not sure he was a
preacher,--who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us, or
write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little
talk occurred.

"How are you, Lieutenant?"

"O," said I, "as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except
to pain."

"Ah," said he, "such and thus will the wicked be,--such will you be if
you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all
eternity, all of you will be as that hand,--knowing pain only."

I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling
horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke,
the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching,
burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files.
When the doctor came, I begged for morphia. He said gravely: "We have
none. You know you don't allow it to pass the lines."

I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In
about an hour, Dr. Wilson came back with two aids, and explained to me
that the bone was so broken as to make it hopeless to save it, and that,
besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had
thought of this before, but the anguish I felt--I cannot say
endured--was so awful, that I made no more of losing the limb than of
parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief
preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as
must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of
torture like that which I had suffered.

I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the
left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the
knife, I asked: "Who is to give me the ether?" "We have none," said the
person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.

I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe; but it was
insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six
weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the
second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play
through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was
followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were
brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I
said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain,
and here am I. How queer!" Then I slept,--slept the sleep of the just,
or, better, of