Does it seem to you that this was exceptional, dear reader?  Ah! no; in the wards outside, where lay hundreds of private soldiers, without the pride of rank to sustain them, only their simple, noble manhood, I daily witnessed such scenes.  The courage and daring of our soldiers have won full appreciation from the whole world.  Of their patient endurance, I was for four years a constant witness, and I declare that it was sublime beyond conception.  I cannot remember the name of the heroic officer whose wound I have described.  I remember, however, that Dr. Jackson treated it successfully, and that in the desperate days, towards the close of the war, the wounded man was again at his post.  I know not whether he fell in battle or if he still lives bearing that horrible scar.  Captain Weller, of Louisville, Kentucky, was also an inmate of the same ward.  My remembrance of him is that he also was badly wounded.  I also recollect that he was a great favorite with his comrades in the ward, who spoke enthusiastically of his “record.”  He was never gay like the others, but self-contained and reticent, and frequently grave and sad, as became an exile from “the old Kentucky home.”  My cares were at this time of constant skirmishing, greatly increased by anxiety for my husband.

He had at the battle of New Hope Church, while carrying ammunition from the caisson to the gun, received a slight wound in the left foot, but did not consider it of sufficient importance to cause him to leave his command.  Later, however, he succumbed to dysentery, and after the battle of Jonesboro’, although having served his gun to the last, he was utterly overcome, and fell by the road-side.  The last ambulance picked him up, and he was sent to Newnan, as all supposed, to die.  Had I not been in a position to give him every advantage and excellent nursing he must have died.  Even with this, the disease was only arrested, not cured, and for years after the war still clung about him.  Under Providence, his life was saved at that time.  This one blessing seemed to me a full recompense for all I had hitherto encountered, and a thorough justification of my persistence in the course I marked out for myself at the beginning of the war.  Various “affairs” continued to employ the soldiers at the front; in all of these our losses were comparatively small.  I never saw the soldiers in better spirits.  There was little if any “shirking.”  As soon as—­almost before—­they were recovered they cheerfully reported for duty.  The “expediency” of Johnston’s retreat was freely discussed.  All seemed to feel that the enemy was being drawn away from his base of supplies into a strange country, where he would be trapped at last, and to feel sure that it was “all right.”  “Let old Joe alone, he knows what he is about,” and on every hand expressions of strong affection and thorough confidence.  The army was certainly far from being “demoralized,” as General Hood must have discovered, when, immediately afterward,