Tom has gone, but the Professor is here still. I do not mean to stay long,—I shall rejoin my regiment in a day or two. In the mean time, I amuse myself, when the Professor is not here, by scribbling in my note-book and reading it over. Such a book as it is now! My own thoughts begin it; then, as we reach the battle-fields, I have not time to think, much less to put my thoughts in writing; then comes a record of deaths,—poor fellows, who wanted me to write to their homes. How curious that record is! Men whom I didn’t care for grew heroic to me in those first days,—when death was a novelty,—and I am minute in my descriptions of them. Then, as the deaths become more and more frequent, my descriptions grow shorter, and I give a line only, even to those whom I really loved. It is strange reading, this note-book of mine!

Here is an item which I find in my note-book: “Quarrelled with Tom!” How we have fought, to be sure! I don’t know what this quarrel was about, but I know how it ended. We didn’t speak for two days, and then came another attack from that restless creature, Stonewall Jackson. It was such a lovely day,—fresh and spring-like, but it soon grew hot and dusty. Every once in a while a bullet would whiz past; I could hear the rumble of the artillery, and I was terribly thirsty. I didn’t see Tom, but I knew he was near,—we always kept close together at such times;—still, if I had seen him, I wouldn’t have spoken to him. My horse had been shot from under me, and I had cut open the head of the man who did it; it seems strange, now that it is all over, that I could do such a thing. Suddenly I saw the barrel of a rifle pointed at me. The face of the man who was pointing it peered from behind a tree with a malicious grin. I felt that death was near, and the feeling was not pleasant. However, the situation had an element of absurdity in it, and that made me laugh a little. The man who was going to kill me laughed too. I heard a little click, a report, and his gun went up, and he went down. Tom had shot him.

“Tom,” said I, with some feeling, “you have saved my life.”

“There!” said he, triumphantly, “you spoke first.”

I saw that I had, and I was dreadfully provoked. However, he admitted that he was wrong; and so, under the circumstances, I decided that a reconciliation was advisable.

The Professor has been here to-day. He is the most delightful companion I know; and, what is his special charm, he really believes that he is hard and cynical, the tender-hearted old baby! I know that he fancies himself a second Diogenes. His liking for us boys is very queer to me. Tom is his pet, but he prefers to talk to me. He discusses Tom with me, and then he discusses me, just as if I were a third person. To-day he told me I was a mass of selfish pettinesses. I don’t think that was his word, but that was what he meant; “and yet,” said he, “you are capable of heroic generosity.” I always know that part of what the Professor says is said in earnest; but I am never quite sure what part it is. He doesn’t fatigue me, and doesn’t excite me, and it is well for me that he is here; still, I am impatient to get back again. He has told me about Tom’s staying with me, instead of going home. I don’t know what to say about it; I don’t know what to think. It makes me want to die for him; nothing else that I can do seems sufficient. When this war is over, I suppose Tom will marry and forget me. I never will go near his wife—I shall hate her. Now, that is a very silly thing for a lieutenant-colonel to write. I don’t care, it is true.

I wonder if I am so very selfish, after all. I like refinement and elegance, and I hate dirt; and I do like to have people care for me and do things to oblige me. But my first thought is not always of myself; and I don’t think I am unjust to others, because of myself. And, if I desire the sympathy and appreciation of others, I am sure it is not wrong.

“C’est qu’un coeur bien atteint veut qu’on soit tout À lui.”

I can’t remember, though, just now, a single unselfish thing that I have ever done, unless it was giving some of the fruit and jelly that the Professor brought me yesterday to a poor fellow with hungry eyes, whom I saw glaring at them through the door. That wouldn’t have been generous, either, if he hadn’t been a rebel. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy is the only generous action that I can discover of mine, after all my self-analysis. Confound self-analysis, any way! It is only another form of selfishness, mingled with morbid conceit. If I did what I ought to do, without thinking about myself at all, it would be better for me; but I haven’t anything to do just now, except scribble away here, and it is dreadfully stupid.

How talking with the Professor has set me to thinking of Harvard again! Now that the lights are glimmering at intervals through the ward, I can see the yard, with Holworthy and Stoughton and Hollis beaming away from their windows at each other, and Massachusetts standing a little apart, as becomes its greater age, but benignant in its seclusion. I hear the voices of singing in the yard, on the steps, and under the trees; I can see fellows sitting round the tables in their rooms, studying and not studying; I can hear recitations made to the different professors and tutors; and just as the bell for morning prayers, which I still hate, begins to clang upon my memory, I remember that I am here in a hospital, while we are still fighting and killing each other for the sake of the country that has given us all we enjoy. I shall be out soon, I know. There is always good prospect of a battle when I feel this way; and yet I do horribly loathe the tint of blood which has seemed to rest on everything I have seen or dreamed of for a year past. How I hate war, and yet how wholly I am absorbed in it! I am getting feverish; I shall write no more to-day.

In looking over my note-book, I find something which, luckily for me, I had almost forgotten; and that is, the prediction of my friend Mooney. Poor idiot! he was shot the first time that we were under fire. How pleasant it would have been for me in all the work I have been through, if I had remembered that prophecy! How it would have aided my recovery in my sickness, if I had been haunted by those words! I am to meet a dishonorable death for a dishonorable action, am I? The only dishonorable action I can commit is to go over to Stonewall Jackson, and learn how to fight. By Jove! I do admire that man. He is what too few officers on either the Union or the Rebel sides are, unselfish and in earnest. But I don’t think that I shall join him, for all that; and, if I did, I should not be likely to meet with death,—his luck and his pluck would take me through.

The Professor has confided to me a plan of his, which delights me. He says that he will go North, and bring Tom’s mother on to Washington, if her health permits. As Tom’s father is in Europe at present, and as it would be highly unpleasant, to use the mildest term, for a lady to travel alone to Washington, knowing nothing of the place and its peculiarities, it is very thoughtful and very kind, and something more, in the Professor to do this. Then Tom can run up to Washington for a day or two to see her, poor fellow! and all, or rather part, of his great generosity will be rewarded. The Professor is a brick to think of it; and I have made him promise to start to-morrow. And when he goes, I shall go too, only in the other direction. How happy this will make Tom!

I don’t know what makes me think of our class-day now, but I do wonder who had the rooms which Tom and I engaged for our spread. Perhaps it’s the contrast between salad and strawberries, and hardtack and corned-beef; though now everything seems to me to be saturated with gruel. I wonder if Tiny Snow was at class-day this year! She was an object of awe to me in Freshman year; then I despised the sex when I was a Sophomore; and then in Junior year I saw a good deal of her. She had a way of drooping her head a little; and then, with a sort of shy little gulp, raising it, and making her eyes childlike and plaintive. It was quite pleasant, even after familiarity with it had destroyed its novelty. I wrote some verses to her once, and sent them to “The Harvard Magazine;” but they came into the hands of an editor who was gone on her himself, and he very properly rejected them. Once I showed Tiny, quite by accident, the Etruscan locket which I got abroad, and which Tom admired so much that I had his initials cut on it to give to him.

“Oh, how lovely!” said Tiny. “Who is it for?”

“Don’t you see the initials?” said I.

“T. S.,” said she, innocently; “who can it be?”

I thought there seemed something like a blush upon her cheek as she spoke; but I told her that T. S. was some one I cared a great deal about.

“Is she pretty?” asked Tiny.

“She!” I answered; “it isn’t any girl; it’s my chum, Tom, you know.”

Then she really colored; and a little while afterward I remembered that those were her initials. How she must have hated me,—perhaps!

I have eaten a real breakfast at last, and am upon my feet again. The Professor has gone, and I am going at once. How curious it will be to come out of this dream, and go back again to work! The doctor begs me not to get excited, and yet tells me that in three days I shall be as well as ever. I have been excited for a year now, and I go to the front this very afternoon. I am rather thin, and my shirt feels something like an air-box; but I shall get over all that soon. We are to make an attack before long, I understand.

I am back in camp. This is the last entry that I shall make in this note-book for some time to come. I am alarmed a little about Tom. I think he is going to be sick; he seems excited and feverish, and yet dull. However, he has brightened up wonderfully since I told him about the Professor’s intention; and I am not sure but that it was a dreadful homesickness that oppressed him when I first met him. He won’t see a doctor; he laughs the idea to scorn, and says he is only tired and overworked, and that, if I can manage to secure him a little rest, he will soon be all right. But he is dying to see his mother, he confesses to me, and I am not surprised to hear it.

I said that this is the last entry I shall make here. I am not sure now but that these are the last words which I shall ever write. I take charge of a small expedition to-night, with men whom I have personally selected for the purpose; and we are to destroy the bridge above here. It must be done at once. Jackson is near there, and we expect and fear an attack from him. The work is delicate rather than difficult; but it is sufficiently dangerous for me to commend my soul to God before I start upon it. Good-by, little note-book, perhaps forever. If Tom and I return safe,—and Tom will, I am sure,—why, then, perhaps, I may tell you all about this coming night’s work; but, if not, you will be destroyed, unread; and so farewell.