Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/257

Rh men in dirty ragged blouses, with muskets in their horny hands, and knapsacks slung across their broad shoulders,—those men who were crowded into freight trains, and cattle-cars, from which light and air was was well-nigh excluded. They were our brothers, and our husbands, and our sons, each followed with tearful prayer—each with anxious hearts going down with them to the deadly peril, and throbbing with trembling fear for the news after the battle.

"Would you ask for them to be conveyed on velvet upholstery to the camp and battle field?" someone, disdainfully asks. No, sir! !—But I would ask for the precious freight decently ventilated cars—plain, even rude seats, and vessels which are in no danger of foundering at sea in a gale of common strength. I would ask, if the companies contracting to transport them were too poor to furnish these, that the General Government at Washington sell some of its superfluous ornamentation about the capitol, and build such themselves.

It is no light thing to those who have travelled over the roads in these filthy cars. I was offered a free transit on a passenger train through, but I chose to come with the regiment, and fare as well as they fared—and no better.

I hope ere the next war-breezes sweep over our land, the nation shall know how to appreciate and treat the common soldier, on whom it depends for its splendid success. Generals, and artillery, and gun-boats, and fortifications are nothing unless the solid material of mortality man them, and in all conscience