impression that the "fut" was a boot, for trousers, socks, shoes
and legs were a mass of mud. This comical tableau produced a
general grin, at which propitious beginning I took heart and
scrubbed away like any tidy parent on a Saturday night. Some of
them took the performance like sleepy children, leaning their
tired heads against me as I worked, others looked grimly
scandalized, and several of the roughest colored like bashful
girls. One wore a soiled little bag about his neck, and, as I
moved it, to bathe his wounded breast, I said,

"Your talisman didn't save you, did it?"

"Well, I reckon it did, marm, for that shot would a gone a couple
a inches deeper but for my old mammy's camphor bag," answered the
cheerful philosopher.

Another, with a gun-shot wound through the cheek, asked for a
looking-glass, and when I brought one, regarded his swollen face
with a dolorous expression, as he muttered--

"I vow to gosh, that's too bad! I warn't a bad looking chap
before, and now I'm done for; won't there be a thunderin' scar?
and what on earth will Josephine Skinner say?"

He looked up at me with his one eye so appealingly, that I
controlled my risibles, and assured him that if Josephine was a
girl of sense, she would admire the honorable scar, as a lasting
proof that he had faced the enemy, for all women thought a wound
the best decoration a brave soldier could wear. I hope Miss
Skinner verified the good opinion I so rashly expressed of her,