“No, nor for boots either,” I replied.
“Why so?” he asked, with some curiosity.
“I buy neither boots nor shoes.”
“How then?”
“I buy only one.”
Thus, dear public, am I, John Smith, tormented for having sacrificed a leg for my country. How often have I felt that I would be far happier if I were still a mark for the bullets at Malvern Hill, Bull Run, or Antietam! This accursed quizzical disposition on the part of the public has made me feel, at times, that life was actually a burden to me!
One day I met an elderly lady in Philadelphia who stopped me on the street, asked a profusion of questions, and wound up by giving me an accurate history of her son. She said he had gone into the army, had been missing ever since a certain battle, and she feared he was no more. Ever after that, whenever we met—and it happened frequently—she would hail me, commence with, “I’ve never heard from my son yet!” and talk at me till I felt weak in the knee. At last, I met her one day, and pretending I did not see her, I was passing by, when I felt her grasp on my elbow, and was obliged to stop.
“My son’s dead,” she said. “I’ve heard from his officers, and they say he was killed.”
O, how I envied him! Sleeping peacefully in a quiet grave, somewhere, with nothing to trouble him, and no one to torment him with questions, he must have been happy compared with the wretched John Smith! The old lady began again to give me his full history, as she had related it to me many times before, while the cold perspiration started from my frame, and I felt as though death was not two doors from me.
Thus am I bored without mercy. No one spares me, except such as have been in the army themselves. Men, women, children, foreigners, fools and even negroes, subject me to this systematic torture.