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THE FARMER AND SOLDIER.
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a battle, and just before we rushed into it, I have felt a fearful shuddering, an inexpressible horror at the thought of butchering my fellow creatures. But in the heat of contest, such feelings vanished, and the madness and desperation of a demon possessed me. I cared neither for heaven nor hell.
"You, who dwell in the midst of the influences of mercy, and shrink to give pain even to an animal, can hardly imagine what hardness of heart comes with the life of a soldier, deeds of cruelty are always before him, and he heeds neither the sufferings of the starving infant, nor the groans of its dying mother.
"Of my own varieties of pain I will not speak. Yet when I have lain on the