.

.

A week or more after the army corps had gone, I drove with my father to the capital one day, and almost every mile of the journey we saw a blue coat or a gray coat lying by the road, with bones or hair protruding--the unburied and the forgotten of either army.

Thus I had come to know what war was, and death by violence was among the first deep impressions made on my mind.
My emotions must have been violently dealt with and my sensibilities blunted--or sharpened?
Who shall say?
The wounded and the starved straggled home from hospitals and from prisons.

There was old Mr.
Sanford, the shoemaker, come back again, with a body so thin and a step so uncertain that I expected to see him fall to pieces.