hus far, and will always last,--but these attachments were
immediate only, and, so far as I felt, were almost baseless; for not
directly could I see and feel what was felt by the men I loved. Outside
the narrow bounds of the company my world was all abstract. I fought for
that world, for it appealed to my reason; but it was with effort that I
called before my mind that world, which was a very present help to every
other man. The one great fact was war; the world was an ideal world
rather than a reality. And I frequently felt that, although the ideal
after all is the only reality, yet that reality to me must be lacking in
the varying quality of light, and the delicate degrees of sweetness and
truth which home and friends and all the material good of earth were
said to assume for charming their possessors. The day brought me into
contact with men; the night left me alone with myself. In my presence
men spoke of homes far away, of mothers, of sisters, of wives and
children. I could see how deep was the interest which moved them to
speak, and, in a measure, they had my sympathy; yet such interest was
mystery rather than fact, theoretical rather than practical. I could
fill these pages with pathetic and humorous sayings heard in the camps,
for my memory peculiarly exerted itself to retain--or rather, I should
say, spontaneously retained--what I saw and heard; saw and heard with
the least emotion, perhaps, ever experienced by a soldier. Absorbed in
reflections on what I heard, and in fancies of a world of which I knew
so little, it is not to be doubted that I constructed ideals far beyond
the humdrum reality of home life, impracticable ideals that tended only
to separate me more from other men. Their world was not my world; this I
knew full well, and I sometimes thought they knew it; for while no rude
treatment marked their intercourse with me, yet few sought me as a
friend. My weak attempts to become companionable had failed and had left
me more morose. But for the Captain and for Joe Bellot, I should have
been hopeless.

Such had been my feelings before I had willed; now, in a degree,
everything was changed; indifference, at least, was gone, and although I
was yet subject to the strange experience which ruled my mind and
hindered it, yet I knew that I had large power over myself, and I hoped
that I should always determine to live the life of a healthy human
being, that I should be able to accept the relationships which, thro