Passages from an Old Volume of Life | Page 9

against
a claim, and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a movement
onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory to serve
its mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less than
we think. Our bullets and cannonballs have lengthened into bolts like
those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with
weapons, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a
newly invented head-gear as old as the days of the Pyramids.
Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and,
we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our
narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and
shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded
by the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for.
For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready,
if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this world, that
the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country whose
natural condition shall be peace, and not a broken province which must
live under the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war
and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this sacrifice,
battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object must be won.
Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to mortals. We are
not abruptly asked to give up all that we most care for, in view of the
momentous issues before us. Perhaps we shall never be asked to give
up all, but we have already been called upon to part with much that is
dear to us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. The
time may come when even the cheap public print shall be a burden our
means cannot support, and we can only listen in the square that was

once the marketplace to the voices of those who proclaim defeat or
victory. Then there will be only our daily food left. When we have
nothing to read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to
offer a compromise. At present we have all that nature absolutely
demands,--we can live on bread and the newspaper.

MY HUNT AFTER "THE CAPTAIN."
In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam,
my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a
telegraphic messenger. The air had been heavy all day with rumors of
battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with
throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might
bring.
We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted. I took the
envelope from his hand, opened it, and read:
HAGERSTOWN 17th
To_________ H ____
Capt H____ wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at
Keedysville
WILLIAM G. LEDUC
Through the neck,--no bullet left in wound. Windpipe, food-pipe,
carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable vessels, a
great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,-- ought
to kill at once, if at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought
mortal,--which was it? The first; that is better than the second would
be.--"Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland." Leduc?
Leduc? Don't remember that name. The boy is waiting for his money. A
dollar and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen cents? Don't keep
that boy waiting,--how do we know what messages he has got to carry?

The boy had another message to carry. It was to the father of
Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was
grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough,
a town a few miles this side of Keedysville. This I learned the next
morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central Telegraph
Office.
Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the
quarter past two o'clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an
accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or
pressing emergency. I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the
cars. I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose
society would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my
own, and whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim.
It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished apart,
that I mean to give my "Atlantic" readers an account. They must let me
tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that
interested or amused me, and