his countenance. He was one of the most even tempered men I ever knew. I never knew him to speak an unkind word to anyone, or use a profane or vulgar word in my life.
One of those ricochet cannon balls struck my old friend, N. B. Shepard. Shep was one of the bravest and best soldiers who ever shouldered a musket. It is true, he was but a private soldier, but he was the best friend I had during the whole war. In intellect he was far ahead of most of the Generals, and would have honored and adorned the name of General in the C. S. A. He was ever brave and true. He followed our cause to the end, yet all the time an invalid. To-day he is languishing on a bed of pain and sickness, caused by that ball at Jonesboro. The ball struck him on his knapsack, knocking him twenty feet, and breaking one or two ribs and dislocating his shoulder. He was one of God's noblemen, indeed—none braver, none more generous. God alone controls our destinies, and surely He who watched over us and took care of us in those dark and bloody days, will not forsake us now. God alone fits and prepares for us the things that are in store for us. There is none so wise as to foresee the future or foretell the end. God sometimes seems afar off, but He will never leave or forsake anyone who puts his trust in Him. The day will come when the good as well as evil will all meet on one broad platform, to be rewarded for the deeds done in the body, when time shall end, with the gates of eternity closed, and the key fastened to the girdle of God forever. Pardon me, reader, I have wandered. But when my mind reverts to those scenes and times, I seem to live in another age and time, and I sometime think that "after us comes the end of the universe."
I am not trying to moralize, I am only trying to write a few scenes and incidents that came under the observation of a poor old Rebel web-foot private soldier in those stormy days and times. Histories tell the great facts, while I only tell of the minor incidents.
But on this day of which I now write, we can see in plain view more than a thousand Yankee battle-flags waving on
