and observed the varying effect produced on the
different members, officers and men. To some it came as relief after
long suspense, while others seemed hopelessly cast down and dejected.
Orders to prepare to move soon followed, and our march to and through
Richmond began with only two of our four guns, the other two being left
behind for want of horses.

We reached the city shortly before midnight, and, with Estill Waddell,
of our battalion, I passed by the home of some friends, who, we found,
had retired for the night. In response to my call, the head of the house
appeared at an upper window. I had with me the few valuables I
possessed, among them the brass button worn on my jacket and indented by
the shell at second Cold Harbor. These I tossed into the yard, with the
request that he would keep them for me. And, some months after the war,
the package was sent to me in Lexington.

We could now see and realize what the evacuation of Richmond involved.
Waddell had learned that his brother James, adjutant of the
Twenty-fourth Virginia Infantry, had been wounded the day before at
Petersburg, and was in the Chimborazo Hospital. At this we soon
arrived, and entered a large apartment with low ceiling and brilliantly
lighted. On row after row of cots lay wounded men, utterly oblivious and
indifferent to the serious conditions that disturbed those of us who
realized what they were. Nurses and attendants were extremely scarce,
and as deep silence prevailed as if each cot contained a corpse.

After a search of a few moments Waddell recognized his brother in sound
sleep. His appearance for manly beauty, as we stood over him, surpassed
that of any figure I have ever seen. His slight, graceful form stretched
at full length, a snow-white forehead fringed with dark hair, and chin
resting on his chest, he lay like an artist's model rather than a
wounded warrior, and the smile with which his brown eyes opened at the
sound of his brother's voice betokened the awakening from a dream of
peace and home. On another cot, a few steps farther on, I recognized
John McClintic, of the Rockbridge Cavalry, and brother of my messmate.
He was a boy of seventeen, with his arm shattered at the shoulder. On
the cot next to him lay a man who was dying. McClintic and the others
near him who could make their wants known were almost famished for
water, a bucket of which, after much difficulty, we secured for them. On
the following day this young fellow, rat