Probably another
point, too, how we give long preparations for some object, planning
and delving and fashioning, and then, when the actual hour for doing
arrives, find ourselves still quite unprepared, and tumble the thing
together, letting hurry and crudeness tell the story better than
fine work. At any rate I obey my happy hour's command, which seems
curiously imperative. May be, if I don't do anything else, I shall
send out the most wayward, spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed.
Note:
[1] The pages from 1 to 15 are nearly verbatim an off-hand letter of
mine in January, 1882, to an insisting friend. Following, I give some
gloomy experiences. The war of attempted secession has, of course,
been the distinguishing event of my time. I commenced at the close of
1862, and continued steadily through '63, '64 and '65, to visit the
sick and wounded of the army, both on the field and in the hospitals
in and around Washington city. From the first I kept little note-books
for impromptu jottings in pencil to refresh my memory of names and
circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd
cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and not
seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from
narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending
somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left,
forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of
associations never to be possibly said or sung.
Pages:
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