While there, who should come in but the ubiquitous
Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, often confounded with his
namesake who visited the Flying Island, and with some reason, for he
must have a pair of wings under his military upper garment, or he could
never be in so many places at once. He was going to Boston in charge of
the lamented Dr. Revere's body. From his lips I learned something of the
mishaps of the regiment. My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave
than at first thought; but he mentioned incidentally having heard
a story recently that he was _killed_,--a fiction, doubtless,--a
mistake,--a palpable absurdity,--not to be remembered or made any
account of. Oh, no! but what dull ache is this in that obscurely
sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the nervous centre
called the _semilunar ganglion_ lies unconscious of itself until a great
grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the non-conductors
which isolate it from ordinary impressions? I talked awhile with
Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but soldier-like and
uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent lady, a
captain's wife, New-England-born, loyal as the Liberty on a golden
ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that
goddess's portrait.
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