Mr. Mudge started at once to find the dead body of his son, and succeeded in reaching the Confederate lines, where they began to search for the body, which could not be found on the battlefield. The boy was at last discovered alive, lying neglected in the Confederate field hospital.
It was often impossible for the surgeons and detailed nurses to care for all the wounded, and so they gave their time to those having a chance of living, which poor Mudge certainly did not seem to have. The gunshot wound had caused his face to turn quite black, so that his father, in hunting among the hopelessly wounded, did not recognize him; but the boy knew his father’s voice and called out, and so was rescued from a slow death. Mudge told his story to me essentially as follows:
WILLIAM MUDGE
“I lay all night on the field, drenched by a shower (which often happens after a battle). In the morning Confederate soldiers were detailed to bury the dead, and were preparing to carry me to the open trench near by. When I spoke to them feebly they gave me water from a canteen, and left me, feeling sure I would die before morning. Imagine what a night that must have been! The brushwood near where I was lying took fire, and I narrowly escaped being burned to death. When the men came on the third day to bury the dead, I had become so weak I could only move my little finger to show life. The Johnnies then said—‘This fellow is good stuff, let’s take him in.’”
It was easy for the father to get permission to take away this apparently dying prisoner. Going by easy stages to Washington, it was found on examination that the boy was permanently blind and had lost an eye. His skull was said to have been fractured so that there were not two inches of solid cranium, the jaw bones and teeth were destroyed.
Surgeons with much skill trepanned a hole in the skull with a silver plate, and with the assistance of skilled dentists, they manufactured jaw bones and teeth. They had fitted him with a glass eye, and green glasses to cover the defects, so that some months after, when I met him at the New England Rooms, he had the appearance of a well-dressed, refined, though rather frail blind man.
During the fair I had taken care of him and walked him about the great halls explaining many things that he could not, of course, see or understand, and he came to consider my opinions final. He carried to his home in Lynn about three hundred dollars from the fair subscription and other benevolent sources.
A few weeks later his mother wrote me, saying that William had become so unhappy and irritable that they could not manage him, and he had so often said that if Miss Smith were there, she would know what would make him more contented. Mrs. Mudge begged me to come, if only for a short visit. This I could not well refuse; and I found a pleasant refined family in a comfortable home of their own. Mr. Mudge, William’s father, was a gentleman and a bank president. I will digress here for a few words on an observation, quite surprising to me. Early on Sunday morning I saw Mr. Mudge and several other gentlemen coming up the street, each carrying a newspaper and two large bundles. This seemed quite strange, but was explained at breakfast by the inevitable down-east baked beans in a crock, and a loaf of hot brown bread which had been at the bake shop all night. It was the custom for gentlemen to bring them home on Sunday morning. Certainly they were delicious. Being of New York blood, I was not “au fait” on the customs regarding baked beans and brown bread.
William’s mother told me that he was almost transformed when under my influence. His was a restless nervous temperament, and this, added to his blindness, made life miserable. His fastidious tastes and conventionality continued. One Sunday, in church, he whispered, “Is my back hair parted straight?”—this being the style for men at that time. And again, “Am I holding my prayer-book right side up?” He needed occupation; but what could the blind boy do?