I stood a moment to take an observation--to make a sort of moral diagnosis before beginning my attack--to find out whether the man needed direct or indirect sympathy. Very often, to a severely wounded man--not of a nervous temperament, but suffering intensely,--a kind word, showing that you appreciate and enter into that suffering, falls on the burning wound with a soothing, cooling power, as beneficial, for the instant, as a more visible application; on the wound, I say, for the answer is, after a few minutes’ conversation, not, “Thank you, I feel better able to bear the pain, now;” but, “Thank you, my arm doesn’t burn as much as it did--my limb isn’t so painful--my head feels cooler, now.” But, on the other hand, who that has suffered from unstrung nerves does not know that what is most needed in such a case, is to divert the mind from itself--to present suddenly some other image powerful enough to efface from it the impressions of its own wretched self--to enable it to rouse itself and rise above the weakness it is ashamed of, but has no power to conquer? Any allusion to the suffering itself, in such a case, only adds fuel to the flame.
I had time to draw my own conclusions, and soon decided that Dick’s protegé belonged to this latter class. He did not notice my approach; I therefore stood watching him for a little while. His arm and hand, from which the bandage had partially slipped, were terribly swollen; the wound was in the wrist, (or rather, as I afterwards found, the ball had entered the palm of his hand and had come out at his wrist,) and appeared to be, as it subsequently proved, a very severe one.
My boast that I could make a pretty good conjecture what State a man came from by looking at him, did not avail me here. I was utterly at fault. His fair, Saxon face, so far as I could judge of it as he lay sobbing on his pillow, had something feminine--almost childlike--in the innocence and gentleness of its expression; and my first thought was one which has constantly recurred on closer acquaintance, “How utterly unfit for a soldier!” He wanted the quick, nervous energy of the New Englander, who, even when badly wounded, rarely fails to betray his origin; he had none of the rough off-hand dash of our Western brothers, and could never have had it, even in health; nor yet the stolidity of our Pennsylvania Germans. No! it was clear that I must wait till he chose to enlighten me as to his home. After a few minutes’ study, I was convinced that his tears were not from the pain of his wound; there was no contraction of the brow, no tension of the muscles, no quivering of the frame; he seemed simply very weary, very languid, like a tired child, and I resolved to act accordingly.