[435] I now feared that his excitement would carry him beyond his strength. I could not keep him from talking. I was bending over him to see if he would remember me. Looking me steadily in the eyes, his brows knit with perplexity for a few seconds, when with a smile of delight and surprise he said, ‘Yes! yes! It is you, Mr. L——. I am glad you stayed with me. I have been dreaming about you while I've been asleep; and I must have been asleep a great while. How long?’ I told him enough to let him understand how ill he had been,—how long,—and how weak he still was. He did not realize it. His eyes wandered down to his thin hands, white as alabaster, and through which the pale-blue thread-like veins wandered. ‘Oh! Is it I?—so lean? I was not so when I fell sick.’—And large tears rolled down his cheeks. I implored him to be quiet and rest, and I promised him he should get better every day, and be able to go home in a short time. But he grew impatient the more I tried to soothe and restrain him. He looked at me beseechingly, and asked, ‘Won't you let me talk a little? I must know something more, or it seems to me I shall go crazy. Please put your ear down to me: I won't speak loud,—I won't get excited.’ I did.—‘Have you got any letters for me?’ ‘Yes, but they are at my office. You shall have them to-morrow. They are all well at home.’ ‘And Bella?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, God be praised!’— After a few moments of repose, he again opened his eyes wide.— ‘I have been gone so long from the army! It seemed as though I never could get back when I got home. I got away; and I wandered, and wandered.—Oh, how tired I was Where is McDowell?— Is General Scott dead? They said so. Did they carry off Old Abe? How did he get back? Did the Rebels get into Washington that night? How long have I been sick? What place is this?—Oh, my head! my head!’ I was frightened. He had risen from the deep ocean into the sunlight for a brief hour, and now he seemed to be going down to come up no more. The tender chord of memory had given way. In a little while the surgeon came by, and I told him what had happened. ‘I was afraid of that. But I think we can manage it. If he wakes ’
This text is part of:
United States Publishing Company, 1874.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.