Page:Notes of the Mexican war 1846-47-48.djvu/176

170 marched together, and slept under one blanket, divided our crackers, and often drank out of one canteen and our coffee out of one cup. How often did we talk about the good people of Lancaster County, of their beautiful farms, their ways, habits, festivals and fairs. But he is now gone, no more on earth will we hear his clarion voice answer roll-call. No more will his well-built form be seen in our ranks. He has passed from us in this tierres calientes, far from his garden country home in the northern clime, with no mother's prayers or hand to fan or cool his fevered brow, or to wipe the sweat from his downcast face. No sister's gentle voice to whisper words of encouragement and love. No father to strengthen him in the dying hour. No kind friends were at his bedside to watch over him and attend to his necessary wants. There was something very peculiar about Mr. Schaffer. After we left Vera Cruz, and way out of sight of the ships that brought us from the United States to the shores of Mexico, he became melancholy and very low spirited, and fretted. He would frequently speak of being in this hostile country where every man, woman and child is thirsting for his life's blood, and that it would be almost impossible for him to escape death in this country—Mexico. I told him that I admitted that we were in a strange and hostile land, and that many chances of life are constantly against us, and that many dangerous and threatening clouds may hang around us, but to pass them all and trust in the future, and to cast those delusions and troublesome thoughts from his mind. That I feared nothing except our Maker above us, and that I left nothing behind but what I expect to see again. After talking to him in this way he would then pick up courage, go off and attend to his duties singing, whistling, chatting and laughing, but the vision of the early scenes of his childhood, and the peculiar circumstances and threatening danger before him would soon come back to his mind again.

Previous to our regiment leaving "Camp Misery," for the interior of Mexico, he was put in the Jalapa hospital, he being too ill from diarrhœa to march with us. I called to see