A man has come into this room, wounded at Port Republic, First Sergeant Seventh Ohio, the most awful specimen of emaciation that I ever saw or would have believed consistent with the vital spark. The articulation of each joint, covered only by the tense polished skin, is as distinct as in a skeleton.
Another horror: a rebel deserter, who was put in with the Yankees in order to be under guard, has just been sheared, on account of one of the plagues of Egypt; and his head was a sight to dream of, not to tell. He had been living in the woods since he deserted, was immediately taken down with typhoid fever, and I thought wanted to die.
The room now consists as follows, beginning with my next neighbor: Corporal James Shipp, known as Jimmy, the pet of the room, doctors and nurses inclusive: a nice, simple-hearted boy of seventeen, brave and good; shot in shoulder, scapula taken out; recovering. Private Smith, Forty-sixth Pennsylvania: good fellow, apparently; has taken laudanum enough to float a ship, and seems to be getting fat on it.
The skeleton sergeant comes next. He keeps a journal, and his wound drives me from the room, whenever opened.
The deserter and company. He wouldn’t have needed John Phœnix’s tape-worm, in order to use the editorial “we.”
A bragging squirt of a Georgian, who got scratched in the finger in Maryland, and marched all the way here to save his precious hide and boast of the Yankees he had killed.
George Peet, Fifth Ohio: a good young fellow; lost his foot the other day, after six weeks trying to save it.
Henry Shaw, One Hundred and Second New York: a little, white-headed Harlemite, a little conceited; talks a little better English than the rest of them; shot in back; recovering.
Arthur Jordan, Tenth Maine: obliging, pleasant, nice fellow; had the measles, and was sent to the “measly ward,” from which he has just made his escape on his own hook, returning here at the risk of being put in the guard-house.
Sergeant Henry Holloway, Fifth Connecticut: the only one with whom I can fraternize at all; a railroad man, engine driver, etc., infected with the insubordinate ideas natural to his regiment; otherwise, a good fellow.