tified. It immediately met. The strictures
were read, and in case of many sentences, especially towards the close,
from necessity re-read by the Judge Advocate. After considerable
laughter over the document, and some little indignation at the
unwarranted dictation of "their commanding General," of which title the
General had taken especial pains to remind them at least every third
sentence, the court decided not to change the sentence, and directed the
Judge Advocate to embody their reasons for the character of the
sentence in his report. The reasons, much the same as those stated to
the General by the Judge Advocate, were reduced to writing, and duly
forwarded, with the record signed and attested, to their "commanding
General." That record, like some other court-martial records of the
Division, has not since been heard of as far as the Judge Advocate or
any member of the court is informed. The poor boy a few days afterwards
entered a hospital, not again to rejoin his regiment. His application
for discharge has not been heard of. With no prospect of being fit for
active service--dying by inches in fact,--he is compelled at Government
expense to follow the regiment in an ambulance from camp to camp, and on
all its tedious marches.

The profanity in the foregoing chapter has doubtless disgusted the
reader quite as much as its utterance did the Judge Advocate. And yet
hundreds of the Division who have heard the General on hundreds of other
occasions, the writer feels confident will certify that it is rather a
mild mood of the General's that has been described. The habit is
disgusting at all times. Many able Generals are addicted to the habit;
but they are able in spite of it. That their influence would be
increased without it, cannot be denied. It has been well said to be
"neither brave, polite, nor wise." But now when the hopes of the nation
centre in the righteousness of their cause, and thousands of prayers
continually ascend for its furtherance from Christians in and out of
uniform, how utterly contemptible! how outrageously wicked! for an
officer of elevated position, to profane the Name under which those
prayers are uttered, and upon which the nation relies as its "bulwark,"
"its tower of strength," a very "present help in this its time of
trouble."

CHAPTER VII.

_A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac--Fitz John's Rail Order--Rails
for Corps Head-Quarters_ versus _Rails for Hospitals--The Western
Virginia