ging to my
regiment--other companies than mine. Acquaintance was quickly made,
however, by men on adjoining cots; but no man, I think, was ever called
by his name. He was Georgia, or Alabama,--his State, whatever that was.
My neighbours called me, of course, South Carolina.

Many had fatal wounds; almost every morning showed a vacant cot. I
remember that the man on the next cot at my left, whose name in ward
vernacular was Alabama, had a story to tell. One morning I noticed that
he was wearing a clean white homespun shirt on which were amazingly big
blue buttons. I allowed myself to ask him why such buttons had been
used. He replied that, a month before he had been on furlough at his
home in Alabama, and that his mother had made him two new shirts, and
had made use of the extraordinary objects which I now saw because they
were all she had. He had told her jestingly that she was putting that
big blue button on the middle of his breast to be a target for some
Yankee; and, sure enough, the wound which had sent him to the hospital
was a rifle shot that struck the middle button. I laughed, and Alabama
laughed, too, but not long. He died.

For nearly two months I remained in this woful hospital. Life there was
totally void of incident. After the first week, in which we learned of
the further successes of the Confederate arms and of our final check at
Malvern Hill, anxiety was no longer felt concerning Lee's army, now
doing nothing more than watching McClellan, who had intrenched on the
river below Richmond, under the protection of the Federal fleet. We
learned with some degree of interest that another Federal army was
organizing under General Pope somewhere near Warrenton; but Southern
hopes were so high in consequence of the ruin of McClellan's campaign,
and the manifest safety of Richmond, that the new army gave us no
concern; of course I am speaking of the common soldiers amongst whom I
found myself.

At the end of a fortnight my wound was beginning to heal a little, and
in ten days more I began to hobble about the room on crutches. On the
first day of August I was surprised to see Joe Bellot enter the ward.
The brigade had marched into Richmond, and was about to take the cars
for Gordonsville in order to join Jackson, who was making head against
Pope. It was only a few minutes that Bellot could stay with me; he had
to hurry back to the command.

Then I became restless. The surgeons told me that I could get a
furlough