Olmsted is the law-giver; he knows the fact
of my existence, and will use me when he wants
me. It is very cold, and the air has the texture
of your worst Boston weather, — steel-filings
and all.
" Wiujon Small," May 13.
Dear Mother, — Yours of the ninth received.
The mails come with sufficient regularity. We
all rush at the letter-bag, and think ourselves
blighted beings if we get nothing. Yesterday I
came on board this boat, where there are thirty
very bad cases, — four or five amputations. One
poor fellow, a lieutenant in the Thirty-second
New York Volunteers, shot through the knee,
and enduring more than mortal agony; a fair-
haired boy of seventeen, shot through the lungs,



v 26 THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR.
every breath he draws hissing through the
wound ; another man, a poet, with seven holes
in him, but irrepressibly poetic and very comi-
cal. He dictated to me last night a foolscap
sheet full of poetry composed for the occasion.
His appearance as he sits up in bed, swathed
in a nondescript garment or poncho, construct-
ed for him by Miss Whetten out of an old
green table-cloth, is irresistibly funny. There
is also a captain of the Sixteenth New York
Volunteers, mortally wounded while leading his
company against a regiment. He is said to
measure six feet seven inches, — and I believe
it, looking at him as he lies there on a cot,
pieced out at the foot with two chairs. 1

I took my first actual watch last night ; and
this morning I feel the same ease about the
work which yesterday I was surprised to see in
others. We begin the day by getting them all
washed, and freshened up, and breakfasted.
