ts carrying on a stretcher a wounded Union soldier.
They halted as I approached, and rested the stretcher on the sidewalk.
An old man was with them, apparently about sixty years old, of small
stature and slight frame, and wearing the garb of a civilian. I stopped,
and had a brief conversation with one of the stretcher-bearers. He told
me that the soldier had been wounded in one of the recent assaults by
the Union troops on the defenses of Vicksburg, and, with others of our
wounded, had just arrived at Memphis on a hospital boat. That the old
gentleman present was the father of the wounded boy, and having learned
at his home in some northern State of his son being wounded, had
started to Vicksburg to care for him; that the boat on which he was
journeying had rounded in at the Memphis wharf next to the above
mentioned hospital boat, and that he happened to see his son in the act
of being carried ashore, and thereupon at once went to him, and was
going with him to a hospital in the city. But the boy was dying, and
that was the cause of the halt made by the stretcher-bearers. The
soldier was quite young, seemingly not more than eighteen years old. He
had an orange, which his father had given him, tightly gripped in his
right hand, which was lying across his breast. But, poor boy! it was
manifest that that orange would never be tasted by him, as the glaze of
death was then gathering on his eyes, and he was in a semi-unconscious
condition. And the poor old father was fluttering around the stretcher,
in an aimless, distracted manner, wanting to do something to help his
boy--but the time had come when nothing could be done. While thus
occupied I heard him say in a low, broken voice, "He is--the only
boy--I have." This was on one of the principal streets of the city, and
the sidewalks were thronged with people, soldiers and civilians,
rushing to and fro on their various errands,--and what was happening at
this stretcher excited no attention beyond careless, passing glances. A
common soldier was dying,--that was all, nothing but "a leaf in the
storm." But for some reason or other the incident impressed me most
sadly and painfully. I didn't wait for the end, but hurried
away,--tried to forget the scene, but couldn't.

On the evening of June 1st we filed on board the big, side-wheel
steamer "Luminary," which soon cast off from the wharf, and in company
with other transports crowded with soldiers, went steaming down the
Mississippi.