The
attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also,--only a few
hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
there, and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by
the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is
called to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on
stretchers. The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their
sufferings,--a few groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a
scream of pain, as they lift a man into the ambulance.

"To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected, and to-morrow and the
next day more, and so on for many days.

"The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more American than is
generally supposed,--I should say nine tenths are native-born. Among the
arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois men. As usual, there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was, perhaps,
worse than usual. Amputations are going on,--the attendants are dressing
wounds. As you pass by, you must be on your guard where you look. I saw,
the other day, a gentleman--a visitor, apparently, from curiosity--in one
of the wards stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were
probing, etc. He turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and
fallen on the floor."

An episode,--the death of a New York soldier:--

"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It i