Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1884 — Two Acts. [ARTICLE]

Two Acts.

“Who will volunteer?” “I!” shouted a dozen voices, and twelve men stepped out of the ranks. They were quickly ordered to a dangerous duty, and as they moved off, they silently waved their hands to their companions standing in the ranks. The duty was to remove the gunpowder stored near the hospital building to a place of safety. This was On the Tennesseean the summer of ’63. The Confederates were shelling the camp, and the buildings in which a large amount of powder had been stored were already bn fire. Under the direction of a sergeant, we went to work, for we knew that an explosion so near the hospital meant certain death to the poor fellows there. We had removed all the kegs but one. The fire had burned our faces and singed our clothes, and we all shrank back except our sergeant. He rushed in, enveloped in asheet of flame, and scorched, blinded, blistered, brought out the smoking keg and rolled it to a place of safety. And then what a cheer went up! We were proud of him, and prouder still next day when he received an Officer’s commission. Two days after, the call came again. “Who will volunteer?” Not a man in the company responded. It was a different case. “Bounty Tom” had been arrested in the act of deserting. While confined in the guard-house awaiting his trial, he had been thken ill with smallpox, and was now in a lonely • cabin, a mile from camp. Who would volunteer to watch by the sick “bounty-jumper ?” The nurses had all left him. The surgeons were all busy. Every one-de-spised Tom as a deserter and a ruffian. “Better let him die!” they said. “I will go,” said a quiet voice. And <>a man who had been sneered at during an engagement as a coward, went to the bedside of that loathsome ruffian and nursed* him until he died. Then he came back AJjd quietly took his place among us, as calmly as if he had been home bn a furlough. Brave Sergeant Wittlesy’s name was mentioned with honor in the dispatches. Simple Jack Holley passed unnoticed. His act was soon forgotten, and there is hardly a man in Company who remembers his name tq-day. But which was the braver man?— Youth’s Companion.