Page:Memorials of a Southern Planter.djvu/227

 Rh and mammy rejoined us at the door, she was in a state of excitement. She had been dreadfully scared by the fighting on the stage, and feared that Petruchio might go up in the gallery and fight there too.

After the battle of Resaca and New Hope Church, the wounded were sent to Macon, and they were laid out on the floor of the railroad station in long rows. Their wounds had been dressed on the field two days before, but not since, and they had had no food during those days. Thomas Dabney took every available thing in the house to nourish them, and his daughters, under his direction, made lint and tore up linen into long strips. They accompanied him, and helped to minister to the suffering men, binding up wounds, giving them hot tea, milk, and other refreshment.

The surgeons soon discovered that he understood dressing wounds, as he went from one soldier to another, putting on fresh bandages and helping his daughters in cases that they could not manage.

Years after, as he was getting on a railroad train, a man seized his hand, and said, "I can never forget you, sir. You dressed my wound at Macon." Thomas could not recall the man's face, he had dressed the wounds of so many. But the man was not satisfied till he made him recollect which one he was.

"I asked your daughter to dress my wound, and she said that she could not, but she brought you to do it for me." And this recalled the circumstance to his memory.

The only groans heard from those wounded men came from two sweet-faced young boys. They were shot through the head, and were delirious, and both were dying. One of them said, "Kiss me, mother."

As they left this scene, Thomas's daughter said to him, "I could not get to the boy I begged the lady standing near him to kiss him."

"Yes, I heard you," Thomas replied, in a husky voice.

The lady had passed her hand over the lips of the dying lad, and said, "That seems to satisfy him."