Well, as I do not intend to dwell on this part of the narrative very long, I will simply say that the doctors finally reached my case. I was carried into the little building, where so many pangs had been suffered that day, and laid on an operating-table; and after a slight examination of my wound, and a consultation of eight or nine seconds, they lulled me to repose with chloroform, and scientifically relieved me of my left leg. When I returned from the state of profound oblivion into which the chloroform had thrown me, I was glad to find that they had not made a mistake, and cut off the wrong limb—as a doctor was once known to do. They _had_ amputated the _right_ leg, because the _left_ one was the _right_ one—it being the wounded one—and my _right_ leg was now my _left_ one, because it was the only one _left_. Yet, the other was always the left one, and it has remained so, because it has been ever since _left_ on the battle ground. However, that is all _right_.
What I suffered during the ensuing three months in Smoketown Hospital, several miles from Sharpsburg, I will pass over with but a thought and a shudder, and hasten on to tell of the curious and amusing adventures I have since met with, “on a crutch.”
I will never forget my first attempt to walk on crutches. I thought it looked easy, to see others walking about the hospital on crutches; just as an inexperienced person is apt to think rowing a boat an easy matter, because he sees others do it with apparent facility. So, one day, when my strength had so increased that I thought I could bear my weight on my only leg, I urged the nurse to lift me up and let me try a pair of crutches.
He did so. He raised me up, and I stood holding tremulously to the tent-post—for I and five other unfortunates occupied a hospital tent—while he carefully placed a crutch under each of my arms. It was the first time for several months that I had been in an erect position, and you can’t well imagine how I felt—without studying a good while about it. The ground on which I stood seemed so far beneath that it made me quite dizzy to look down on it, and I trembled at the awful possibility of falling.
With the crutches under my arms, and the nurse’s strong hand on my shoulder to keep me steady, I made two or three feeble, timid strides, and concluding that walking on crutches was not quite what it was “cracked up” to be, I faintly said: