with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can command.  He was starving,—­he could not get what he wanted to eat.  He was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial containing three thimblefuls—­of brandy,—­his whole stock of that encouraging article.  Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants.  Feed this poor gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him, nor he himself.  We are all egotists in sickness and debility.  An animal has been defined as “a stomach ministered to by organs;” and the greatest man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of fever and starvation.

James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey as far as Middletown.  As we were about starting from the front of the United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed a wish to be allowed to share our conveyance.  I looked at them and convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor deserters, nor camp-followers, nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on a proper errand.  The first of them I will pass over briefly.  He was a young man of mild and modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania regiment, which he was going to rejoin.  He belonged to the Moravian Church, of which I had the misfortune to know little more than what I had learned from Southey’s “Life of Wesley.” and from the exquisite hymns we have borrowed from its rhapsodists.  The other stranger was a New Englander of respectable appearance, with a grave, hard, honest, hay-bearded face, who had come to serve the sick and wounded on the battle-field and in its immediate neighborhood.  There is no reason why I should not mention his name, but I shall content myself with calling him the Philanthropist.

So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist, and myself, the teller of this story.

And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail from the great battle-field.  The road was filled with straggling and wounded soldiers.  All who could travel on foot,—­multitudes with slight wounds of the upper limbs, the head, or face,—­were told to take up their beds,—­alight burden or none at all,—­and walk.  Just as the battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other.  For more than a week there had been sharp fighting all along this road.  Through the streets of Frederick, through Crampton’s Gap, over South Mountain, sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, the long battle had