field,—and with the help of the dead rebel’s blanket of last night, which I had sense enough to bag when they picked me up, I slept once more.

In the morning, they sent me in an ambulance or “avalanche,” as they call it, to head-quarters. Thought at first I was going before Felix or Stonewall himself; turned out to be General Hill. He came and looked into the ambulance. “What regiment?” “Second Massachusetts.” “Let’s see, Gordon’s old regiment?” “Yes.” “Best regiment in Banks’ army; cut all to pieces, though: I’ve been over the ground,” and exit. He ordered me sent to Orange Court House; countermanded, and they dumped me out by a blacksmith’s shop. A surgeon came along and ordered me sent to Rapidan Station, on the box seat of an “avalanche”; and an awful “avalanche” it was,—four men with legs and arms off inside. It was eight miles over rocks and through rivers, and generally such a drive of damnation as never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Luckily, I kept my strength; but why the inside passengers didn’t die before we got half way is the marvel. “The lamentable chorus, the cry of agony, the endless groan,” as we bounced and jolted over corduroy road and river bed, was an ill thing to hear. We arrived at the railroad about dusk, just as I was calculating about how much longer I could stand it without fainting, and they put us out on the grass among those already arrived. The train came along after dark, and, finding that I must shift for myself or be left in the field, I made my painful way on hands and knees, among horses’ feet and under the awful “avalanche,” to the platform, where, after a while, they picked me up and put me aboard; turned seat back, put my foot up, and slept.

An interval of broken oblivion in the dark car, with occasional wakings to a semi-consciousness of rumbling wheels, brakes, and once familiar railroad sounds, mingled strangely with groans, cries, stench, squalor, and misery. But, as the night was only a succession of frightful dreams, I didn’t undertake to decide which was reality, but took the benefit of the doubt, which was a species of relief. But with the gray dawn illusions vanished, and the miserable reality stood out, bald and unmistakable. Where we were going, I didn’t know; but after a while the impression seemed to prevail that it wasn’t Richmond, but Staunton; and at about twelve we arrived here. The train at once became a menagerie, wherein the Yankee wild beasts were stirred up and stared at by the town. One citizen, I remember, was turned out of the car by a rebel sergeant for insulting the prisoners. They took us out at last, one or two rebs who had died in the night being first served. Finally, about evening, they took the two Yankee captains, in almost an upside-down position, with heads in straw and feet in air, through the town to the hospital, women coming to the windows with various expressions of countenance, pity being the scarcest. I’ve often seen them look out to see soldiers pass, but never expected to figure in this sort of a pageant for their edification.

[The reflections and moralizings on my situation, which follow, it was my first impulse to omit from this paper entirely; but on the whole I decide to let them stand as I find them, requesting only that comrades will consider them as given in a sort of family confidence.]

Of my life, if life it may be called [continues the diary], in this place, I desire to make no record, the olim haec meminisse principle having no application here. Let the waters of oblivion cover it forever, if I am ever again a free man. To lie a crippled and helpless butt for the exulting Philistine and his women ten thousand times worse than himself, while such tremendous history is being made of which we can only guess at the reality, is a living death. And with such a companion! What is happening behind the impenetrable curtain between us and the North? Until the news that God has abdicated and Satan reigns is confirmed beyond a peradventure, so long will I believe that the right will triumph in the end. But where the end may be, this year or twenty hence, quien sabe?

Of my own chances for life and liberty, I cannot even guess. The blackness of darkness surrounds me on every hand, with no perceptible ray or glimmer from any quarter, as yet. But, doubtless, many a man who thinks he sees his path of life stretching away in far perspective is really as blind as I, and can discern no further beyond his nose. When the tide of war shall turn, as turn it will, what will be done with us? where shall I be,—here or in the Libby? Well, each place has its merits: here, enough to eat and no bracelets; there, the company of gentlemen. Oh Harry Russell! if you and I were together to cheer each other with regimental chat, or gallant Major Jim, sans peur et sans reproche, in your company I could suffer and be strong unto the end. But I fear that, through desperate wounds, his mortal body has had no longer strength to retain the soul of one of the bravest Christian gentlemen that ever drew sword for the right since the world began.

And Stephen, my friend, man of culture, reading, and intellect, whose only complaint of camp life was the loss of time and opportunity for the growth of mind,—that such lights should be forever extinguished by the bullets of men so few degrees above the brute level, saddens the soul. And shall all this have been in vain? Answer, freemen and gentlemen of the North, with unborn generations waiting: to bless or curse your memory,—answer now!

[The above allusion to “no bracelets” refers to the assertion of a Richmond paper, immediately communicated to us by way of cheering our spirits, that Pope’s officers, on arriving at the Libby, had all been handcuffed. But, although this proved to be erroneous, yet my own boast of no bracelets in the hospital was somewhat premature, as the following incident will show. One evening after supper, just as a half-drunk rebel officer had become so abusive to us that I almost expected the cowardice of a blow, entered the sergeant of the guard, who put a stop to that fun, but, to our great disgust, after the officer had gone, produced a pair of handcuffs, which he informed us he was ordered to apply to “that Yankee,” indicating Captain Bush of the Twenty-eighth New York, who, being wounded in the arm, was walking up and down the room, which no one else was able to do. (This officer, by the way, had voluntarily accompanied his regiment into action, armed with a cane, being under arrest and deprived of his sword.) His wound was severe, and the surgeon had expressed doubts of saving the arm. We all remonstrated against the barbarity of handcuffing the only man whom it would really hurt. No use: he had got his orders, and on went the irons. Bush didn’t say a word, but, after the sergeant had gone, with a sharp stick which his neighbor whittled out for him, and a piece of string poked into the lock of the handcuff, succeeding in pulling back the catch, and slipped one wrist out. The other, he didn’t mind. Before the ward surgeon came round the next morning, he slipped it in again. The surgeon was indignant,—not at the barbarity, but at the interference with his case,—and off he rushed to the surgeon in command, to have the handcuffs removed. But all he obtained was an order that Bush be sent to Richmond, handcuffs and all. We heard, however, that the ward surgeon had them removed as soon as Bush was clear of the hospital yard.

The story we heard, probably true, was that Hay, the medical director in command, reading the account of the Richmond handcuffing, one night when he was tight, was fired with the idea of emulating such a noble example, and ordered the bracelets to be applied at once to any Yankee