Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/223

Rh was kicked, yes kicked, by a miserable man who was acting as captain in the Fifty-Sixth Mass. Regiment. I could have torn him in pieces, as a wild beast tears the destroyer of her young. I could have seen his heart lie quivering at my feet, while the passion was on me, for I knew the man was sick, and if he were not, what right had that wretch to touch the sacred body of a man, and a soldier?

I wish I were out of the sight of mankind, when I see such exhibitions of cruelty; my whole nature rises up with the hatred of revenge; and then to hear them laugh over the affair when they get together at the dinner table! Oh, such scenes often repeated would turn me wild with the terrible passions which they stir up, like tigers in their lair.

1em April has come, and the morning is sunny, but the winds, so long rampant, are loth to go with the dead March, and continue to moan, and shriek, and sigh. I have a narrow bed, and last night I took in a great fat Irish woman for a companion, and consequently kept awake all night for fear one of us would fall out of bed. She came down to see her husband, and left this morning on the transport Connecticut, with the wounded.

Very many have gone from the Ninth Corps, and many more ought to go, for the freshly-wounded are arriving fast, most of them from the Fifth, Ninth, and Twenty-Fourth Corps. We have a great number in hospital now, and nothing is to be heard but