the battle and retreat, than any paid reporter could have given
us. Curious contrasts of the tragic and comic met one everywhere;
and some touching as well as ludicrous episodes, might have been
recorded that day. A six foot New Hampshire man, with a leg
broken and perforated by a piece of shell, so large that, had I
not seen the wound, I should have regarded the story as a
Munchausenism, beckoned me to come and help him, as he could not
sit up, and both his bed and beard were getting plentifully
anointed with soup. As I fed my big nestling with corresponding
mouthfuls, I asked him how he felt during the battle.

"Well, 'twas my fust, you see, so I aint ashamed to say I was a
trifle flustered in the beginnin', there was such an allfired
racket; for ef there's anything I do spleen agin, it's noise. But
when my mate, Eph Sylvester, caved, with a bullet through his
head, I got mad, and pitched in, licketty cut. Our part of the
fight didn't last long; so a lot of us larked round
Fredericksburg, and give some of them houses a pretty consid'able
of a rummage, till we was ordered out of the mess. Some of our
fellows cut like time; but I warn't a-goin' to run for nobody;
and, fust thing I knew, a shell bust, right in front of us, and I
keeled over, feelin' as if I was blowed higher'n a kite. I sung
out, and the boys come back for me, double quick; but the way
they chucked me over them fences was a caution, I tell you. Next
day I was most as black as that darkey yonder, lickin' plates on
the sly. This is bully coffee, ain't it? Give us another pull at
it, and I'll be obleeged to you."

I did; and, as the last gulp subsided, he said, with a rub of his
old handkerchief over eyes as well as mouth: