ou don't say it's serious?" was the reply.

"Serious! Why, you're shot through the stomach. You won't live over the
day."

Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. He said, "Anybody
got a pipe?" Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck
a light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently
the doctor came to him again, and asked him what he could do for him.

"Send me a drink of Bourbon."

"Anything else?"

"No."

As the doctor left him, he called him back. "It's a little rough, doc,
isn't it?"

No more passed, and I saw this man no longer. Another set of doctors
were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after
a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelled the familiar odor of
chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees
began to move around from left to right, faster and faster; then a
universal grayness came before me,--and I recall nothing further until I
awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity
in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left
leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding
myself too weak, hailed an attendant. "Just rub my left calf," said I,
"if you please."

"Calf?" said he. "You ain't none. It's took off."

"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."

"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."

As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.

"That will do," said I, faintly.

A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where
I filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
severely wounded officers. After my third week an epidemic of hospital
gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
Then an inspector came, and we were transferred at once to the open air,
and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining arm,
which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, ble