The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-04-05

The Generals Troubled Sleep Crowded will,
Dreams of War Days.

Dreams of War Days.
Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, April 4.-The dying days of Gen.
Grant are filled by thoughts of his war expert
ences. Awake and asleep alike he is much of
the time recalling his campaigns. This was nat
ural, in any case, but special cause was the
work that he had been doing on his book about
the great struggle. His disease had stopped him
in the middle of an undertaking to put his mem
DRY ard views on record, but he continued to tax
his memory as to the minutest details of the
movements and battles. His meditations were
all in that direction and his troubled sleep was
crowded with dreams, in which he imagined that
he was going through the war again. The Rev.
DR.. Newman says: "He fought the battle of Shi-
lob over and over again. That engagement had
recently been the subject of a magazine article
by him, and the details were thereby freshened
in his mind. In his last days, when
he slumbered ftfully in his chair, he
would awake with start, and an ejaculation,
remaining for moment in a sort of daze; and
several times he said he had been dreaming of
Shiloh Harrison, his negro body servant, who
acted as nearly in the capacity of q nurse as he
would permit anybody to do, says that the hard,
incessant pain made Grant dream repeatedly
that he was wounded in the throat This fact
was revealed only by disconnected EXPLANATIONS,
for the General was Enthusiastically taciturn
to the end. Once he clutched his neck, and
cried: sit was the shell did it!7 Evidently
spasm in the region of the cancer had made him
dream that a shell hit him. The family and
doctors are disinclned to talk much of the mort
uary agonies of the hero, but all agree that
they were severe
Grants concern regarding his book, so New
man says, was not SO much for its possible effect
upon his fame a general, but because he
looked upon its publication as of financial value
to his fa,nily. 1t is unlikely that the public will
ever definitely know the point at which his own
pen ceased and that Of Gen. Adam Badeau began.
Some of Grants last attempts at composition
were so ineoherent to be almost unintelligible.
The pressure for copy went to the utmost
bounds of propriety. Mark Twain stayed in
town, actively engaged as partner in the
firm of Webster & Co., in which the young
Grants are shareholders for the publication of
their fathers work 1t is understood that veter-
ans of the war will be employed as far as posi-
ble in the canvass for the sale Of the
volumes. Badeau went to work to
finish the manuscript as soon as it
became sure that Grant could do no more at
it. 1t was Mark Twain's doing that this was so
promptly resorted to. Grant was averse to it,
and the delay was considered detrimental to the
enterprise. At length Badeau set about the
task unknown to the General, whose notes and
documents were in available shape.
The two additional war articles that Grant
agreed to write for the Century magazine were
not done so far as editor Glider is aware. He
says that he refrained from any insistance upon
the performance of the task, even when the pa
tent was still in condition to do some literary
labor. From another source it was learned that
he did commence one of them, but was unable
to clear his mind sufficiently to grasp the sub
ject. What he wrote was jumbled and in some
passages wholly irrelevant The truth seems to
be that the last week of his life was 80 weak
and agonized that he was much of the time in a
mental daze, though he maintained the stoical
calmness that has so long been known as be-
longing to his nature.