The Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

at my bed, when this little
talk occurred.
"How are you, Lieutenant?"
"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except to
pain."
"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,--such will you be if
you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
eternity, all of you will be as that hand,--knowing pain only."
I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We
have none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."
I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In about
an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me that
the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say endured--was
so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of parting with a

tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief preparations were
made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as must forever be
inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of torture like
that which I had suffered.
I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the knife, I
asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the person
questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain, and
here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,--slept the sleep of the just, or,
better, of the painless. From this time forward, I was free from
neuralgia; but at a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to
mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.
It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous
prison life in the South. In the early part of August, 1863, I was
exchanged, and, after the usual thirty days' furlough, returned to my
regiment a captain.
On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga,
in which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own
share in this contest is, as it were, burnt into my memory with every
least detail. It was about six P. M., when we found ourselves in line,
under cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a
gentle slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and
crowned with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space, and
take the fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like
movement on its flank.

Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think,
was common in many fights,--that the enemy had begun to bowl
round-shot at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the
valley in good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As
we climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At
this moment a battery opened on our left,--the shots crossing our heads
obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I
can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red
flashes,--the long, wavering line,--the sky blue above,--the trodden
furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed,
and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred,
if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock
which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus
intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
When I awakened, I was lying under a