The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107,
September, 1866, by Various

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866

Author: Various

Release Date: December 5, 2007 [EBook #23743]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***

Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections).

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XVIII.--SEPTEMBER, 1866.--NO. CVII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of the article.

THE SURGEON'S ASSISTANT.

I.

The sickness of the nation not being unto death, we now begin to number
its advantages. They will not all be numbered by this generation; and as
for story-tellers, essayists, letter-writers, historians, and
philosophers, if their "genius" flags in half a century with such
material as hearts, homes, and battle-fields beyond counting afford
them, they deserve to be drummed out of their respective regiments, and
banished into the dominion of silence and darkness, forever to sit on
the borders of unfathomable ink-pools, minus pen and paper, with
fool's-caps on their heads.

I know of a place which you may call Dalton, if it must have a name. At
the beginning of our war,--for which some true spirits thank Almighty
God,--a family as wretched as Satan wandering up and down the earth
could wish to find lived there, close beside the borders of a lake which
the Indians once called--but why should not your fancy build the lowly
cottage on whatsoever green and sloping bank it will? Fair as you please
the outside world may be,--waters pure as those of Lake St. Sacrament,
with islands on their bosom like those of Horicon, and shores
beautifully wooded as those of Lak