[415]
But nobody cries.
Bear away the clay,
To the dead-house; away!
Who cares! who ever sheds tears
Over ragged and dirty soldiers' biers!
A box of pine,
Say three feet by nine,
They place him in;
Away from the din
Of battle and strife,
Then hurried for life,
Under the stones to bury the bones
Of the poor soldier whom nobody mourns.
In his home far away,
A letter some day,
Perhaps may tell
How the poor soldier fell.
Then tears, ah!
how deep,
The loved ones will weep,
When they hear that the bier
Of him they so loved, awoke not a tear.
Hagood's brigade served sixty-five consecutive days in the trenches of Petersburg, entering them with an aggregate of twenty-three hundred men and officers. When withdrawn on the 20th of August, to participate in the fighting on the Weldon road, incident to Grant's turning operations, but fifty-nine officers and six hundred and eighty-one men remained present for duty.
General Hagood's address was received with enthusiastic applause, which was indefinitely prolonged when Colonel P. C. Gaillard, his old comrade in arms, walked up and congratulated him.
Soon after the conclusion of General Hagood's address, the second regular toast was proposed by Colonel John S. Fairly:
Drank standing and in silence.
Third toast, by D. B. Gilliland, fourth vice-president:
The Confederate Soldier—Poorly paid, clad and fed, with little training or rigid discipline, he endured more, accomplished more, and fought better than any soldier in any army in any age.
