errand. We had come out at once not to look on, but to do whatever lay in our power to help all round. I went over the battlefield with Gen. Webster, who had command of the artillery through the three days. Something had been done already to clear away the wreck, and first of all the dead. But the woods and the open were still strewn with the dead horses and harness, shot and shell, while in one reach I counted three men who had not been buried, and in another, on the edge of the woods, there were eleven. And in a lone place aside, out of the way of the brush and the carnage, as if he had crept there- the fellow ! poor to die, was a soldier of the rebel army, with his blanket about him, a poor bit of a shawl his wife had given him, it may be, or his mother. He was poorly and thinly clad I could notice, but he could not feel the cold.

"His hands were folded on his breast;

There was no other thing exprest

But long disquiet merged in rest.”"

He had done with it all, while in some home they were wondering if they should ever see his face again.

XIX

This has been a word, and no more, about the battlefield. And now I must tell you of the work we went out to do. The small town of Dover was full of the sick and wounded men, huddled together anywhere until they could be removed. Surgeons, helpers, home-made nurses, we do what we can to help them where they lie, pour out our stores for them freely as water runs down hill; for the Sanitary Commission are burning the wires below in their eager haste to send up other stores almost as soon as we get there. Everything we could need was there. "Sanitary" is lord of the day.

When we had done what we could, there and then, a steamer was ready to take one hundred and sixty sick and wounded down the river to Mound City to a great hospital, and we went with them. They are laid so close on the floor of the long saloon that sometimes it is hard to set your foot between them. Here is one who has lost an arm, and there one who has lost a leg. Here is a gray-haired man, and there a

boy of eighteen: they are shot through the lungs.

I am

Here is a noble-looking soldier with a fearful wound over the eye, and there a yellow-haired German with blue eyes that appeal to me pitifully as I come and go, so that I feel I must attend to him, no matter who else waits. He has been mauled in the face, I find, so that he can take no nourishment and is perishing for lack of food. "What can I do for you?" I say, and he points first to his mouth, or rather where his mouth was, and then to his stomach. at a loss for some moments what to do, while the blue eyes watch me, eager and hungry; and then in a flash I see my way. I had rested some while in a state-room, and, as I was turning out, saw a pretty silvered funnel on a shelf above my head. So I bend over him and say, "I am going to get something into you, old man, or I will know the reason why; but you must help me for all you are worth." His tongue could not answer me, but his eyes said: "All right. I will do what you tell me."

I got a fine pitcher of milk from the stores, put a lot of sugar in it and something else, but will not tell you what that was. I had noticed a small slit in one corner of his mouth. "Now,"

I said, "this small funnel will go in there, and this milk will go through into your stomach." And again he looked the amen he could not say. So I poured slowly, and the stream found no hindrance. I could hear the gurgle, and his blue eyes shone. I gave him all I dared, and then said, "That will do for now." But, as I passed him to help some other man, he would appeal to me with those eyes and point to the place where milk and things go. So we would have another turn of the pitcher. The woful concave changed slowly to the convex; and, before we left the steamer, the surgeon said, "That fellow will get well." And, do you believe it, I think that by Heaven's blessing on the milk and things I saved the blue-eyed boy's life.

The surgeon comes to a young man close by me, as I attend to that mouth, and says, "I fear I must take off your arm. ." He begs to have him leave it on a while longer, no matter for the pain. So the good surgeon leaves him, and he moans to me: "What shall I do if I lose my arm? There is only myself left to look after my old mother and the farm. I must save that arm." And, before we leave the steamer, the surgeon tells me the arm will be saved. Here is a man I must attend to who has lost his arm and is sink

ing into the shadows. And, as I lay cool wet linen on the stump, he tells me, in broken sentences, he has left a wife and two young children at home he will never see again, and gives me a glance into his brave soul in asking me what hope there may be for him when he passes through the gates. He has always tried to do right, he says, and to be a man, but never professed religion. "You will go right home to God, your Father and mine," I told him, "never you fear." With some more words from my heart he is comforted, and, as I come and go, I watch the face grow white. He is very quiet now. I ask a good, sweet Presbyterian deacon, a neighbor of ours in the city, to watch with him. The lovely, sweet soul is quite of my mind about the future for such a man, and, when all is over, he comes to tell me how he had put up the one hand gently when the end came, closed his own eyes, and then laid the hand softly on his breast and was no more, no more, and yet forevermore that man.

That boy on the bulkhead is shot through the lungs, and all day long, and through the night, he is in sore anguish; but at last the pain ceases, and he beckons to one of my comrades and says: "I shall die now; and will you do me a great