Preparations for resuming the pursuit the following day were made by sending such of the wounded as could be removed to Louisville, and leaving behind as few surgeons and temporary field hospitals as were absolutely necessary. Wagon and ambulance trains were started at once, freighted with human suffering and wounded heroes, and as the train wound its way over hills and rough roads, jolting across rocks and into ruts, or rattling along the hard pavement of Kentucky turnpikes, fearful were the sufferings of those most severely injured. At last, after being battered and used up generally, they reached Louisville, and were consigned to clean hospital cots, where they lay and wondered if they had not been passing through the mills of the gods and been ground down exceedingly fine. Clean, well ventilated rooms, clean shirts and clothes generally, worked favorable changes, and in a few weeks many returned to their places in the ranks, ready to do and die if need be for country and right.

Others were crippled for life, and eventually received their discharge, to hobble their way through the thorny paths of life on crutches.

A few hospital sketches must, of course, find place somewhere in our story. Our history would be incomplete without them; and as the consecrated walls of the hospitals at Louisville at this time were crowded with the sick and maimed, which like a vast sea was ever ebbing and flowing, we have taken the liberty of transcribing from one of the diaries kindly loaned us.

TUESDAY, OCT. 30тH.-My wound has troubled me but little to-day. I have read much of the time, both the newspapers and my Bible. There is much consolation in that Book of Books to a bed-ridden, homesick and much demoralized soldier. Here is a gem: "Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." I pondered long over that promise and thought to cast all my cares and sorrows, hopes and fears before the throne of God and implore Divine assistance and aid. When my silent petition was ended and I came to review it, I found that every request was for the alleviation of my own sufferings and for personal blessings-it was all for self. burthen of that prayer.

My own wants and wishes was the Oh! this is a sad, hard and selfish

world, with none but selfish creatures in it.

Just then, who should appear but one of the "guardian angels" of the hospital-two ladies, sisters, resident in the city, whose whole time is devoted to the sick and suffering ones, who daily drift in from the army. They are constant visitants of the hospitals and minister to the sick and dying. One sat by my bedside and talked long and earnestly with me; entering with the keenest zest into all my present trials and future plans, and before she left, I learned to regard her as all the others do-as a kind sister and friend. How many a sick and despondent soldier has cause to bless these fair angels of mercy, who smooth the dying pillow and cheer the weary spirit in its flight to the brighter world beyond. Their coming brings a gleam of sunshine into the chambers of sickness, that leaves a bright halo

INCIDENTS OF HOSPITAL LIFE.

287 lingering around our couches long after they have departed. Nothing but innate goodness, a strong sense of christian duty, regardless of self, prompts them to the performance of these labors of love. Oh! this world is not quite so selfish, after all. There is much of love, true and unwavering, yet left in the world, and this war, with all its untold horrors, has now and then a cheering ray to relieve its night of darkness. Dwight Follett, from Ohio, with as patriotic impulses as ever inspired human being, left a home where peace and plenty abounded and nothing was wanting to complete his happiness and promote his highest earthly good. He left all for his country, and fearlessly encountered the camp, the march and the battle-field. For a few weeks he bore up bravely-did cheerfully all that duty and patriotism required. But alas disease fastened its remorseless fangs upon his vitals, and we find him languishing on a bed of pain.

Her

To yonder home sped the sad tidings, and without a moment's delay his mother hastened to the cot of her boy. She found him very low-almost at the portals of death. For six long and weary weeks has she sat and watched by the side of her darling boy. Visitors look into his pallid face and whisper, "he must die!" The physician sees no ray of hope, and has long since pronounced his case a hopeless one. Not so, that mother. abiding faith in a God that is a hearer and answerer of prayer, tells her that her son shall live, and from that distant home comes the father's word of cheer, for he, too, prays Heaven that the sick one's life may be spared. How strong, how abiding that mother's love. On awaking in the early morning, I see her standing by the sick one's couch. From morning to evening she is there; and during the watches of the night, noiselessly and oft she steals to the side of her sleeping son. Next to God's, a mother's love is unfailing. Yesterday, when all but hope had fled, one little ray of life was seen to steal over his countenance, faintly lighting up his glazed and fixed eye. To-day he is better still. Oh! 'tis good to see that mother's heart thrill with gladness. With an unshaken trust in God, she believes her boy will yet be well.

MONDAY, Nov. 5TH.-It was a long time last night before I could get to sleep. My wound was painful and my back ached as if being stretched upon the wheel of torture; my flesh was tender and my mind as irritable as my body was sore. As I lay upon my cot, the gas-light turned down until only a thin spire of flame, dimly flickering, served to make visible the deep gloom of night. I even fancied that dull light sharpened the perceptions, and never before did I remember of being more sensibly affected in body and mind by each little disturbing noise and the breathing of sleepers around me.

The man in the cot next to mine was afflicted with a cough, which might well be compared to a fog-horn, or the hoarse tones of a thunder storm. 'Twas not a small, hacking cough, escaping from just beyond the lips, but deep and unfathomable; surging up from the lowest depths; wrenching every joint and muscle of the mortal system. That cough would long ago have wrecked any common craft, sailing on its tumultuous billows. That cough was enough to supply a regiment, and then have had a surplus sufficient for any possible contingency. There was no let up to it at this time, and all night long it was cough, cough, cough-like the soughing of a steamboat, or the hoarse barking of a blood-hound.

On the other side was a lubberly fellow, who appeared to care more for his rations than for the disease with which he is said to be afflicted. It is ludicrous as well as annoying to listen each day to the recital of his various ailments, forming a chapter as long as the song with nine hundred and ninety-nine verses in it, the last like the first and they like all the rest, only a thousand times more uninteresting. Well, he is terribly given to snoring, and such deep, unearthly snores coming from the cavernous depths of a huge pair of lungs, rushing like a hurricane through a flabby glottis and distended nostrils, in tones as unmusical as the rasping of a saw or the hooting of a bazoon. There was no cessation in the notes he gave us that night.

It was a snore so deep, sonorous,

As to shake the ceiling o'er us.

Another, in a distant corner, laying near the cot of a German, was all night long talking in his sleep. His dreams were vocal ones, and it would have puzzled the most rapid short-hand reporter to have followed the vagaries of his wandering and somnolent senses. At times he was at work upon the farm, driving oxen or horses, and then engaged in some fierce brawl. Very few in that chamber of the sick attended to their own business, and refrained from meddling with their neighbors. At times the poor German in the corner was nearly frightened out of his wits, and when he heard an extra snore,

"Wilder, fiercer than before,"

I could see him raise up in his bed, cast a malignant glance in the direction of the snorer, and in accents of despair cry out, "Schay, you dhare, stophs dat! me none at all schleeps dees nicht." Thus might I go the rounds among the wheezy, groaning, moaning, sighing, dying and rueful visaged inmates of this hospital and find each possessed of some characteristic peculiarly their own that would attract attention.

No history of events connected with the rebellion would be complete without a notice of the hospital and sanitary departments, and the unremitting labors of many of the surgeons in caring for the sick and wounded in their commands. In this respect the 36th was peculiarly fortunate, and suffered less from sickness and malignant diseases than any other regiment of equal number in the army of the United States. In his report to Gen. Sheridan, Col. Greusel used the following language, “Dr. Young, "the brigade surgeon, deserves the highest praise for his admir"able arrangements and great care of the sick and wounded."

Very many of the slightly wounded at Perryville in a few weeks returned to the regiment for duty, and participated in the succeeding campaigns of Murfreesborough and Chickamauga.