I went back to the cabin of the hospital boat and had my supper. After changing my clothes I sat down on a divan, feeling almost too weak and exhausted to stir. A chaplain came on the boat, inquiring for me. When he met me he seized my hand and began to bellow. I have never heard anything like it. When I saw him, I knew that he was crazy. The officers of the boat ran back to see what was the matter, and somehow the surgeon in charge managed to get him into a stateroom and lock him in, and place guards at the door, and the next day he was sent up with the other patients to St. Louis on that boat.
Early the next morning I was transferred with the little baggage I had to another boat set aside for hospital workers. My fine dress, which I had worn for the first time the day before, was wet and muddy, and I pitched it into the river.
Dr. Grinstead, now living in Washington City, was placed in charge of the boat.
The Confederates had retreated toward Corinth, Miss., but there was still firing in the distance. Early in the day I went up the steep bank and out on the battle-field.
The wounded had been gathered up as far as I could see, but many of the dead were still lying where they fell.
Not far from the landing there were some tents. In one of these tents a son of Sam Houston, of Texas, lay on the ground with others, the gray and the blue lying together. Young Houston was severely wounded in the thigh. I talked with him kindly of his grand, loyal father, and ministered to him as best I could. I saw him many times afterwards, the last time a prisoner at Camp Douglass, near Chicago. If this by any possibility passes under his notice, and he has not forgotten my treatment of him when he was a wounded prisoner, I will be glad to hear from him. I went toward a house on the right, but before I reached it I saw two men coming, carrying a wounded soldier.
They had made a seat by clasping their hands, and his arms were thrown about their necks. I went forward to meet them.
“Oh, set me down by that tree! I can go no farther,” he cried.
They carried him as tenderly as they could, and placed him between the great roots of a very large tree. His breast was bare, and the blood was slowly oozing out of a wound in his lungs.
“I am dying,” he said, “can’t somebody pray?” Both men were weeping. If he was not a brother, he was a friend; I answered promptly, “I can pray.” I knelt there on the damp ground, and taking one of his hands in my own, I asked in simple words the heavenly Father to forgive and bless. He responded to each petition. I kept on praying till he said, “The way is light now, I do not fear.” There was a little gasp, a shiver, and all was still. As I knelt there I closed his eyes and said,—