know. We knew we would go somewhere--that was all. "We would know when
the time came, and 'Marse Robert' wanted us" he would tell us.

That is the soldier's life--"Go, and he goeth; come, and he cometh; do
this, and he doeth it." No choice. Wait for orders--then, quick! Go to
it!

Well we were perfectly willing to trust "Marse Robert" and perfectly
ready to do just what he said. Meantime we take no anxious thought for
the morrow; we go on with our work, and our play--we are "prepared to
move at a moment's warning."

CHAPTER II

BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS

Nineteen miles from Orange Court House, Virginia, the road running
northeast into Culpeper crosses "Morton's Ford" of the Rapidan River,
which, just now, lay between the Federal "Army of the Potomac" and the
Confederate "Army of Northern Virginia."

As this road approaches within three-fourths of a mile of the river it
rises over a sharp hill, and, thence, winds its way down the hill to the
Ford. On the ridge, just where the road crosses it, the guns of the
"First Richmond Howitzers" were in position, commanding the Ford; and
the Howi