2

1
Were you ever under a surgeon's hand,
when every werre tingled with mute
sensation of precise import?

So was it in that abnormal state of life;
every day a drama — sometimes a farce
and more often a tradgy - There were
moving scenes by field and flood, real
actors, sensations, spectacular movements,
heros, applause and all that, but to
recount them in the same sharp outlines
once witnessed — is like escaping from
the surgeon.

True, there ^are memories — and faces —
and associations — and events that once
might have whiled away an hour like
this - but what a maize the whole presents
just now.

I may give you if I can, a crude etching -
an etching wherein the acid of memory
has traced out a common place story, that
began to be dated the day he went from
Sumpter was received

My boyish aspiration was to become a
naval officer and went as far as an
appointment to the Naval Academy. I had
the satisfaction of watching the splendid career
of my successor Charley Jones, who was
with Farraquh at New Orleans.