THREE YOUNG MEN'S DEATHS
_December 20_.--Somehow I got thinking to-day of young men's
deaths--not at all sadly or sentimentally, but gravely, realistically,
perhaps a little artistically. Let me give the following three cases
from budgets of personal memoranda, which I have been turning over,
alone in my room, and resuming and dwelling on, this rainy afternoon.
Who is there to whom the theme does not come home? Then I don't know
how it may be to others, but to me not only is there nothing gloomy or
depressing in such cases--on the contrary, as reminiscences, I find
them soothing, bracing, tonic.
ERASTUS HASKELL.--[I just transcribe verbatim from a letter written
by myself in one of the army hospitals, 16 years ago, during the
secession war.] _Washington, July 28, 1863._--Dear M.,--I am writing
this in the hospital, sitting by the side of a soldier, I do not
expect to last many hours. His fate has been a hard one--he seems to
be only about 19 or 20--Erastus Haskell, company K, 141st N. Y.--has
been out about a year, and sick or half-sick more than half that
time--has been down on the peninsula--was detail'd to go in the band
as fifer-boy. While sick, the surgeon told him to keep up with the
rest--(probably work'd and march'd too long.) He is a shy, and seems
to me a very sensible boy--has fine manners--never complains--was sick
down on the peninsula in an old storehouse--typhoid fever. The
first week this July was brought up here--journey very bad, no
accommodations, no nourishment, nothing but hard jolting, and exposure
enough to make a well man sick; (these fearful journeys do the job for
many)--arrived here July 11th--a silent dark-skinn'd Spanish-looking
youth, with large very dark blue eyes, peculiar looking.
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