of hundreds and thousands of soldiers during every campaign, which none endeavor to explain, other than the facts themselves.  But as the soldier is nothing more than a small fraction of the whole of a great machine, so much happens that he cannot fathom nor explain, that it naturally makes a great number of soldiers, like the sailor, somewhat superstitious.  But when we speak of moral courage, where is there a courage more sublime than the soldier marching, as he thinks, to his certain death, while all his comrades are taking their chances at the hazard of war?

There are many unaccountable incidents and coincidents in a soldier’s experience.  Then, again, how differently men enter battle and how differently they act when wounded.  Some men, on the eve of battle, the most trying time in a soldier’s life, will stand calm and impassive, awaiting the command, “forward,” while his next neighbor will tremble and shake, as with a great chill, praying, meditating, and almost in despair, awaiting the orders to advance.  Then when in the heat of the conflict both men seem metamorphosed.  The former, almost frightened out of his wits, loses his head and is just as apt to fire backwards as forwards; while the latter seems to have lost all fear, reckless of his life, and fights like a hero.  I have known men who at home were perfect cowards, whom a schoolboy could run away with a walking cane, become fearless and brave as lions in battle; while on the other hand men who were called “game cocks” at home and great “crossroads bullies,” were abject cowards in battle.  As to being wounded, some men will look on a mortal wound, feel his life ebbing away, perfectly calm and without concern, and give his dying messages with the composure of an every day occurrence; while others, if the tip of the finger is touched, or his shin-bone grazed, will “yell like a hyena or holler like a loon,” and raise such a rumpus as to alarm the whole army.  I saw a man running out of battle once (an officer) at such a gait as only fright could give, and when I asked him if he was wounded, he replied, “Yes, my leg is broken in two places,” when, as a matter of fact, he had only a slight flesh wound.  These incidents the reader may think merely fiction, but they are real facts.  A man in Company E, Third South Carolina Regiment, having a minnie ball lodged between the two bones of his arm, made such a racket when the surgeons undertook to push it out, that they had to turn him loose; while a private in Company G, of the same regiment, being shot in the chest, when the surgeon was probing for the ball with his finger, looked on with unconcern, only remarking, “Make the hole a little larger, doctor, and put your whole hand in it.”  In a few days he was dead.  I could give the names of all these parties, but for obvious reasons omit them.  I merely single out these cases to show how differently men’s nervous systems are constructed.  And I might add, too, an instance of a member of my