, and by
all that's holy, I never saw anything so mean nor was as much disgusted
as I was to-day. Boys! when shoulder-straps with stars on begin to think
that we are not human beings, of flesh and blood, liable to get sick,
and when sick, needing attention like themselves, it's high time those
straps change shoulders. These damp days we, and especially our sick,
ought to be made comfortable. One great and good soldier that I've often
heard tell of, wounded, of high rank, and who lived a long time ago,
across the ocean, refused, although dying for want of drink, to touch
water, until a wounded private near him first had drunk. That's the
spirit. A man that'll do that, is right, one hundred chances to one in
other respects. We have had such Generals, we have them now, and some
may be in this corps, but it don't look like it."

"Well, Captain, what did you see?"

"Well, I had sent my Sergeant to get a few rails to keep a poor boy
comfortable who had a high fever, and who could not get into the
hospital for want of room. The wood that was cut from the hill was
green, and the poor fellow had been nearly smoked to death. The Sergeant
went with a couple of men, and was coming back, the men having two rails
apiece, when just as they got the other side of the Toll-gate on the
hill, the Provost-Guard stopped them, told them there was an order
against their using rails, and they must drop them. It did no good to
say that they were for a sick man, that was no go. They thought they had
to do it, and did it. They hadn't come fifty yards toward camp, before
one of those big six-mule corps-teams that have been hauling rails for
the last four days, came along, and the rails were pitched into the
wagon. When I heard of it I was wrothy. I cut a bee-line for the
Adjutant and got the Order, and there it was in black and white, that no
more fences--rebel fences--should be destroyed, and no more rails used.
Now, I knew well that these corps-teams had hauled and hauled until the
whole establishment, from General Porter down to his Darkies, were in
rails up to their eyes, and then, when they had their own fill, this
order comes, and we, poor devils, might whistle. Here were our hospitals
like smoke-houses, not fit for human beings, and especially the sick. It
was a little too d----d mean. I couldn't stand it. The more I thought of
it the madder I got, and I got fighting mad, when I thought how often
that same General in his kid gloves, fancy r