ld shoulder a musket sooner than stay out
of the fight. Maurice Bernhiem, quartermaster-sergeant, was also brave
as the bravest. Whenever it was possible he also would join the ranks
and fight as desperately as any soldier. Both men were exempt from
field-service. Auerbach, the drummer of the Seventeenth, was also a
model soldier, always at his post. On the longest marches, in the
fiercest battles, whatever signal the commanding officer wished to
have transmitted by means of the drum, night or day, amid the smoke of
battle or the dust of the march, Auerbach was always on hand. The
members of the Seventeenth declared that they could never forget the
figure of the small Jewish drummer, his little cap shining out here
and there amid the thick smoke and under a rattling fire. Before
taking leave of this splendid regiment, I will give an incident of the
battle of Knoxville, also related to me by one of its members.

[1] Mr. Flynn is now pastor in charge of a Presbyterian Church
in New Orleans, and is as faithful a soldier of the cross as
once of the lost cause.

By some mismanagement, Longstreet's corps had no scaling-ladders, and
had to cut their way up the wall of the entrenchment by bayonets,
digging out step after step under a shower of hot water, stones, shot,
axes, etc. Some of the men actually got to the top, and, reaching
over, dragged the enemy over the walls. General Humphrey's brigade had
practically taken the fort. Their flag was flying from the walls,
about a hundred men having reached the top, where the color-bearer bad
planted his flag, when the staff was shot off about an inch above his
hand. The men were so mad at losing the flag, that they seized the
shells with fuses burning and hurled them back upon the enemy. Some of
the members of this gallant regiment were among the hundreds equally
brave who, after the battle of Chickamauga, became my patients.
Scattered all through the wards were dozens of Irishmen, whose awful
wounds scarcely sufficed to keep them in bed, so impatient were they
of restraint, and especially of inactivity,--so eager to be at the
front. Ever since the war I have kept in my heart a place sacred to
these generous exiles, who, in the very earliest days of the
Confederacy, flocked by thousands to her standard, _wearing the gray
as if it had been the green_, giving in defence of the land of their
adoption the might of stalwart arms, unfaltering courage, and the
earnest devotio