More than
once, however, I experienced something like a sentiment of shame, when,
in the dark and freezing nights, with the hail rattling on my tent, I
sat by my warm fire, and heard the crack of the sharp-shooters, along
the lines beyond Petersburg. What right had I to be there, by that
blazing fire, in my warm tent, when my brethren--many of them my
betters--were yonder, fighting along the frozen hills? What had I done
to deserve that comfort, and exemption from all pain? I was idling, or
reading by my blazing fire,--_they_ were keeping back the enemy, and,
perhaps, falling and dying in the darkness. I was musing in my chair,
gazing into the blaze, and going back in memory to the fond scenes of
home, so clearly, that I laughed the heart's laugh, and was happy. And
they? They, too, were thinking of home, perhaps,--of their wives and
children, to sink down the next moment shivering with cold, or stagger
and fall, with spouting blood, as the bullet pierced them. Why should
_I_ be thus favored by a good Providence? I often asked myself that
question, and I could not answer it. I could only murmur, "I did not
sneak here to get out of the way of the bullets,--those, yonder, are my
betters,--God guard and keep the brave soldiers of this army!"
And now, worthy reader, having given you some idea of the manner in
which the more fortunate ones wintered near Petersburg, in 1864, I am
going to drop the subject of army head-quarters, and my surroundings
there.
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