beginning of the war he enlisted. He was in Colonel Baker's regiment on
the bloody day of Ball's Bluff, and was one of the gallant handful of
men who rescued from the enemy the body of their slain commander. He
was one of the multitude who swam the Potomac amid a pattering rain of
bullets, and walked barefoot seven miles to camp, The first man that
met him there offered him whiskey, Mistaken kindness! Senseless offer!
A man who is sinking with fatigue wants rest, not stimulation; sleep,
not excitement. "Don't offer me _that_," he gasped, shuddering. "I
dread that more than bullets." Instead of the whiskey, he took twelve
hours' sleep, and consequently awoke refreshed, and ready for another
day's hard service. At Antietam he had the glory and high privilege of
giving life for mankind. A bullet through the brain sent him to heaven,
and stretched his body on the field in painless and eternal sleep. It
lies now in a cemetery near his native city; a monument covers it; and
all who were connected with him are proud to point to his grave and
claim him for their own. What a contrast between dying so, and being
killed in a motiveless street-fight by a savage blow on the head with a
speaking-trumpet!
Perhaps, long as this article already is, I may venture to give, with
the utmost possible brevity, one more of the many remarkable cases with
which I became acquainted at the Asylum.
One Sunday morning, a loud ringing of the front-door bell of the Home
in Boston induced Dr. Day himself to answer the summons. He found a man
at the door who was in the most complete state of dilapidation that can
be imagined,--ragged, dirty, his hat awry, torn and bent, spectacles
with one eye gone and the other cocked out of place, the perfect
picture of a drunken sot who had slept among the barrels and
cotton-bales for six months. He was such a person as we thoughtless
fools roar at in the theatre sometimes, about 10.30 P.M., and who makes
the lives of sundry children and one woman a long and hopeless tragedy
up in some dismal garret, or down in some pestilential cellar.
"What can I do for you?" inquired the superintendent.
"My name is A. B----; will you take me in?"
"Have you a letter of introduction from any one?"
"No."
"We must have something of the kind; do you know any one in Boston?"
"Yes; there is Dr. Kirk; _I've preached in his church_; he ought to
know me; I'll see if he does."
In a few minutes he returned, bearing a note from that distinguished
clergyman, saying that he thought he knew the man; and upon this he was
admitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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