erected. From here Mr.
Beers returned to his command. The day of his departure was marked by
hours of intense anguish which I yet shudder to recall. The train
which stopped at the hospital camp to take up men returning to the
front was crowded with soldiers,--reinforcements. I had scarcely
recovered from the fit of bitter weeping which followed the parting,
when, noticing an unusual commotion outside, I went to the door to
discover the cause. Men were running up the railroad track in the
direction taken by the train which had just left. A crowd had
collected near the surgeon's office, in the midst of which stood an
almost breathless messenger. His tidings seemed to have the effect of
sending off succeeding groups of men in the direction taken by those I
had first seen running up the road. Among them I discovered several
surgeons. Something was wrong. Wild with apprehension, I sped over to
the office, and there learned that the train of cars loaded and
crowded with soldiers had been thrown down a steep embankment, about
three miles up the road, and that many lives were lost. Waiting for
nothing, I ran bareheaded and frantic up the track, for more than a
mile never stopping, then hearing the slow approach of an engine, sunk
down by the side of the track to await its coming. Soon the engine
appeared, drawing very slowly a few platform-and baggage-cars loaded
with groaning, shrieking men, carrying, also, many silent forms which
would never again feel pain or sorrow. The surgeons upon the first car
upon descrying me crouching by the roadside, halted the train and
lifted me upon the last car, where, among the "slightly hurt," I found
my husband, terribly bruised and shaken, but in no danger. Arrived at
camp, where tents had been hastily pitched, the wounded and dying were
laid out side by side in some of the largest, while others received
the dead. The sights and sounds were awful in the extreme. At first I
could not muster courage (shaken as I had been) to go among them. But
it was necessary for purposes of identification, so I examined every
one, dying and dead, feeling that _certainty_, however dreadful, might
be better borne by loving hearts than prolonged suspense.

Among these dreadful scenes came a minister of God, whose youthful
face, pale and horror-stricken, yet all alight with heavenly pity and
love, I can never forget. Tenderly he bent above these dying men, his
trembling lips touched by divine inspiration, whispe