Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
History
Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber,
company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad
wound also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament.
I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, "Make your
own choice." I open'd at the close of one of the first books of the
evangelists, and read the chapters describing the latter hours of
Christ, and the scenes at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man
ask'd me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I
read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet
the tears were in his eyes. He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion. I said,
"Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the
same thing." He said, "It is my chief reliance." He talk'd of death, and
said he did not fear it. I said, "Why, Oscar, don't you think you will
get well?" He said, "I may, but it is not probable." He spoke calmly
of his condition. The wound was very bad, it discharg'd much. Then the
diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that he was even then the same
as dying. He behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave him
as I was about leaving he return'd fourfold. He gave me his mother's
address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany pest-office, Cattaraugus
county, N. Y. I had several such interviews with him. He died a few days
after the one just described.
HOME-MADE MUSIC
_August 8th_.--To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a
wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant
singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and
entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd halfway down and took a
seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly wounded in the
hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd much, but at that moment
in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turn'd
over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the
mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stept
round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat
down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a
young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and
join'd by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a
charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up
a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent
soldiers, young men, nurses, &c., with books in their hands, singing.
Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the
New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am not sure but I receiv'd as
much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from
the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers.
The men lying up and down the hospital, in their cots, (some badly
wounded--some never to rise thence,) the cots themselves, with their
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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