y wounded son. (I gave my
name and said Boston, of course, in reality.)

Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features
growing cordial. Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused
his reception of me. The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed
from the service a medical man hailing from ******, Pennsylvania,
bearing my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he
supposed, when my card came up, it was this individual who was
disturbing his slumbers. The coincidence was so unlikely a priori,
unless some forlorn parent without antecedents had named, a child after
me, that I could not help cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me
deliberately that the fact was just as he had said, even to the
somewhat unusual initials. Dr. Wilson very kindly furnished me all
the information in his power, gave me directions for telegraphing to
Chambersburg, and showed every disposition to serve me.

On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old
gentleman in a very happy state. He had just discovered his son, in a
comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel. He thought that he
could probably give us some information which would prove interesting.
To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our
kind-hearted old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as happy as
himself. He went up-stairs to his son's chamber, and presently came down
to conduct us there.

Lieutenant P________, of the Pennsylvania __th, was a very fresh,
bright-looking young man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent
injury received in action. A grape-shot, after passing through a post
and a board, had struck him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or
breaking. He had good news for me.

That very afternoon, a party of wounded officers had passed through
Harrisburg, going East. He had conversed in the bar-room of this hotel
with one of them, who was wounded about the shoulder (it might be the
lower part of the neck), and had his arm in a sling. He belonged to the
Twentieth Massachusetts; the Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by
the two bars on his shoulder-strap. His name was my family-name; he was
tall and youthful, like my Captain. At four o'clock he left in the train
for Philadelphia. Closely questioned, the Lieutenant's evidence was as
round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal.

TE DEUM LAUDAMUS! The Lord's name be praised! The dead pain in