Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/99

Rh speak in subdued tones of the dear soldier who died of wounds in the hospital at Fredericksburg.

Sometimes the wild wailing of the chords seemed a dirge, which sad spirits were chanting over the souls so soon to pass the dark river with the silent boatman, and I grew tearful, and escaped from my thoughts at once.

My labors were confined mostly to the hospital of the Second Division of the Ninth Corps, although I visited my outside patients every day, and they seemed to look regularly for my coming. I tried to carry a cheerful countenance with my aching heart, for God knew that little enough of sunshine went into those dreary rooms. I could go out into the free air, when the scent of blood and discharges from wounds made the closeness unbearable, but they must lie there, and on their hard beds bear it all as best they could.

I found Privates Barber and Loomis in my walk one day—Barber wounded in the arm, while Loomis had lost a leg. Both seemed as comfortable as they could be made without beds, in the crowded rooms; and day after day I went to them, relieving them the best I was enabled to do with our stinted means.

It was dreadful to see the depths into which their spirits were plunged at times, when as comrade after comrade breathed out the last sigh, the uncertainty of their own recovery stole over the enfeebled mind, and agonized with thoughts of all that which they were leaving behind them, they sunk into the depths of despondency.

We had one youth of about seventeen years, whose