HOME-MADE MUSIC

_August 8th_.--To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a
wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant
singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him,
and entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd halfway down
and took a seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly
wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd much,
but at that moment in the evening was wide awake and comparatively
easy. He had turn'd over on his left side to get a better view of the
singers, but the mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed
the sight. I stept round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a
clear show, and then sat down again by him, and look'd and listen'd.
The principal singer was a young lady-nurse of one of the wards,
accompanying on a melodeon, and join'd by the lady-nurses of other
wards. They sat there, making a charming group, with their handsome,
healthy faces, and standing up a little behind them were some ten or
fifteen of the convalescent soldiers, young men, nurses, &c., with
books in their hands, singing. Of course it was not such a performance
as the great soloists at the New York opera house take a hand in, yet
I am not sure but I receiv'd as much pleasure under the circumstances,
sitting there, as I have had from the best Italian compositions,
express'd by world-famous performers. The men lying up and down the
hospital, in their cots, (some badly wounded--some never to rise
thence,) the cots themselves, with their drapery of white curtains,
and the shadows down the lower and upper parts of the ward; then the
silence of the men, and the attitudes they took--the whole was a sight
to look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose those
voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof, and pleasantly the
roof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint old