And there was Bingham, whom I shall never forget, a religious fellow who sung psalms of an evening, and induced the boys to make up money enough for him to go home on—although it was subsequently ascertained that he had plenty of money himself at the time. He was the only mean fellow I remember; but he had lost a leg in the service of his country, and I will spare him. One evening, a few weeks after I had been admitted to the hospital, a man named Thomas, who had been absent for ten days, returned and occupied a bed by the side of mine. He was a soldier who had been slightly wounded, and was doing guard duty at the hospital. He had been absent without leave, had been drinking all that time, and now returned in a very nervous and shattered state of body, and an uneasy and gloomy frame of mind. To add to his trepidation, he was apprehensive that he had been marked as a deserter, during his absence; and he retired to bed in uncommonly low spirits. I was just falling asleep, and every thing was quiet about the hospital, when Mr. Thomas suddenly startled me by springing up to a sitting posture in his bed, and crying out: “No you don’t! I’ll die first! I won’t be taken! You want to try me for a deserter and shoot me with twelve muskets! I tell you, I’ll not be taken!” “What’s the matter, Thomas?” I asked in alarm. “Matter? Why, don’t you see? There’s a whole company of soldiers surrounding the house, and they want to take me for a deserter! Look!” he exclaimed wildly, pointing through the window. “Don’t you see them?” “No, no,” I replied, perceiving that he was afflicted with a mild attack of the _horrors_. “There are no soldiers there. Lie down!” “Yes, there are!” he exclaimed, springing out upon the floor. “See! See! Twenty! Thirty! Forty! Fifty!—I’ll cut their hearts out if they try to take me! I will!”—— ——Here he swore a profane oath. I confess that I felt rather uneasy in the presence of this madman, but calming my fears, I said, coaxingly: “Come, now, Thomas, there’s no one after you. Don’t act so foolishly! Do lie down and go to sleep!” “But I see them! They are down there by that car, now. Do you see? O, I’m watching them! They’ll be sharp if they take me alive!” The terminus of the Market Street and West Philadelphia horse railway is at the building then used as a hospital, and a car arrived and departed every forty minutes till eleven o’clock. At this time, there was one standing some fifty yards from the building, awaiting its time to depart for the depot in West Philadelphia. “Yes, I do see them now,” I said, thinking it better to humor him; “but it is very plain they have concluded you are not here, for they are getting on that car to leave.” “O, I know their tricks!” he replied, quickly. “They only want to make me think they are gone, so that I will go to sleep, and they can come and take me easily. But they don’t catch me that way! I should think not! Ha! Ha! Ha!”