Such had been my thoughts; but now, when Dr. Frost had brought before me the probability of my being already reported absent without leave, and the consequent possibility of being charged with desertion, I decided at once that I should go with Captain Haskell. Whatever I might once have been, and whatever I might yet become, I was not and never should be a deserter.
When I next saw Dr. Frost I asked him when I should be strong enough for duty.
"You are fit for duty now," said he; "that is, you are strong enough to march in case the army should move. I do not intend, however, to let you go at once, unless there should be a movement; in that case I could not well keep you any longer."
I replied that if I was strong enough to do duty, I did not wish to delay. To this he responded that he would ask Captain Haskell to enroll me in his company at once, but to consider me on the sick list for a few days, in order that I might accustom myself gradually to new conditions.
XXII
COMPANY H
"In strange eyes
Have made me not a stranger; to the mind
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise;
Nor is it hard to make, nor hard to find
A country with--ay, or without mankind."--BYRON.
In the afternoon of the day in which occurred the conversation recounted above, I was advised by the doctor to take a short walk.
From a hill just in rear of the hospital tents I could see northward and toward the east long lines of earthworks with tents and cannon, and rows of stacked muskets and all the appliances of war. The sight was new and strange. I had never before seen at one time more than a battalion of soldiers; now here was an army into which I had been suddenly thrust as a part of it, without experience of any sort and without knowledge of anybody in it except two or three persons whom, three days before, I had never heard of. The worthiness of the cause for which this great army had been created to fight, was not entirely clear to me; it is true that I appreciated the fact that in former days, before my misfortune had deprived me of data upon which to reason, I had decided my duty as to that cause; yet it now appealed to me so little, that I was conscious of struggling to rise above indifference. I reproached myself for lack of patriotism. I had read the morning's Dispatch and had been shocked at the relation of some harrowing details of pillage and barbarity on the part of the Yankees; yet I felt nothing of individual anger against the wretches when I condemned such conduct, and my judgment told me that my passionless indignation ought to be hot. But this peculiarity seemed so unimportant in comparison with the greater one which marked me, that it gave me no concern.