face ripped by
a sabre, or his head smashed with a fragment of shell. After awhile the
wound was regarded as a practical benefit. It secured a furlough of
indefinite length, good eating, the attention and admiration of the
fair, and, if permanently disabling, a discharge. Wisdom, born of
experience, soon taught all hands better sense, and the fences and trees
and ditches and rocks became valuable, and eagerly sought after when
"the music" of "minie" and the roar of the "Napoleon" twelve-pounders
was heard. Death on the field, glorious first and last, was dared for
duty's sake, but the good soldier learned to guard his life, and yield
it only at the call of duty.

Only the wisest men, those who had seen war before, imagined that the
war would last more than a few months. The young volunteers thought one
good battle would settle the whole matter; and, indeed, after "first
Manassas" many thought they might as well go home! The whole North was
frightened, and no more armies would dare assail the soil of Old
Virginia. Colonels and brigadiers, with flesh wounds not worthy of
notice, rushed to Richmond to report the victory and the end of the war!
They had "seen sights" in the way of wounded and killed, plunder, etc.,
and according to their views, no sane people would try again to conquer
the heroes of that remarkable day.

The newspaper men delighted in telling the soldiers that the Yankees
were a diminutive race, of feeble constitution, timid as hares, with no
enthusiasm, and that they would perish in short order under the glow of
our southern sun. Any one who has seen a regiment from Ohio or Maine
knows how true these statements were. And besides, the newspapers did
not mention the English, Irish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swiss,
Portuguese, and negroes, who were to swell the numbers of the enemy, and
as our army grew less make his larger. True, there was not much fight in
all this rubbish, but they answered well enough for drivers of wagons
and ambulances, guarding stores and lines of communication, and doing
all sorts of duty, while the good material was doing the fighting.
Sherman's army, marching through Richmond after the surrender of Lee and
Johnston, seemed to be composed of a race of giants, well-fed and
well-clad.

[Illustration: AN EARLY HERO. 1861.]

Many feared the war would end before they would have a fair chance to
"make a record," and that when "the cruel war was over" they would have
to sit by