HOSPITAL CEMETERY.

45

the battle!" said Lewy Smith, shaking his head sadly at the reminiscence." All in and around these yer buildings, all around the hay-stacks, and under the fences, it was just nothing but groaning, wounded men!"

Crossing the yellow-flowing Antietam, we turned up the right bank, with its wooded shores on our right, and on our left a large cornfield containing not less than forty or fifty acres. "There was right smart o' corn all through yer time of the battle. Good for the armies, but not for the farmers. Come to a cornfield like this, they just turned their horses and cattle right into it, and let 'em eat." You fortunate farmers of the North and West, so proud and so careful of your welltilled fields never yet broken into in this ruinous fashion, have you fully realized what war is?

Leaving the course of the creek, and crossing the fields where the fighting on our extreme right began, we reached a still and shady grove, beside which, fenced in from a field, was a little oblong burying-ground of something like half an In the centre was a plain wooden monument constructed of boards painted white; the pedestal bearing this inscription:

acre.

"Let no man desecrate this burial-place of our dead;" And the side of the shaft, towards the fence, these words: "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

This was the hospital cemetery. The graves were close together in little rows running across the narrow field. They were all overgrown with grass and weeds. Each was marked by a small rounded head-board, painted white, and bearing the name of the soldier sleeping below. Here is one, out of the number:

POOLE,

Co. G. 12th Mass.

Died Oct. 14th,

1862.

As I wrote down this name, the hens in the farm-yard near by were cackling jubilantly. The clouds broke also; a shaft of sunlight fell upon the glistening foliage of the grove, and slanted down through its beautiful vistas. I looked up from the sad rows of patriot graves, and saw the earth around me, all around and above the silent mouldering bodies of the slain, smiling sweetly through her misty veil. For Nature will not mourn. Nature, serene, majestic, full of faith, makes haste to cover the wounds in the Earth's fair bosom, and to smile upon them. The graves in our hearts also, which we deemed forever desolate, she clothes with the tender verdure of reviving hope before we are aware, and gilds them with the sunshine of a new love and joy. Blessed be our provident mother for this sweet law, but for which the homes in the land, bereft by these countless deaths in hospitals and on bloody fields, would lie draped in endless mourning.

Near the monument, in the midst of the level burying-place, grew a loftily nodding poke-weed, the monarch of his tribe. It was more like a tree than a weed. With its roots down among the graves, and its hundred hands stretched on high, it stood like another monument, holding up to heaven, for a sign, its berries of dark blood.

Pursuing a road along the ridge in a southwesterly direction, Lewy at length reined up his horse in another peaceful little grove. Without a word he pointed to the rotting knapsacks and haversacks on the ground, and to the scarred trees. I knew the spot; it was the boundary of the bloody "cornfield." We had approached from the side on which our boys advanced to that frightful conflict, driving the Rebels before them, and being driven back in turn, in horrible seesaw, until superior Northern pluck and endurance finally prevailed.

In a field beside the grove we saw a man ploughing, with three horses abreast, and a young lad for escort. We noticed loose head-boards, overturned by the plough, on the edge of the grove, and lying half imbedded in the furrows. This man was ploughing over graves!

Adjoining the field was the historic cornfield. I walked to the edge of it, and waited there for the man to turn his

THE OLD PLOUGHMAN.

47

long slow furrow down that way. I sat upon the fence, near which was a trench filled with unnumbered Rebel dead.

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"A power of 'em in this yer field!" said the ploughman, coming up and looking over as I questioned him. "A heap of Union soldiers too, layin' all about yer. I always skip a Union grave when I know it, but sometimes I don't see 'em, and I plough 'em up. Eight or ten thousand lays on this farm, Rebels and Union together."

Finding him honest and communicative, I wished him to go over the ground with me.

"I would willingly, stranger, but I must keep the team go'n'."

-

66 or

I suggested that the boy was big enough to do that. "Wal, he kin. Plough round onct," to the boy, let 'em blow, t ain't go'n' to hurt 'em none.' So he concluded to accompany me. We got over into the "cornfield," late a hog-pasture, and presently stopped at a heap of whitening bones.

"What's this?" I said.

"This yer was a grave. The hogs have rooted it up. I tol' the ol' man he ought n't to turn the hogs in yer, but he said he 'd no other place to put 'em, and he had to do it."

I picked up a skull lying loose on the ground like a cobblestone. It was that of a young man ; the teeth were all splendid and sound. How hideously they grinned at me! and the eyesockets were filled with dirt. He was a tall man too, if that long thigh-bone was his.

Torn rags strewed the ground. The old ploughinan picked up a fragment.

"This yer was a Union soldier. You may know by the blue cloth. But then that ain't always a sign, for the Rebels got into our uniform when they had a chance, and got killed in it too."

I turned the skull in my hand, half regretting that I could not carry it away with me. My first shuddering aversion to the grim relic was soon past. I felt a strange curiosity to know who had been its hapless owner, carrying it safely

through twenty or more years of life to lose it here. Perhaps he was even then looking over my shoulder and smiling at it; no longer a perishable mortal, but a spirit imperishable, having no more use for such clumsy physical mechanism. The fancy came so suddenly, and was for an instant so vivid, that I looked up, half expecting that my eyes would meet the mild benignant eyes of the soldier. And these words came into my mind: "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

Let him who has never thought seriously of life look at it through the vacant eye-sockets of a human skull. Then let him consider that he himself carries just such a thing around with him, useful here a little while, then to be cast aside. แ Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat,

Is but modelled on a skull."

Take the lesson to heart, O Vanity! It is but a little time, at the longest, that the immortal soul thou art will animate this bone; but the hour comes quickly when to have been a good soldier of the truth on any field, whether resounding with arms, or silent with the calm strong struggle of love and patience, and to have given thy life to the cause, will be sweeter to thee than the fatness of the earth and length of days. No, heroic soldier! you I do not pity, though your mortal part lies here neglected and at the mercy of swine.

The cornfield, and another field from which it was separated by a fence at the time of the battle, are now thrown together, forming a lot of about fifty acres. The upper part was dotted with little dry brown cocks of seed-clover. No hogs were on it at the time; they had been turned out, to save the cloverseed, I presume, for that was of some consequence.

We found plenty more bones and skulls of Union soldiers rooted up and exposed, as we ascended the ridge. Beside some lay their head-boards. I noted the names of a few: Sergt. Mahaffey, Co. C, 9th Regt. P. R. C.," for one.

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"The Rebs had all the fence down 'cept a strip by the pike," said the ploughman. "That was jist like a sifter. Some of the rails have been cut up and carried away for the bullet-holes."

He showed me marks still remaining on the fence. Some of our soldiers had cut their names upon it; and on one post some pious Roman Catholic had carved the sacred initials:

"I. H. S."

-

"I reckon that was a soldier's name too," said my honest ploughman. And so indeed it was,-Jesus Hominum Salvator. Beyond the pike, between it and the woods, was a narrow belt of newly ploughed ground.

"You see them green spots over yon' covered with weeds? Them are graves that I skipped." In the edge of the woods beyond lay two unexploded shells which relic-hunters had not yet picked up.

Whilst I was exploring the fields with my good-natured ploughman, Lewy Smith brought his horse around by the roads. He was waiting for me on the pike. "The last time I drove by yer," he said, "there was a nigger ploughing in that field, and every time he came to a grave he would just reach over his plough, jerk up the head-board, and stick it down behind him again as he ploughed along; and all the time he never stopped whistling his tune."

—a

We drove on to the Dunker church, sometimes called "the Schoolhouse," a square, plain, whitewashed, one-story brick building, without steeple, situated in the edge of the woods. No one, from its appearance, would take it to be a church; and I find that soldiers who fought here still speak of it as "the Schoolhouse."

"The Dunkers are a sect of plain people,” said one of the old Dutch settlers." They don't believe in any wanities. They don't believe in war and fighting."

But their church had got pretty seriously into the fight on that occasion. "It was well smashed to pieces; all made like a riddle; you could just look in and out where you pleased," said Lewy Smith. It had been patched up with brick and whitewash, however, and the plain people, who "did not believe in wanities," once more held their quiet meetings there. I thought much of them as we rode on. A serious, unshaven