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 sight, and I was impressed with their courage and discipline. I had not then learned the wisdom and duty of a soldier to seek all allowable protection from danger. I had a foolish pride to be and to appear fearless—as if it were a shame to seem to do anything to avoid danger. I remember that immediately on my right a soldier had sheltered himself behind a low stump. While silently approving his conduct in this respect yet apprehending he might only shelter himself, I said to him, "Do not fail to fire on the enemy." I had scarcely uttered these words when I heard and felt that sounding thud of the minie ball which became so familiar to our soldiers. My left arm fell to my side and the blood streamed from my throat. I staggered and would have fallen had not two members of the Old Dominion Guard stepped quickly up and caught me and bore me off the field. I was shot through the throat, through the shoulder and through the arm. And I to-day wear six scars from wounds then received, scars more prized by me than all the ribbons and jeweled decorations of kingly grant. When Moses P. Young and Jas. H. Robinson came to my relief I delivered to them what was my first and what I then regarded my last and dying request, for I then thought the wound through my throat must soon prove mortal. It was in these words, which I have ever since borne freshly and sacredly in my memory: "Tell my friends at home that I did my duty." These words expressed all that was in me at that moment—friends, they express all that is in my life. Well do I remember that supreme moment, how I was without fear, and was perfectly willing to die to die the death of the patriot,—and how then came upon me the tender thought of home and of home friends, and all my earthly aspirations concentrated into the one wish that my memory might be kindly linked to the recognition that I gave my life honorably and bravely in duty to myself, to my country, and to my God.