have made no distinction
between age and youth. Every conceivable wound that iron and lead can
make, blunt or sharp, bullet, ball and shell, piercing, bruising,
tearing, was there; sometimes so light that a bandage and cold water
would restore the soldier to the ranks again; sometimes so severe that
the poor victim in his hopeless pain, remedy-less save by the only
panacea for all mortal suffering, invoked that. The men are generally
cheerful, and even those with frightful wounds, often are talking with
animated faces of nothing but the battle and the victory. But some are
downcast, their faces distorted with pain. Some have undergone the
surgeon's work; some, like men at a ticket office, await impatiently
their turn to have an arm or a leg cut off. Some walk about with an arm
in a sling; some sit idly upon the ground; some lie at full length upon
a little straw, or a blanket, with their brawny, now blood-stained,
limbs bare, and you may see where the minie bullet has struck or the
shell has torn. From a small round hole upon many a manly breast, the
red blood trickles, but the pallid cheek, the hard-drawn breath and dim
closed eyes tell how near the source of life it has gone. The surgeons,
with coats off and sleeves rolled up, and the hospital attendants with
green bands upon their caps, are about their work; and their faces and
clothes are spattered with blood; and though they look weary and tired,
their work goes systematically and steadily on. How much and how long
they have worked, the piles of legs, arms, feet, hands, and fingers
about partially tell. Such sounds are heard sometimes--you would not
have heard them upon the field--as convince that bodies, bones, sinews
and muscles are not made of insensible stone. Near by appear a row of
small fresh mounds, placed side by side. They were not there day before
yesterday. They will become more numerous every day.

Such things I saw as I rode along. At last I found the Generals. Gen.
Gibbon was sitting on a chair that had been borrowed somewhere, with his
wounded shoulder bare, and an attendant was bathing it with cold water.
Gen. Hancock was near by in an ambulance. They were at the tents of the
Second Corps hospitals, which were on Rock Run. As I approached Gen.
Gibbon, when he saw me, he began to hurrah and wave his right hand. He
had heard the result. I said: "O, General, long and well may you
wave"--and he shook me warmly by the hand. Gen. Gibbon was struck by a