[201] During all his military career he was subject to the complaint just mentioned, as well as to the most acute form of neuralgia in the face, which often, for nights in succession, kept him without a half-hour's comfortable sleep. At such times he rarely complained, but would keep as still as possible, and usually went about his duty as in the ordinary course of things. During the expedition to Goldsborough he suffered incessantly from neuralgia, often to the extent of great physical exhaustion, but never, to my knowledge, fell out of his place in the ranks, his pluck and determination more than supplying the place of mere bodily strength. One who stood by him in the ranks used to say of him at this time:—
You ought to see how the crack of the guns wakes Weston up. On mornings when everything is quiet he limps off with his face as white as chalk from the pain of his neuralgia, and his teeth set tight together, but the color mounts up in his face when the gunners once get to work, and his head goes up like a war horse's.Such were the qualities which he exhibited in the more trying part of his service. In the camp and on the field, when well, or even in tolerably good health, his personal and social qualities made him the life of the company and a universal favorite. He had the true New England type of humor, quaint, quick, and dry, full of surprises and hard to reproduce in narration. I recall, however, one characteristic speech of his. His company, on returning to Newbern after their first expedition, found their camp without firewood, and were ordered off to the forest, a mile distant, to bring in a supply on their shoulders. Weston, who was still quite weak from his recent sickness, set out for the barracks on the return of the party, himself carrying but one very small stick. On their way back they met Lieutenant T. of Company F, and Weston saw the rebuke in the officer's eye as it lighted upon him, but prevented the expression of it by saying, respectfully, while his eye twinkled, ‘No, I don't mind the physical labor, Lieutenant T.,—it's the degradation that tries my soul.’ To shine in the company of which George Weston was at this time a member was in itself a sort of distinction; for
