“I stoop not to despair;
     For I have battled with mine agony,
     And made me wings wherewith to overfly
     The narrow circus of my dungeon wall.”—­BYRON.

On the next day, the 10th, we marched through Culpeper.  I recognized the place; I had straggled through it on the road to Gettysburg.  Again we went into bivouac early.

That afternoon I again thought of Dr. Frost’s advice to hold to any clew I should ever get and work it out; I had a clew:  I wondered how I could make a step toward an end.

To recover a lost name seemed difficult.  The doctor had said will was required.  My will was good.  I began with the purpose of thinking all names that I could recall.  My list was limited.  Naturally my mind went over the roll of Company H, which, from having heard so often, I knew by heart.  Adams, Bell, Bellot, and so on; the work brought an idea.  I remembered hearing some one say that a forgotten name might be recovered with the systematic use of the alphabet.  I wondered why I had not thought at once of this.  I felt a great sense of relief.  I now had a purpose and a plan.

At once I began to go through the A-b’s.  The first name I could get was Abbey; the next, Abbott, and so on, through all names built upon the letter A. I knew nobody by such names.  My lost name might be one of these, but it did not seem to be, and I had nothing to rely upon except the hope that the real name, when found, would kindle at its touch a spark in my memory.  Finally all the A’s were exhausted—­nothing.

Then I took up regularly and patiently the B’s.  They resulted in nothing.  I tried C, both hard and soft, thinking intently whether the sound awoke any response in my brain.

I abandoned the soft C, but hard C did not sound impossible; I stored it up for future examination.

Then I went through D and E, and so on down to G, which I separated into two sounds, as I had already done with C, soft and hard.  This examination resulted in my putting hard G alongside of hard C.

H, I, and J were examined with like result—­nothing.

The K was at once given a place with the preferred letters.

L, M, N, O were speedily rejected.

At P I halted long, and at last decided to hold it in reserve, but not to give it equal rank with the others.

Q gave me little trouble.  I ran down all possible names in Q-u, and rejected all.

The remainder of the letters were examined and discarded.

In order of seniority I now had the following initial letters:  C hard, G hard, and K, with P a possibility.

It was now very late, but I could not sleep.  My mind was active, though I found to my surprise that it was more nearly calm than it had been for days.  I knew that I ought to sleep, but I seemed on track of discovery.  It had taken me hours of unremitting labour to get where I was,—­monotonous but interesting labour—­and it would likely take me hours more to advance a single step farther.