Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 4, April, 1886

On inquiry I discovered he had come in for his fate characteristically. While they had been preparing the mid-day meal for his company, the cook complained of a scarcity of water. The path to the draw-well was in the direct line of a terrible fire; it was positively furrowed with ripping segments of shell. Instead of ordering the men on fatigue duty (whose actual business it was) to go, volunteers were asked for, and Andy and a comrade stepped forward and undertook to fetch a bucket. Hardly had they started into the open on their hazardous errand, when a shell exploded almost at their feet, knocking them over like ninepins, and sending the fragments of the bucket whizzing in splintered chips far asunder. Andy's comrade was hit on the sole of the foot, and broke into a bellow of pain. It was no want of fortitude; the torment must have been insupportable. The net-work of sinew and muscles in that most delicately formed portion of the human framework was torn through, and the dirty leather of the shoe was forced into the flesh, and there was an ugly circle of jagged spokes around like the star-fractures made by a stone flung through a pane of glass. Andy's right leg was shattered a few inches above the knee, and hung on by a shred of skin; the shock must have deprived him of sensation, and the rapid gush of blood caused a merciful swoon. The hemorrhage was stopped by a surgeon on the spot, and a dose of brandy poured down his throat. As he recovered his speech he murmured in a dazed way his old catch-words "much-a-wanted."

While I was learning these particulars, the pathetic little procession was climbing towards the hospital of St. John of God, where the most accomplished of our staff of surgeons were in waiting to perform serious operations, and the zealous brothers of the institution – a sort of anticipatory Red Cross order – were on the constant watch to supply all that science, good nursing and the beautiful compassion of religion could suggest for the benefit of the afflicted.

On the ground floor the operating-room was situated, and thither the party bore their pale-faced, perspiring, still burden. I followed, thinking I might be of use as I understood Italian; and, in any case, when the sufferer returned to consciousness it might be some comfort to him to have the face of one he knew by his pallet. It was promptly decided that the leg should be amputated at the thigh, and as the surgeons, with workmanlike coolness, proceeded with their grim preliminaries, the pain awoke Andy to his situation. And yet not quite. By the wild unrest of his eyes and the working of his features, it was plain that he was in the throes of acute agony; he felt it, but he could not tell why or wherefore it was. He knew too keenly where the seat of pain was, but he could not divine the exact injury he had sustained, and strove almost frantically to rise so as to obtain a view of his lower extremities. He caught sight of me, and besought me to lift him. I laid my hand on his forehead and tried to pacify him, but in vain. He sank back with a moan that went to my very marrow. While he lay thus, as if in the coma of prostration, I asked quietly if they did not propose to administer chloroform, but they shook their heads and said they had none to spare except for officers. I insisted that the boy would die under the knife unless he had something to numb his sensibility, and at the moment he opened wide his eyes, and, with a look of pleading which I can never forget, gasped —

"Gracious God! How I burn. Take me out and shoot me."

Then, in a sharp shout of entreaty as if wrung by a stronger spasm than before —

"If you're friends, if you're men, you'll put me out of pain."

The surgeon-major at last relented and nodded to an aide, who administered the chloroform. Quickly and skilfully the operation was performed, and when the patient came back to things of the world he lay in a ward on the same floor, a cradle over the stump to avert the risk of hemorrhage from the dressings being disturbed. He was very feeble and languid, and spoke like one in a trance.

"Do you feel better after your sleep, Andy?"

"Yes, thank you; 'twas much-a-wanted. But my feet are very cold."

His feet! Then he knew nothing of what had occurred; that he was no longer as others, but maimed in his youth, destined to go through life a cripple – if he ever rose from his bed.

"Put more covers over me," he besought.

He got a stimulating cordial from one of the brothers who specially charged himself with his guardianship, and I passed through some of the remaining wards on my way out. Those who were the least querulous appeared to be the very men who were most grievously wounded, perhaps they were too spent to sigh; those who were loudest in their yells of anguish – there is no other word – were a number of unfortunates who had their flesh scorched and shrivelled by the blow-up of a magazine. It is as trying to hear a strong man yell with anguish as to see a strong man shed tears. Here and there a lighted taper was placed at the foot of a bed, and the white sheet drawn over the mute and motionless occupant told its own story.

The next forenoon I visited Andy. He was weak but sprightly, and still unconscious of his great loss. He asked me how we were getting on, and when we should have the enemy beaten, for he could distinctly hear the whistling of shells and the repercussion of the booming of the big guns.

On the following day there was a change in him for the worse. There were two reasons to explain it; a shell had fallen on the roof of the hospital and crashed into one of the wards of the upper story where it burst. This naturally caused a fearful commotion, and fevered and mutilated patients had started from their beds in panic and crouched in the corridors and on the staircases. But, to my thinking, the alteration in Andy's condition was to be traced rather to another accident. He had learned the extent of his misfortune. A rough, good-natured comrade who had snatched time for a friendly call had blurted it out.

"Keep up your spirits, my hearty; you won't be the first lad to hobble through life on a timber-peg."

The poor fellow turned a ghastly white, gazed around him in a scared, vacant manner – so the brother told me – and asked with dry, tremulous lips for a drink of water. Afterwards he had dozed into a delirious slumber. In his ravings he fancied he was on a lone and dangerous post in advance of our lines, and that his officer had forgotten him.

"I'm perishin' wid the cowld," he peevishly muttered, "and no sign o' the relief. Ten hours on sentry; I give them ten minutes more. If they don't come, I'll go."

Then there must have been a struggle in his harassed brain between duty and the sense that he had been neglected.

"No," he continued. "Desertion before the inamy – disgrace! Can't do that. As I'm here, I'll see it out. I wish the relief would come."

And then the poor crazed youth went through the motions of slapping his hands across his breast to quicken the circulation, and began humming the air of "The Pretty Maid Milking her Cow."

By degrees the motion of his hands slackened, his voice grew fainter, he turned his head on one side, and dropped into a deep, calm sleep.

Duty took me elsewhere, but I returned in a few hours. As I stole up to the bedside the patient was awake and looked brighter and better than before. It was the blazing of the wick before the candle expires.

"He has had a lucid interval," whispered the brother, "and was so meek and patient that it made me weep. But he is delirious again – still yearning for that relief."

At that instant the sunset flame shooting through a window burnished the sufferer's face until it looked like that of some waxen image with a halo; by a powerful effort he propped the upper portion of his body on his left elbow, raised his right arm in salute, and cried —

"Hurrah! I saw the sunlight on yer bay'nets, boys. Andy wouldn't lave his post. But whisper, sargent, ye were much-a-wanted, much-a-wanted!"

And with a glad laugh the boy-soldier fell back.

There was a thin crimson streak upon the pillow. The relief had, indeed, come at last.

    John Augustus O'Shea, in Merry England.

Mixed Marriages

Marriage is so intimate a union between man and wife that the hearts of both should ever beat in full and unalloyed sympathy and accord. Above all, the religious convictions of both ought to be in perfect harmony. If there is not in the family a common faith and a common form of divine worship, the consequences are disastrous to home comfort, to religious training, and to faith itself. Show me a family that forms an exception, and you either show a strengthening of the rule, or you show a family that is happy only in appearance. For, even then you will find that the Catholic party has to do a thousand things unknown to the other, and to beg of the children to keep matters secret. There is woe following the telling of the secret. Suffice it to know that the wisdom of the Catholic Church is opposed to these unions; that if the Catholic party die, the children, as a rule, are lost; and that even in the best cases religious indifference is the ordinary consequence.

How often do we meet such an instance as this, nor shall I overdraw it. A young Catholic lady tells her confessor that she intends to marry a Protestant young man. The confessor remonstrates. It is useless. Her mind is made up on the matter. He is a good young man, with no prejudice against her faith, and is satisfied to be married by the priest. Very well; they get married; and six months afterward the bell is rung at the priest's door. A thickly veiled female comes in, and she has a sad story to tell. She has been abused, called names in which her religion was not complimented; and, oh, worst of all, this very day he has thrust her out of doors. Yes; called Papist and thrown down the stoop by the "splendid young man" on whose arm she hung so proudly in the heyday of her foolish fascination!

Some of our young ladies may be educated a little too high for our average young man. And too many of them look down on honest labor – on the young mechanic or tradesman – and cast their eyes on some banker's clerk or broker's accountant, who, with ten or twelve dollars a week, studies the manners of the millionnaire, frequents the opera, and may not be above forging his employers' name. Better to cast her lot with the honest young Catholic tradesman, who attends to his religious duties, is temperate and steady, forgetting altogether that he neither dresses like a fop nor poses like a Chesterfield.

If the man be the Catholic, the case is worse. The mother has most influence with the children. The father worries, drinks, loses his position, and perhaps dies a victim of intemperate habits.

Farewell, My Home

Though sunshine dances merrily
On wave and stream and trembling leaf,
Though wild birds wake their minstrelsy,
My heart is full of grief.

No sunshine there; 'tis sad and lone;
No echo to the wild bird's lay;
One only thought – the dear hearth-stone
I loved is quenched to-day.

My heart will break; I cannot bear
To part with scenes so loved, so blest.
My heart will break; I cannot tear
Me from this home of rest.

Yet, though I say farewell, my home,
'Tis but the lips that speak their part;
Believe, wherever I may roam,
I leave with thee my heart.

Broken, yet clinging still to thee,
My home, as to a mother's breast;
Broken, yet loving tenderly
My home, my heart's first rest.

Farewell, my home, farewell, farewell;
One last, one lingering look I take
On each dear scene of hill and dell,
Of mountain bold and silver lake.

Farewell, I leave my bleeding heart
Within thy loved retreats to roam;