In an old trunk, up in the garret where the family letters were deposited for more than half a century, I found the diary of a soldier, in which the following notes attracted my attention: “August 14, 1864. Yesterday was a terrible day for me. The battle at Deep Bottom, near Richmond, took the last of my messmates. Andrew Brown was wounded early in the engagement—shot through the thigh. Comrade Charles Pepperman assisted him to the rear. While they were gone, the man at my side, Amos Friedel was shot through the head and died instantly. Thus three of my messmates left my side within fifteen minutes. Pepperman joined the ranks an hour later, and a few minutes after was shot and fatally wounded. This morning Henry Traveler was found on the battle field, with his arm shattered horribly, and was taken to the hospital. “In noting these fatalities and injuries, I cannot help but recall Comrade Shoemaker, the first of my messmates to pass out. His was the most pitiable death of all. He died three months ago of nostalgia. This is simply a melancholy growing out of homesickness. Shoemaker had married a pretty girl only a few weeks before he enlisted and went to the front. The army lay in supine idleness for several weeks, and Shoemaker had nothing to do but brood over his separation from the one he loved so fondly. A deep melancholia settled down upon his soul and we could not awaken an interest in his heart. Hour after hour his mind dwelt upon the scenes of his Pennsylvania home, and his deserted wife’s sad face looked out of the shadows and smiled the lonely smile of a forsaken woman. “They took him to the hospital, but the doctors could find no organic disease in his body. He was simply dying of loneliness and a longing, longing to be with the people he loved. He was a large man, standing six feet in his bare feet, and this made his death all the more pathetic. We tried to get him a furlough and send him to his family at home, for thirty days, but the officers laughed at us, and said the man would come out of his melancholia in a few days and go to eating hard-tack. They were men without heart or sentiment, and they did not know the depth of Shoemaker’s gloom. “Three weeks after being taken to the hospital, he died, and was buried in Virginia, and the longing wife never saw his face again.