"I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall."--BYRON.
On the next day, the 10th, we marched through Culpeper. I recognized the
place; I had straggled through it on the road to Gettysburg. Again we
went into bivouac early.
That afternoon I again thought of Dr. Frost's advice to hold to any clew
I should ever get and work it out; I had a clew: I wondered how I could
make a step toward an end.
To recover a lost name seemed difficult. The doctor had said will was
required. My will was good. I began with the purpose of thinking all
names that I could recall. My list was limited. Naturally my mind went
over the roll of Company H, which, from having heard so often, I knew by
heart. Adams, Bell, Bellot, and so on; the work brought an idea. I
remembered hearing some one say that a forgotten name might be recovered
with the systematic use of the alphabet. I wondered why I had not
thought at once of this. I felt a great sense of relief. I now had a
purpose and a plan.
At once I began to go through the A-b's. The first name I could get was
Abbey; the next, Abbott, and so on, through all names built upon the
letter A. I knew nobody by such names. My lost name might be one of
these, but it did not seem to be, and I had nothing to rely upon except
the hope that the real name, when found, would kindle at its touch a
spark in my memory. Finally all the A's were exhausted--nothing.
Then I took up regularly and patiently the B's. They resulted in
nothing. I tried C, both hard and soft, thinking intently whether the
sound awoke any response in my brain.
I abandoned the soft C, but hard C did not sound impossible; I stored it
up for future examination.
Then I went through D and E, and so on down to G, which I separated into
two sounds, as I had already done with C, soft and hard. This
examination resulted in my putting hard G alongside of hard C.
H, I, and J were examined with like result--nothing.
The K was at once given a place with the preferred letters.
L, M, N, O were speedily rejected.
At P I halted long, and at last decided to hold it in reserve, but not
to give it equal rank with the others.
Q gave me little trouble. I ran down all possible names in Q-u, and
rejected all.
The remainder of the letters were examined and discarded.
In order of seniority I now had the following initial letters: C hard, G
hard, and K, with P a possibility.
It was now very late, but I could not sleep. My mind was active, though
I found to my surprise that it was more nearly calm than it had been for
days. I knew that I ought to sleep, but I seemed on track of discovery.
It had taken me hours of unremitting labour to get where I
was,--monotonous but interesting labour--and it would likely take me
hours more to advance a single step farther.
A sudden idea presented itself. What if the name was a very unusual
name, one, in fact, that I had never heard, or seen written, except as
the name of this Doctor? This thought included other thoughts--one was
the idea of a written name. I had been following but one line of
approach, while there were two,--sound and form. I had not considered
the written approach, but now I saw the importance of that process.
Another thought was, whether it would help me for the name to be not
merely unusual, but entirely unknown. I could not decide this question.
I saw reasons for and against. If it was an utterly unknown name, except
as applied to the Doctor, I might never recover it; I might continue to
roll names and names through my brain for years without result, if my
brain could bear such thought for so long. I pictured in fancy an old
man who had forgotten in time his own name, and had accepted another,
wasting, and having wasted, the years of his life in hunting a word
impossible and valueless. But I fought this fear and put it to sleep.
The uncommon name would cause me to reject all common names, perhaps at
first presentation; my attention would be concentrated on peculiar
sounds and forms. If my mind were now in condition to respond to the
name, I might get it very soon.
In debating this point, I suppose that I lost sight of my objective, for
I sank to sleep.
At daylight I was awake. My mind held fast the results of the night's
work. I wrote as follows:--