repeatedly before on errands of kindness or duty, and who was just from
the battle-ground. He was going to Boston in charge of the body of the
lamented Dr. Revere, the Assistant Surgeon of the regiment, killed on the
field. From his lips I learned something of the mishaps of the regiment.
My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave than at first thought; but
he mentioned incidentally having heard a story recently that he was
killed,--a fiction, doubtless,--a mistake,--a palpable absurdity,--not to
be remembered or made any account of. Oh no! but what dull ache is this
in that obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the
nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies unconscious of itself
until a great grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the
non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary impressions? I talked
awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but
soldier-like and uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent
lady, a captain's wife, New England born, loyal as the Liberty on a
golden ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that
goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick through the Rebel
inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it would be safe, to
unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the
town.

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small
chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,
I know he will forgive me if I confess that I could not help smiling in
the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man, he
said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his
acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.
He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him
querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a
thin voice, with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can