The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-04-25
DIDN'T WANT THE BLANKET.

A fifex of the late Twenty-6rst Wiscon- sin volunteers contributes the following to the Denver Otisioa:
 When the beautiful but iil-fated Anne Boleyn came at last to lay her head upon the executioner's block, We are informed by the historian that she requested the headsman to remove her curls from un- dex the ax. in order that they should not be sOiled with her blood.
 When the bland, suave, dissipated, tyranical Charles the Second lay dying upon his bed, all his faithful attendants around him awaiting in silent grief for the dread moment to arrive, we are told that Charles, lying for hours and days on the borders of the silent land beyond, found it convenient to indulge to the last gasp of his existence in the natural levity of his disposition, and apologized to weep ing friends about his bedside for being such an unreasonable time dying.
 The late Bayard Taylor, in one of the chapters in his book of travels in Europe tells us in a most graphic description of the pTivations he endured as he travelled along the country roads in the rain and the mud clothes all wet. money all gone, hungry, weary and oppressed with snx- iety, lest when at last he should arrive at his destination, where he expected re- mittances from home, none should be awaiting him that neither hunger, nor cold, nor rain, nor mud, nor all these de- pressing circumstances combined, could prevent him from noticing with the keen est relish every point of interest in the landscape around him. But this ten- dency of the mind to divert itself from the perils of the moment, with the trifling environments of our situation, is law of our being the mind. laboring under the stress of imminent danger, terrible suf- fering or intense fear. escapes with a bound on the least chance of relief to the contemplation, with all the more sharp ened perception. of the minutest and most unimportant incidents of our sur roundings. Perhaps it is owing to this law of the mind, to a certain extent, that, after the lapse of more than twenty years, the events which still stand out strongest in my recollections of the rebellion were triflIng events, of no moment whatever, and playing only the most subordinate part inethe great tragedy of the time.
 As our brigade passed at double
 
 the front on the morning of the battle of Resaca, going to relieve the first line of battle which had suffered terribly in the charge just made, we soon began to pass the wounded as they limped or were car ried on stretchers to the rear, and the dy- ing and dead, lying in all sorts of places and conditions in the brush and timber on the way. The air was full of whist ling bullets, and the sky full of bursting, shrieking shells great branches of the trees above us broke fiom their places, severed by huge cannon balls, and the splinters and bits of wood torn and bruised from the huge trunks flew aloft, and, scattering in the air, fell like flakes ot snow down upon the ranks of men passing hurriedly beneath them. It was a sight to inspire terror in the hearts of the bravest me n, but felt neither terror nor the slightest fear. noted with the keenest perception the minutest incidents of the hurried drama being enacted be- fore my eyes; noticed the very birds fiit- ting in terror in the uudergrowth through which we passed ; saw the frightened pigs fleeing through the woods ; took careful noe of the crooks in the little brook we crossed ; observed with curious interest the intense tension on the features of my comrades as they faced the awful leaden hail, cutting apparently every twig and bush In front; saw everything and felt nothing was too busy to feel anything. As we neared the front, and the killed and wounded men lay thicker and thicker about us, my file leader, who had never been under fire before, turned on me a face filled with the agony of despair, and in voice, supplicating, beseeching sym pathy and aid in his distress, said to me, Oh, we shall all of us be killed" Pear son was middle-aged man and l was but a boy, but had been under fire be- fore, and Pearson knew it. saw that apparent indifference on my part would help him, and responded at once with perfectly reckless, needless, presu mptive abandon, and swore with all the vehe- mence could muster, regardless of req son or common sense, that we were not in the least danger in the world that not bullet or shell could touch us, and that there was not enough ammunition inside the rebel works to kill or injnre either of us. Events justified my fool assertion. We both of us came out of the fiery CT. deal without scratch, and Pearson told me two years afterwards. as we were rid ing home in the stage together, after our discharge from the army, that never in all his life had the counsel or advice of mortal man done him so much good as that utterly senseless assurance I gave him in that hour of peril. Said he, "I knew you were lying, and that you did not yourself believe word you uttered, but you seemed so positive about it, and so careless and indifferent about the dan- ger, that your manner inspired me with courage, and don't believe could ever have gone another step if you hadn't said what you did"
 On the morning before that terrible battle, the officers of our division, sus- pecting that an attack would be made, fooiishly ordered us all to leave our knap- sacks in the rear, and in consequence of that foolish order, never after repeated in the long campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta, when the chilly night fell upon