that you were left so long?' 'Why, you see,'
said he, 'they couldn't stop to bother with us, _because they had to
take the fort_.' 'But,' said I, 'did you not feel 'twas cruel to leave
you to suffer so long?' 'Of course not! how could they help it? _They
had to take the fort_, and when they did, we forgot our sufferings, and
all over the battle-field went up cheers from the wounded, even from the
dying. Men that had but one arm raised that, and voices so weak that
they sounded like children's, helped to swell the sound.' 'Did you
suffer much?' His brow contracted, as he said, 'I don't like to think of
that; but never mind, the doctor tells me I won't lose an arm or a leg,
and I'm going back to have another chance at them. There's one thing I
can't forget though," said he, as his sunny brow grew dark, 'Jem and I
(nodding at the boy in the adjoining cot) lived on our father's
neighboring farms in Illinois; we stood beside each other and fell
together. As he knows, we saw fearful sights that day. We saw poor
wounded boys stripped of their clothing. They cut our's off, when every
movement was torture. When some resisted, they were pinned to the earth
with bayonets, and left writhing like worms, to die by inches. I can't
forgive the devils for that.' 'I fear you've got more than you bargained
for.' 'Not a bit of it; we went in for better or worse, and if we got
worse, we must not complain.' Thus talked the beardless boy, nine months
only from his mother's wing. As I spoke, a moan, a rare sound in a
hospital, fell on my ear. I turned, and saw a French boy quivering with
agony and crying for help. Alas! he had been wounded, driven several
miles in an ambulance, with his feet projecting, had them frightfully
frozen, and the surgeon had just decided the discolored, useless members
must be amputated, and the poor boy was begging for the operation.
Beside him, lay a stalwart man, with fine face, the fresh blood staining
his bandages, his dark, damp hair clustering round his marble forehead.
He extended his hand feebly and essayed to speak, as I bent over him,
but speech had failed him. He was just brought in from a gunboat, where
he had been struck with a piece of shell, and was slipping silently but
surely into eternity. Two days afterward I visited Jefferson Barracks
Hospital. In passing through the wards, I noticed a woman seated beside
the cot of a youth, apparently dying. He was insensible to all around;
she seemed no less so.