bought my parents their new house, then chanced a like sum on a silver speculation that paid out handsomely enough to afford me an interest in a half dozen factories on the Naugatuck. Poverty, they say, is the philosopher’s ornament and the worldling’s plague. Yet, though I like to think of myself as a philosopher, this did not deter me from gathering most gratefully what came honestly into my hands. In short, by my early twenties I found myself rich: enough to afford a set of tasteful rooms within easy walking distance of the great libraries of Boston. There I commenced to apply myself to study, reflection, and, by stages, to the quill driving and lecturing that brought me a small measure of notice among those whose good opinion I most valued. Through the intercession of one of them, the estimable Unitarian Reverend Daniel Day, I was approbated to give sermons, and became a preacher of no fixed pulpit. It is to Reverend Day, also, that I am indebted for the introduction to that remarkable person, his sister, who is now my wife.
As I lie in the dark, thinking over the words I have just written to her, I recall that I have said I will not be sorry to leave here. Contemplating those words, I realize that they are not altogether true. I will be sorry indeed on one account: that is, to leave Grace, for this a second time, in bondage. Although this time, the choice to stay is hers.
I had stood for a very long time, that night after the battle of the bluff, trying to gather the strength to once again enter this house. I cannot say how long it was that I stood with my head pressed against the chipped white pillar. Despite the chill, sweat formed scalding rivulets down my back. I could hear the cries of the wounded men coming from inside, and knew I should be with them. For their pain was real, and present, and mine was just an old memory from a past that no one could change.
I straightened, finally, took a last deep breath of outside air, and laid my hand against the great door. There were bits of board nailed up where the beveled lights had been. I supposed they had been shot out or shattered in the battle for possession of the island. Inside, in what had been the elegant oval reception hall, men huddled, wounded and wet. Some lay flat upon the floor, some half-propped against the walls. One man’s head was pillowed on the plinth that held the Bound Prometheus, and his face had the same wracked expression as the carved countenance above him.
No one, it seemed, had got across the river with a full kit. Some had pants, but were missing shirts; others were attired the opposite way, having lost the lower half of their costume, but retained a coat. Some were entirely nude. Of these, a few shared Turkey rugs pulled up to cover them. Others, without such comfort, shivered so hard that it seemed likely they would shake the house off its foundations. I gave my own black frock to one of these wretches.
Because cries issued from the room that had been Mr. Clement’s library, I expected that the worst cases were within, and that I would find our surgeon there. Dr. McKillop is a short, stocky man with muscled forearms as hairy as a Barbary ape’s. He was turned away from me, working on the wrecked arm of Seth Millbrake, a wheel-wright from Cambridge. I noted that even the back of McKillop’s coat was blood-spattered, indicating the work he had accomplished whilst I’d tarried to wallow in my own exhaustion and despair. I resolved to think better of him. At his feet lay a forearm, a foot, and a leg, sheared off at the knee. McKillop lifted his boot from this gore-slicked floor and commenced to use its sole as a strop for his scalpel.
Seth was pleading with the surgeon, as such men always do, to save his limb. But the missile had shattered the bone near the elbow, splintering it into a score of white needles now sewn all through the shredded muscle.
My resolution regarding McKillop was tested within an instant when the surgeon, turning to wipe his knife on a piece of rag, noticed me. “March! About time! Get over here!” he barked, as one might call to an errant dog. “Hold his shoulders,” he instructed, and I did,