Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/94

60 repose. I said, "What is a prayer to a promise?" when the Chaplain argued that others had no coffins—it was unwise to establish such precedents, and he wished to conclude the ceremony as quickly as possible.

I ordered the sexton to take him from the grave, and with some demurring he complied, and I left a guard over the body, till I could return with the coffin. I combed his hair, and washed his face, and they laid him into the unstained box, and again he was lowered into the shallow grave, this time to rest in peace.

My feelings were bitter toward those unfeeling men, who thought of nothing only how best and quickest to put the poor clay out of sight, before it become an offence to the senses. Such familiarity with death may harden some natures—surely there was the semblance of utter callousness of heart in many such scenes, where dead men were hurried into the graves with scarce a foot of earth above the rotting clay.

Going out about two miles distant, I found a number of our regiment, one from Co. F—Sergeant Starkey—wounded badly through the back. He was lying on his face—his dirty, bloody blouse his only pillow, and as he grasped my hand, great sobs shook his manly frame, and tears even fell on his coarse sleeve.

I was almost unnerved for a moment—had he been my own brother I could hardly have grieved more, for they were all brothers to me. I had been