ewhere below
the heart, where the nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies
unconscious of itself until a great grief or a mastering anxiety
reaches it through all the non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary
impressions? I talked awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate,
feeble, but soldier-like and uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a
most excellent lady, a captain's wife, New England born, loyal as the
Liberty on a golden ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough
to have sat for that goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick
through the Rebel inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it
would be safe, to unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from
the pavement of the town.

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small
chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump,
I know he will forgive me if I confess that I could not help smiling
in the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man,
he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his
acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.
He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him
querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in
a thin voice, with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone
can command. He was starving,--he could not get what he wanted to eat.
He was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial
containing three thimblefuls--of brandy,--his whole stock of that
encouraging article. Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and
afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants. Feed this poor
gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him,
nor he himself. We are all egotists in sickness and debility. An
animal has been defined as "a stomach ministered to by organs;" and the
greatest man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of
fever and starvation.

James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a
bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey
as far as Middletown. As we were about starting from the front of the
United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed
a wish to be allowed to share our conveyance. I looked at them and
convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor
deserters, nor camp-followers,