Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/111



So much waited to be done that I sometimes grew bewildered, and wished for a hundred pair of hands, that I might work out the strength of will which kept up soul and body. I was often sent for while in the midst of a distressing scene, and I hardly knew where to direct my steps. Some were so eager to join their commands, that it needed the greatest watchfulness to prevent them from going even out of sick-beds.

We had a Captain Williams sick with a fever, yet burning with a desire to join his regiment, which was gathering the laurels of battle thickly, in the long list of wounded and dead. No persuasion could turn him from his purpose; he got up from his straw bed, and with feeble steps tottered from the tent, left on the transport, and in ten days his body was at City Point in the dead-house, waiting embalmment.

So the Harvester gathered them in, one after another; before disease as well as by the deadly shot they fell in their manhood's prime, and many hearts ached with the terrible blows which came to them over the electric wires, and they never more rebounded from the fearful shock.

Lieut. Barton was our first officer killed. He met