Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/126

92 artillery, and the feet of thousands opposed to the death, he gathered up those scraps for practical use, and by the knowledge became a benefactor to men suffering from the dreadful havoc of war.

If only strong and bearded men had been accepted into the ranks, I could have borne it better to see them suffer and die; but to see faces of youth, fair and smooth as a girl's, lying under the coarse blankets, and the white lips moaning with the pain of deathly wounds, was hard to bear. Men, if they died, seemed to possess a life which, because it was wanted, had become fully ripe with the glory of perfect manhood.

I saw one boy under the surgeon's knife, so white and still I almost hoped he would never wake to know how he must go through life a shattered wreck, and the journey just begun. Yet he opened his eyes cheerfully upon us, and the mangled limb was tossed away like a useless rag, and laid in the bosom of old mother earth, only because in her laboratory alone it could be resolved into elements inoffensive to living man.

My tent was my fortress, invaded now and then, it is true, by the feet of messengers to summon me to some sick-bed—still my fortress, where I sat in silent hours, and thought of home, and wondered if my children missed me, but all with no wish to leave my post. Had the war lasted fifty years, and I been living in health, I must still have remained. No peace would have visited my pillow, knowing that I could watch beside the suffering, and impart one ray of comfort.