No formal general's report, nor book in the
library, norcolumn in the paper, embalms the bravest, north or south,
east or west. Unnamed, unknown, remain, and still remain, the bravest
soldiers. Our manliest--our boys--our hardy darlings; no picture gives
them. Likely, the typic one of them (standing, no doubt, for hundreds,
thousands,) crawls aside to some bush-clump, or ferny tuft, on
receiving his death-shot--there sheltering a little while, soaking
roots, grass and soil, with red blood--the battle advances, retreats,
flits from the scene, sweeps by--and there, haply with pain and
suffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed,) the last lethargy
winds like a serpent round him--the eyes glaze in death----none
recks--perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search
not the secluded spot--and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier
crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown.
SOME SPECIMEN CASES
_June 18th_.--In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, company M,
4th New York cavalry--a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful
physical manliness--shot through the lungs--inevitably dying--came
over to this country from Ireland to enlist--has not a single friend
or acquaintance here--is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is
the sleep of death)--has a bullet-hole straight through the lung. I
saw Tom when first brought here, three days since, and didn't suppose
he could live twelve hours--(yet he looks well enough in the face to
a casual observer.
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