“It is time to get up, grandpa,” she said.
“Wh—where am I? What has happened?” Then, as his mind realized the truth, he said, “Oh, Nelly, Nelly, how I have suffered.”
“How, grandpa?”
“I—I—but never mind now, my dear; I will tell you after awhile. Run down-stairs while I prepare for breakfast. But, Nelly, let me tell you not to believe what I said to you about the glories of the past; it was not true, my child, not true. I have learned better; I talked to you like a foolish old man. Thank God, my dear, that you live late in the world’s history. No man is more unwise or more ungrateful than he who finds delight in playing the part of An Old Fogy.”
MAJOR DUNWOODY’S LEG,
AND THE GREAT POTTAWATOMIE CLAIM.
At Gettysburg, on the afternoon of the third day of July, 1863, Major Henry G. Dunwoody, of the 483d Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, while leading his men into action, was struck by a shell from a Confederate battery. A moment later he was lying upon the ground unconscious, and beside him lay his left leg, severed from his body several inches above the knee.
When the fight was over for the day, the wounded Major was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. A day or two later, the fever having left him, he lay in bed feeling tolerably comfortable. His mind not unnaturally turned to consideration of his wound. He began to think how very inconvenient it would be to have to hop about on one leg during the remainder of his life, and he couldn’t help wondering where his leg was and what would be its fate. He suspected they would bury it; and the notion seemed an unpleasant one.
“I don’t like the idea of being partially interred,” he said; “and while I am alive, too. I am too young a man by half a century to have one foot in the grave.”