nd the rebel sharpshooters were
peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"

In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."

As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
regular Carolina or Virginia planter."

The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."

Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--

"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I to