real New England
country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."

Another extract from a letter to his mother in April, 1864:--

"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."

[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
air and sunshine.

When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and