d at as I limped along.
Reaching my hotel, I took a bath and turned into a good
bed, thinking of my brother and the thousands of other
soldiers who were out in the rain and many of whom would
perhaps have no bed to turn into for three years; for
there were a few three years regiments even then.

The next day, to my great joy, my brother's regiment
marched in and over to Georgetown heights; and, after
visiting them there, I sent my gun home by Adams Ex. and
took the train for Boston. Said my father, when I got
home, "Well, I think you have got enough of war now."
"No, sir," I said, and in less than thirty days I had
enlisted; and three years from the date of the first
battle of Bull Run I was skirmishing about six miles from
Richmond--three years--and yet I hadn't quite got to
Richmond.

That Bull-Run musket is the only war weapon left in the
family, and I hope you will keep it in memory of the good
work I was willing to do with it, even before I was a
soldier.

Dr. SAMUEL A. GREEN then said:

I have listened with intense interest to Mr. Clement's paper, as I was
not only present at the skirmish therein described, but as Assistant
Surgeon of the First Massachusetts Volunteers it was my professional
duty to look after the wounded on that occasion. I remember vividly the
events of that day, July 18, 1861, not only because it was the first
time that I ever was under fire, but because it was the greatest fight
that up to that time the Union army had fought. I remember, too, the
proud record made by the First Massachusetts in that preliminary
skirmish. In each of two companies,--G and H,--the regiment lost six
men; and Company H--to which Mr. Clement's paper relates--had more men
wounded than killed. Nor were these the only losses met by the Old First
in that memorable action. The wounded men came under my professional
charge, and they received such care as could be given them on the field
of battle, scanty though it was. The men who fell in that skirmish--some
of them my friends and all my acquaintances--left impressions on my mind
so deep that I have since accepted without hesitation the fact that "war
is hell." This action of July 18 was only a skirmish that preceded the
first battle of Bull Run, which was fought three days later on July 21.
The armies contending on that day were commanded, respectively, by
General McDow