I told you, didn’t I, how I went up to the Soldiers’ Home and how we walked out that night and sat and talked till almost mornin’? ’Twas a clear night with lots of stars and Washington looked mighty pretty lyin’ there still and white. Mr. Lincoln pointed out the Capitol and the White House and Arlington and the Long Bridge, showin’ me the lay of the land. “And it’s nuthin’ but one big hospital, Billy,” he said after a while. “You wouldn’t think, would you, lookin’ down on it so peaceful and quiet, that there’s 50,000 sick and wounded soldiers there? Only Almighty God knows how many of ’em are dyin’ this minute; only Almighty God knows how many are sufferin’ so they’re prayin’ to die. They are comin’ to us every day now--have been ever since the Wilderness, 50,000 here and 150,000 scattered over the country. There’s a crawlin’ line of sick and wounded all the way from here to Petersburg to-night. There’s a line, from Georgia to Chattanooga--Sherman’s men. You can’t put your finger on a spot in the whole North that ain’t got a crippled or fever-struck soldier in it. There were days in May, just after the Wilderness, when Mary and I used to drive the carriage along lines of ambulances which stretched from the docks to the hospitals, one, two miles. It was a thing to tear your heart out to see them. They brought them from the field just as they picked them up, with horrible, gaping, undressed wounds, blood and dust and powder caked over them--eaten by flies and mosquitoes. They’d been piled like cord wood on flat cars and transports. Sometimes they didn’t get a drink until they were distributed here. Often when it was cold they had no blanket, when it was hot they had no shade. That was nearly four months ago, and still they come. Night after night as I drive up here from the White House I pass twenty, thirty, forty ambulances in a row distributin’ the wounded and sick from Grant’s army. “Think what it means! It means that boys like you and me were, not so long ago, have stood up and shot each other down--have trampled over each other and have left each other wounded and bleeding on the ground, in the rain or the heat, nobody to give ’em a drink or to say a kind word. Nothing but darkness and blood and groans and torture. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s true. Boys from Illinois where I live, shootin’ boys from Kentucky where I was born! It’s only when I see them comin’ in I realize it--boat load after boat load, wagon load after wagon load. It seemed sometimes after Bull Run and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville if they didn’t stop unloadin’ ’em I’d go plumb crazy. But still they come, and only God knows when they’ll stop. They say hell’s like war, Billy. If ’tis,--I’m glad I ain’t Satan.”