THE OLD SERGEANT.
By FORCEYTHE WILLSON.
“Feel my pulse, sir, if you want to, but it ain’t much use to try—” “Never say that,” said the surgeon, as he smothered down a sigh; “It will never do, old comrade, for a soldier to say die!” “What you say will make no difference, Doctor, when you come to die.
“Doctor, what has been the matter?”—“You were very faint, they say; You must try to get to sleep now.”—“Doctor, have I been away?” “Not that anybody knows of!”—“Doctor—Doctor, please to stay! There is something I must tell you, and you won’t have long to stay!
“I have got my marching orders, and I’m ready now to go; Doctor, did you say I fainted!—But it couldn’t ha’ been so,— For as sure as I’m a Sergeant, and was wounded at Shiloh, I’ve this very night been back there, on the old field of Shiloh!
“This is all that I remember: The last time the lighter came, And the lights had all been lowered, and the noises much the same, He had not been gone five minutes before something called my name: ’Orderly Sergeant—Robert Burton!’—just that way it called my name.