“And did you imagine,” said I, “that such a rebellion could be carried on without affecting and injuring every nerve and fibre of the whole country? Do you not see that it is a moral Pyæmia--a poisoning of the veins of the entire nation? And although we trust the disease may be arrested ere it destroy national existence, still the system suffers throughout; and the result must be vapid volumes, paltry pictures, and silly statements of so-called science. But granting that it is to be deplored--that the military mind should take the place of the literary one, I must break a lance with you on the question whether, in so doing, ‘poetry, refined taste, and love for the beautiful’ must of necessity be lost. I will not grant it. At the opening of the war I thought, with you, that the finer feelings of our nature were exclusively the property of the higher classes; but two years’ experience in a military hospital, where men appear mentally as well as physically in “undress uniform,” has shown me the utter fallacy of such a theory; and now I do not hesitate to affirm that I have seen there as much unwritten poetry, tender feeling, aye, and love for the beautiful, as I have ever witnessed among the same number of people gathered together at any time, or in any place.” Sickly sentimentality, whether shown in words or actions, for “our poor, suffering soldiers,” is certainly a thing to be much deprecated; but, on the other hand, is not a hard, gregarious view of them to be equally avoided? I do not ask to raise them to _more_, but not to sink them to _less_ than men. Our army is no “Corporation without a soul;” it is a mass of units--a collection of beating hearts, throbbing pulses, and straining nerves, which ask and need our love and sympathy, and surely they should not ask in vain. I have anticipated your question, dear reader, “Why bore us with your conversation with your friend?” Simply because that conversation has led to the further bore of this volume. These notes were jotted down as the incidents occurred; they are a simple statement of facts simply stated. The only object of collecting them at present is that, as my friend’s feeling appears to be a general one, it seemed possible that these instances might prove, in some small degree, the converse of the proposition; and, although at any other time quite unworthy of publication, the intense and absorbing desire, at present, to obtain particulars of even the most trifling circumstances connected with the war, has led me to hope that they may not be wholly without interest.