s of the Union
cause.

Such letters bore to the very quick. It seems to them that the writer
is taking that opportunity to speak a word of eulogy for himself. As
for the true soldier, he never asks for words of flattery; he is not to
be gulled with bland words and braggadocio. The letter for the soldier
is the long, pithy one, full of little things, even down to gossip.
_Gossip is better than eulogy_, especially when used in an egotistical
manner.

BATTLE.

Much has been said and written about battle, the greater portion of
which is an exaggeration of facts. Fireside writers and reporters have
composed long manuscripts, beginning and ending in frantic agonies and
seas of blood, exhausting the vocabulary of pathetic epithets. That
battle is dreadful cannot be denied, but those who have passed through
the fiery ordeal do not experience half the convulsions and agony of
soul that is written. If a comrade falls, the column still moves on. No
one, by the late rules of war, dare stop to bear off the wounded or
sympathize with those in the throes of death. There are men detailed
for that purpose, who follow up in the rear and give those in need due
attention.

A soldier in a pitched battle does not pretend to know who is hurt
until the battle is ended; he must needs push ahead and do his part
until he is no longer able. Many of your comrades fall around you; they
show unmistakable symptoms of severe wounds, but your attention is too
much engrossed to ever think to inquire the nature of their wounds. You
are hardly conscious of any suffering around you. Excitement has borne
you off so that you never think to look and see who is on your right or
left, or whose spirit is winging its flight from the body over which
you are walking. The soldier does not seem to feel pangs of sorrow when
arms clash the loudest; he does not see danger and suffering and
ghastly sights until all is over and quiet restored. Those who are
unacquainted with the mental condition of the soldier in time of
battle, wonder and ask why it is that those whom he knows so intimately
are wounded and many times killed by his side without knowing the
nature of their wounds or the circumstances of their death. The reason
for this is manifest from what has already been said.

There is oftentimes more horror in the idea and dread of battle than in
the thing itself. The soldier becomes so accustomed to human butchery
that it loses many, very many, of its h