Fg & ( 
 
 Class. 
 
 Book. 
 
HOSPITAL DAYS 
 
 
 l^ 
 
HOSPITAL DAYS. 
 
 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 I). VAN NOSTRAND, 192 BROADWAY, 
 
 MDCCOLXVII). 
 

$r 
 
 THE "SURGEON IN CHARGE," 
 
 HONORED COMMANDER, 
 
 TRUE COMRADE, 
 
 BELOVED FRIEND, 
 
 THIS LITTLE STORY OP THE HOSPITAL 
 
 Jfs Jhiseribefc. 
 
FIRST DAYS 
 
In the Autumn of 1865, when the new Peace on 
 all the hills and fields made them seem so sweet and 
 fair, we found ourselves, a family long parted, explor- 
 ing the by-roads in the north New Hampshire country. 
 Following, one day, a winding green wagon-track, far 
 from the main road, we came upon a desolate rough 
 farm half way up the lower slopes of the Bartlett 
 mountain. A dozen sheep were scattered over 'the 
 stony fields, and among them sat a man in the full 
 uniform of a Zouave, bagging trowsers, gay-braided 
 jacket, cap, tassel, and long bright crimson scarf, com- 
 plete. He had but just got home from some distant 
 post, with very little back pay in his pocket for the 
 sick wife, and none at all to spend in sober clothes, 
 and had gone at once to work upon the obstinate 
 farm, all in his gay attire. He seemed a little stunned 
 by the silence round him. He 'missed the drums,' he 
 
said. We had a little talk over the old days already 
 so distant although so near, and ' left him, the sun 
 touching the red and the blue of his bright garments, 
 tending his sheep under the solemn hills. 
 
 One who sits and listens for the drums to-day seems 
 like the Zouave among the she ep -crofts ; the flags and 
 the music have marched so far away. And yet there 
 may be some, in these times of gain-getting, pleasure- 
 seeking, and "reaction," who are not sorry to look 
 backward a little, now and then, and refresh from the 
 old fountains their courage and their love of country. 
 
On a blue-and-gold day in the edge of November*, 
 a hundred years ago, two ladies, with their luggage, 
 were carefully packed into an ambulance, the chief con- 
 veyance of the period, at the door of a Washington 
 hotel. They were setting out — with an easy and cheer- 
 ful-minded confidence in the unknown, which seems 
 strange to them as they look back at it, but which must 
 have been part of the spirit of the time — for a lonely 
 outpost hospital to which they had been invited by 
 the officer in charge, as supervisors of the nursing and 
 cooking department. 
 
 Through the unclean paste of Washington streets ; 
 over the Long Bridge and the turbid river, hindered by 
 endless wagon-trains, halted by German sentinels, who 
 read the passes upside down ; along roads in which the 
 heavy wheels turned back the soft soil as a plough 
 turns the loam in the fields ; through little sparkling 
 streams that rushed across the carriage-way ; by miles 
 and miles of treeless, open, desolate country — fields on 
 fields full of deep-red dwarf oaks, and low, thick, yellow 
 shrubbery — in the smoky sunshine and sweet, spicy air ; 
 
10 
 
 at last, climbing by long slopes a pleasant height, they 
 came to the grove skirting the Hospital grounds, and 
 wound up to the brick rear-court of a large quadrangle 
 of buildings. 
 
 The officer in charge came out to meet them, and 
 took them over to their lodgings in the parsonage, a 
 few yards from the central offices. They were so fortu- 
 nate as to be assigned quarters in the house with the 
 Chaplain and his family, and were shown into a large 
 octagon-sided room, with bare, clean floor, two camp 
 beds, with bed-sacks stuffed with straw, two little tables 
 with regulation tin basins, and in the wide fireplace a 
 huge black cylinder of sheet-iron, giving out a dull roar, 
 and turning red here and there in spots. 
 
 Out of the windows lay the sweetest country. Just 
 below were the remnants of a garden — lilac, syringa, 
 and straggling bushes on which two or three late, pale 
 roses fluttered and hung. These stood up to their knees 
 in the long, rough grass which covered the rolling ground 
 down to the feathery edge of trees, and the deep-cut, 
 yellow cross-roads. Beyond the road the red fields 
 reached far away, and beyond the fields, curving and 
 shining, moved the river. A streak of mist, and a 
 steeple here and there, showed where the nearest town 
 grovelled along the river's edge ; and on the left, looking 
 through miles of airy purple, hung in the smoke of the 
 
11 
 
 City, and the autumn vapor, the wonderful white dome, 
 not yet lifting aloft, nor having the right to lift the 
 finished figure of Liberty. Months and years made every 
 gleam and shadow, every color and line of the landscape 
 dear and familiar to the two who looked out upon it 
 delighted, on the first day of their new life. 
 
 The Hospital was a divinity school in the old days, 
 but very early in the war-time professors and pupils fled 
 away southward, in such unseemly haste to declare for 
 the rebellion that doors were left ajar, women's gowns 
 hanging in the cupboards, books lying open, face down- 
 wards, on the tables. One of the first cares of the 
 Surgeon in Charge was to have all these books collected, 
 carefully boxed, and sent to the nearest provost-marshal 
 for safe keeping. The deserted buildings first fell into 
 the hands of brigade and division commanders, were 
 occupied as headquarters for a few months, and were 
 then set apart for General Hospital uses. 
 
 The beautiful grove was spared by special order. The 
 brick and stone buildings scattered through it, dormi- 
 tories, class-halls, professors' houses, library and chapel, 
 with the addition of a little village of barracks, made 
 excellent accommodation for the sick. The ground falls 
 away from this pleasant height on all sides but the south. 
 Southward the brown waste stretches unbroken ; no 
 fence, no tree, wide, desolate, but sweet ; dipping here 
 
12 
 
 and there into ravines full of mist and soft color, climb- 
 ing at last against the sky in other heights, where, for 
 many months, rebels came and went at their pleasure, 
 making strong their offensive defences, and flaunting 
 their insolent banner. 
 
SPECIAL DIET. 
 
The morning after their arrival, the new-comers, who 
 had already been formally mustered into the service of 
 the United States, were put on duty in published orde"s, 
 and were waited on in the store-room by the women- 
 nurses in a body, somewhat prepared to resent if occa- 
 sion offered, but soon melting and smiling on observing 
 the unformidable aspect of the new authority. "Them 
 dear lambs!" said old Mrs. B., afterwards, "what / 
 was afraid of was caps." 
 
 The store-room was a comfortable room in the centra 
 or Administration building, over the main entrance, with 
 the luxury of an open wood fire- and a wide window over- 
 looking the barracks and the lovely view. Down the 
 sides of this room ran shelves and cupboards for storing 
 all manner of comforts ; regulation supplies proper to the 
 Special Diet department, and outside gifts of all kinds 
 which began to flow in at once, and continued flowing 
 in a twice-blessed current all the days of the service. 
 To this store-room was afterwards added a much larger 
 room next door, nicely fitted up and bountifully filled 
 with good things. 
 
 An exploration was then made of every nook and 
 
16 
 
 corner of the Hospital. A little ripple of smiles followed 
 the Surgeon in Charge up and clown the wards, and the 
 men to whom he spoke or whom he touched, loosen- 
 ing or righting strap or bandage, looked proud and 
 pleased. 
 
 In the course of this tour of inspection the Superin- 
 endent received a few words of instruction as to her 
 position and its duties. She might visit in the wards, dis- 
 tribute little extra comforts, talk to the men, write letters 
 and ' sympathize' as much as she had time and inclina- 
 tion for, but her serious business was to see that the 
 women-nurses did their duty, and that the Special Diet 
 vas everything that it ought to be. She was required 
 o know what quantity and quality of raw material was 
 iirnished by the Commissary Steward ; to see that this 
 vas properly cooked, properly distributed from the diet 
 kitchen, received in good order in the wards, carefully 
 divided there ; that each patient got, without unlawful 
 leakage, the exact articles ordered for him by the ward 
 medical officer ; in short, she was expected to follow the 
 food from the commissary store-house down the sick 
 man's throat. 
 
 To these duties the Superintendent added in her own 
 mind, among others, that of learning whether the per- 
 mitted articles were cooked according to the taste and 
 fancy of the individual, knowing well that A. prefers salt 
 
17 
 
 and B. sugar in the same kind of porridge, and disliking 
 from her soul the tall-men-powders-short-men-pills sys- 
 tem she has observed elsewhere. 
 
 A chief special diet cook and five or six assistants 
 were detailed for the kitchen, and a set ■ of printed 
 forms and tables arranged by which everything was 
 made methodic and easy. "Call my attention to any 
 roughness you see in the working of this or that 
 order," said the Surgeon in Charge; "Observe, observe 
 continually ; your observation is worth more than my 
 theory." 
 
 Standing where she could see and sympathize with the 
 ' difficulties and scruples of authority,' as well as with 
 the needs and helplessness of suffering, the Superin- 
 tendent eagerly availed herself of the privileges of her 
 position. The diet system was from time to time 
 altered and improved, until a set of tables, blanks, and 
 orders was fixed on, so " fitly framed together" that the 
 little department moved, without undue friction, fairly 
 and smoothly to the end. 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge made the diet system the 
 subject of much thought, observation, and care. " We 
 must have order and economy," he said; "but we 
 must also avoid all restriction in gratifying the lawful 
 wants of the sick. The hospital fund is to be used, 
 as far as possible, for the very men out of whose 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 rations it is saved." He declared that patients and 
 their needs could be classified to a great extent ; that 
 it was safer on all sides to use, in the large proportion 
 of cases, a set of fixed bills of fare specifying the 
 proper dishes for each meal, rather than a miscellaneous 
 list of articles from which inexperienced ward officer 
 and captious patient should make up together their 
 programme of a harmonious banquet. The Superin- 
 tendent has in her possession many original orders 
 on the diet kitchen, of which the following are speci- 
 mens : 
 
 Private H. (Inflammation of stomach.) Hot cakes, 
 cheese and molasses candy. 
 
 Private C. (Chronic diarrhoea.) Grated flour por- 
 ridge, lemonade, oyster soup, oatmeal gruel and pep- 
 permint tea. 
 
 Private J. (Chronic diarrhoea.) 
 
 BREAKFAST. 
 
 DINNER. 
 
 SUrPER. 
 
 Coffee. 
 
 Boast Beef. 
 
 Oyster Soup. 
 
 Steak. 
 
 Fish. 
 
 Raw Cabbage. 
 
 Eggs. 
 
 Boiled Cabbage. 
 
 Cheese. 
 
 Bread. 
 
 Radishes. 
 
 Bread. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Bread. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Milk-punch. 
 
 Tea. 
 
 Coffee. 
 
19 
 Private K. (Typhoid fever.) 
 
 BREAKFAST. DINNER. 
 
 SUPrER. 
 
 Mutton Chops. 
 
 Beefsteak. 
 
 Milk. 
 
 Potatoes. 
 
 Potatoes. 
 
 Tea. 
 
 Bread. 
 
 Tea. 
 
 Arrowroot. 
 
 Coffee. 
 
 Coffee. 
 
 Cake. 
 
 Doughnuts. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Butter. 
 
 Plum Pudding. 
 
 Pudding. 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge held that a roast-beef and pud- 
 ding diet, an eggs and milk diet, a vegetable diet for men 
 touched with scurvy, a milk-porridge diet, a beef-tea 
 diet, and a gruel diet, would cover the majority of cases ; 
 one entire table being changed for another as it stood, as 
 often as was necessary for variety ; for the most delicate 
 food given monotonously disgusts the sick person. Private 
 Davidson, Ward D, for instance, was very fond of chicken 
 stewed in rice, and a nice dish of it was prepared for him. 
 The ward surgeon neglected or forgot to make a change 
 in the diet order, and the chicken was duly sent day after 
 day, until Private D. became so exasperated with the sight 
 and even the smell of it, that weeks afterward when the 
 same dish was brought for his next neighbor, he seized a 
 moment when his comrade's back was turned, crawled 
 from his bed and threw the whole mess, dish and all, out 
 of the window. 
 
20 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge thought it necessary, however, to 
 leave some liberty, outside of all fixed tables, as the sick 
 man's appetite sometimes requires tempting, not only with 
 frequent changes, but with " home dishes " and dishes 
 prepared to some extent after his own fancy. Badly 
 wounded men too, often consume almost unlimited quan- 
 tities of food and stimulants. For all such case special 
 blanks were provided, on which any and all reasonable 
 articles might be ordered by the ward surgeon. A little 
 book of the gravest cases was kept in the store-room, and 
 constant note taken of their needs and progress. The 
 incessant, strenuous effort of the Surgeon in Charge was, 
 to put it in a grand way, to make 
 
 1 ' Perfect law commeasure perfect freedom. " 
 
 The framework of the diet system is this : 
 
 First (A). The Diet Table, a bill of fare or fixed carte 
 drawn up by the Surgeon in Charge, prescribing the dif- 
 ferent articles for each meal, under several general heads, 
 with the exact quantity of each man's ration, in pounds, 
 ounces, pints, etc., set down in the margin, thus : 
 
 Private Jones, No. 1, is ordered by his ward surgeon 
 " Eggs and Milk Diet." Referring from the return to the 
 diet tables posted in the store-room and in all the wards, 
 we see that "Eggs and Milk Diet " means that Private 
 Jones is to have for : 
 
21 
 
 BREAKFAST. DINNER. SUPPER. 
 
 Milk pt.l Milk pt. 1 Milk pt. 1 
 
 Eggs, poached, No. 2 Chicken oz. 8 Milk toast . . . . oz. 6 
 
 Milk toast oz. 6 Custard oz. 6 Butter oz. 1 
 
 Butter oz. 1 Bread oz. 4 Cheese oz. 1 
 
 Second (B). The Ward Diet blank, or Return, in which 
 every man's needs for the day are entered under his name 
 and number. Private Jones, No. 1, Eggs and Milk Diet. 
 Private Robinson, No. 2, Beef-tea Diet. One of these 
 returns for each ward comes to the Superintendent every 
 day in the morning. 
 
 Third. The Ward Returns aggregated by the Super- 
 intendent on one blank for the kitchen. 
 
 Fourth (C). The Requisition on the Commissary Stew- 
 ard for the raw material ; so many pounds, ounces, 
 quarts, etc., based on the aggregate returns. 
 
 This, for instance, is a copy of the requisition on the 
 Commissary Steward for May 22, 1865, the number of 
 patients on the Special Diet returns for that day being 
 346. 
 
 " The Commissary Steward will please issue for Special 
 Diet: 
 
 Bread lbs. 390 
 
 Butter lbs. 40 
 
 Milk qts. 350 
 
99 
 
 Beef lbs. 130 
 
 Chickens (11 pr.) 22 
 
 Potatoes lbs. 125 
 
 Onions lbs. 30 
 
 Sugar... lbs. 30 
 
 Coffee lbs. 10 
 
 Pickles qts. 4 
 
 Rice lbs. 15 
 
 Dried apples lbs. 15 
 
 Salt lbs. 7 
 
 Oysters gallons 4 
 
 Signed by the Superintendent." 
 
 The lighter supplies, tea, loaf-sugar, eggs, dried beef, 
 corn-starch, etc. ; tomatoes, cheese, fresh butter, sweet- 
 meats, spices and wines, are issued from the store-room, 
 and an account is kept in the Store-room Book of Issues. 
 Voluntary supplies for general distribution are stored and 
 issued in the same way. 
 
 Fifth (D). The Commissary Steward's daily evening 
 report, a duplicate of which is sent to the Superintend- 
 ent. This shows the quantity of all raw material 
 received, issued, and remaining on hand in the commis- 
 sary store-house. 
 
 Sixth (Ei). The order on the grocer or tradesman in the 
 town, of which blanks signed by the Surgeon in Charge 
 are furnished the Superintendent to be filled up by her 
 
23 
 
 with the extra articles needed, not issued by either com- 
 missary or medical purveyor, but to be bought out of the 
 hospital fund. 
 
 These papers check each other ; the Superintendent is 
 required to keep copies of them all on file. At the end 
 of the month the tradesmen's bills are sent to her to 
 compare with the retained copies of the orders, when 
 mistakes or fraud are easily detected. "But no theory 
 is perfect," said the Surgeon in Charge, in one of his short 
 lay sermons; "no system can be framed to exclude dis- 
 honesty. Eternal vigilance is the price of Special Diet. 
 Inspect, inspect continually." 
 
 All mixed drinks, i. e., punches, egg-nog, mulled wine, 
 wine-whey, lemonade, and acid fruit-drinks, and sherbets 
 are prepared by the Superintendent, and issued when 
 called for (F). 
 
 In order that the occasional extra resources of the 
 Hospital, or the gifts of friends, might be used with judg- 
 ment and impartiality, the Surgeon in Charge had a little 
 type-holder and printer's pad provided, with which the 
 Superintendent could fill in blank spaces in the diet re- 
 turns (B). The steward announced, let us do him the 
 justice to say, with evident pleasure, "You can draw on 
 the garden for green peas to-day, about so many bushels." 
 The tipsy, but benevolent corporal in the printing-office, 
 was always delighted to set up and the Superintendent to 
 
24 
 
 stamp on a lot of ward returns the charming words, 
 green-peas, or canned peaches, fresh fish, strawberries, 
 corn-cake, tomatoes, tomato-omelettes, string-beans, etc., 
 etc , and send the blanks round to all the wards. The 
 ward officers could then fill in names and numbers as 
 they liked, and there was not much danger of improper 
 or unequal distribution. 
 
SUPERINTENDENT'S DAY 
 
The outline of a Superintendent's day, with digressions, 
 is like this ; and all days — week-days, Sundays, and holi- 
 days, are very much alike. 
 
 Soon after breakfast, provided for over night, the 
 ward returns begin to come in. A little rattle in the tin 
 Post-Office box on the store-room door ; Ward A. is 
 early to-day ; so much the better. It happened to the 
 writer, visiting elsewhere and wanting to speak to the 
 ward surgeon, to ask, "At what time does Dr. B. make 
 his rounds?" " Well 'm," answered the ward master, 
 " that depends on how drunk he was the night before." 
 One after another the returns come in ; A, B, C, D, E, 
 F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, 0, P, Q ; sixteen of them to- 
 day. They are aggregated on one sheet, quantities are 
 estimated, and the requisition on the commissary steward 
 made out. Supplies necessary from the Superintendent's 
 store-room are estimated, and amounts entered in the 
 store-room book. The stimulants are prepared and 
 issued. The punches are compounded in huge caldrons 
 with stop-cocks and drawn off into armies of ward bottles. 
 Each man's bottle, is carefully re-washed before filling 
 (ward bottle-washing not recognized), corked and re- 
 labeled with adhesive label with his name and number. 
 
28 
 
 The bottles are carried in butler's boxes to the wards and 
 delivered to the women-nurses, through whom the special 
 diet and extra delicacies of all sorts are distributed. 
 
 It is time now and over-time to go to the kitchen and 
 give directions about dinner. The kitchen is a very large, 
 light basement room, under the Administration building. 
 Here are two important requisites of efficiency in the 
 special diet service ; a good central kitchen and rapid 
 communication with all parts of the hospital. The fix- 
 tures and utensils of the kitchen are abundant and of the 
 best quality. Recipes, either regulation or modifications 
 of Dutch and New England master-pieces, are plainly 
 written out and posted on the walls in perpetual sight ; 
 How to poach eggs ; Beef-tea, one ration ; Chicken soup, 
 one ration ; Corn bread, one ration. Every dish is in- 
 spected or tasted. The Superintendent confesses to a 
 private silver spoon in the pocket of her apron. The 
 main articles of food are, of course, prepared in bulk in 
 large vessels, and measuring cans and ladles of various 
 sizes hang in shining ranks against the walls. John is 
 justly proud of his tin-scouring. 
 
 Down one side of the kitchen runs a long dresser or 
 table. Here are ranged in order the sliding shelves or 
 trays of the diet wagon : A, a ; B, b ; C, c ; D, E, and 
 F ; one or more for each ward, Hung on the wall, over 
 the table, is the aggregated list ; the ' aggravated re- 
 
29 
 
 turn/ John calls it, as if it were a kind of sickness. By 
 long practice we all know to an invisible fraction how 
 much is one ration, and how much ten or twenty rations 
 of anything. If difference of opinion arises we weigh 
 again. All fluids are carefully measured in cans of exact 
 capacity. The great wooden ladles hold so many ounces 
 of mashed potato and so many of custard, etc. The cov- 
 ered cans, dishes, and jugs are set quickly on the trays 
 and quickly filled. It is wonderful how rapidly this can 
 be done with division of labor and practice. The trays 
 are shoved through the long windows and lifted into the 
 compartments of the wagon ; the doors of the wagon are 
 buttoned to, and with the " double team" in blue and a 
 guard behind, it sets out swiftly and smoothly along the 
 railed plank-walk or tramway which runs all over the 
 camp. The car halts in front of each ward ; the ward- 
 room window goes up, the trays are passed through, and 
 even at the uttermost barrack the mashed potato hurries 
 in smoking hot. The car makes one or two journeys at 
 each meal, according to the number of men in hospital, 
 and after each meal runs about again and collects and 
 brings in trays, cans, and dishes to be washed in the 
 kitchen. The " wittles train," as the men call it, was 
 somewhat long in coming to full perfection, but, "like 
 the hundred-years flower of the aloe," we said, "this was 
 worth waiting for." 
 
30 
 
 The woman-nurse in each little ward-room receives her 
 tray or trays, having her china plates and cups, her 
 knives and forks and tumblers, set out in order before- 
 hand ; divides the food according to a duplicate of the 
 ward return hanging over her table, and the men-nurses 
 carry it about. She follows immediately down the ward, 
 helps and feeds those who are unable to help themselves, 
 and sees that all have enough. If anything goes wrong, 
 she is directed to send word at once to the Superintendent. 
 She has means of heating over any simple thing if the 
 patient does not incline to it at the fixed hour. A sick 
 man will often take his food nicely if he may have his own 
 time about it, and does not feel himself under observation. 
 In critical cases a fresh ration is prepared instead of the 
 rechauffe. The small special blanks (F) are meant for 
 these and all other cases of emergency ; or the woman- 
 nurse can have anything urgently needed at the moment, 
 by sending her own written request for it. Extra rations 
 of one or two articles — such as beef-tea, oysters, eggs — 
 are always on hand in the kitchen. The Government 
 ration is so generous that when honestly used there is 
 almost always margin enough for extra calls without 
 extra requisitions for raw material. The commissary 
 steward, however, is required by the Surgeon in Charge to 
 keep some trustworthy person in the storehouse ready at 
 all times to fill such requisitions. 
 
31 
 
 The Superintendent follows in the wake of the diet car. 
 Such is the celerity with which the Defenders, even when 
 ill, swallow their food, it is impossible to be in more than 
 one or two wards while eating is actually going on. But 
 by beginning at a different and unexpected ward and 
 meal every day, the objects of an inspection are pretty 
 well secured. " Was the gruel right?" "Did you get a 
 full tumbler of punch?" " You are tired of the beef- tea? 
 Grumble as much as you like." "But I don't want to 
 grumble ; I aint got no complaints to make — only," — 
 
 aside to Gr , "I'd as lief see the devil coming up the 
 
 ward as that beef-tea!" 
 
 Take a page at random from the Superintendent's 
 shabby, little yellow note-book. What hospital nurse 
 doesn't know the sort? "Gushing complains of the 
 steak ; it is too rare." — The Superintendent observes 
 with pain that the Defenders all prefer their steaks cut 
 thin and fried. — "Jeffries wants more seasoning in his 
 soup ; it is * too fresh,' he says, and Brooks must have 
 his tomatoes raw, with vinegar. Thompson says the 
 men-nurses are too slow ; he says he ' wants particular 
 attention paid to him ;' he 'can't eat fish-hash,' and he 
 ' can't eat soup.' Bates wants ' crust coffee,' and explains 
 to me how it should be made. No. 35 hasn't touched 
 his breakfast. ' If he could only have some Boston brown 
 bread.' Mem. : to try and get him some. Eustace is 
 
32 
 
 tired of all his drinks ; try mulled sherry. Cocoa in F. 
 poor and washy to-day. More small cans wanted for 
 gruels. Ward return wrong' — explain to woman-nurse. 
 Quinn running down ; try champagne in a long-spouted 
 feeding cup. Mem. : to show nurse in K. how to get 
 more dish-towels and hot-water cans for cold feet. Scott 
 says he can't get along without 'jel' for his tea every 
 night. Cut up No. 802 's chicken and feed him with 
 it, on his intimation that he will eat it if I do ; he 
 admits that it is not as bad as he expected." 
 
 After the tour of the wards the chief cook comes 
 for directions, and the tea, sugar, eggs, cheese, etc., 
 for twenty-four hours, are weighed and counted out. 
 The chief cook is an enthusiast in his profession, or 
 rather in his calling, for he was a blacksmith when he 
 enlisted. He came into the Hospital with fever, and, 
 for some inscrutable reason, was, when convalescent, 
 detailed to the diet kitchen. But he "took" at once 
 to his new trade, learned rapidly, and showed great 
 zeal and intelligence in it. His blacksmith's hand was 
 light, accurate, and neat as a woman's. He took genuine 
 pleasure in trying new dishes, and genuine pride in their 
 success. He was often known to follow a ^.ice dish 
 quietly down to the ward, and stand by, enjoying 
 every mouthful the sick man swallowed. He was in 
 "mild misery" if anything failed in flavor or seemed 
 
33 
 
 stinted in quantity, and showed real delight when assured 
 that such and such sick men began to mend on good 
 food alone. May fair fortune and full rations follow 
 him — clear-witted, kind-hearted, faithful Thomas Sul- 
 livan, Special Diet cook. 
 
 One day, this note went down in a hurry to the office 
 of the Surgeon in Charge : 
 
 "Dr. , 
 
 " Etc., etc., etc. 
 " Deae Sir : Sullivan, chief Special Diet cook, is ordered to 
 report to the adjutant to-day before dress-parade, and from this 
 time forth to play upon a drum ! Cannot the ' interests of the 
 service ' secure him to the kitchen ? Surely he is more impor- 
 tant there than in the drum corps of this Hospital. Please let 
 him still flourish his wooden spoons instead of his drum-sticks." 
 
 Here is the note officially ' returned,' endorsed, " Sul- 
 livan is restored to his kettles, to remain as long as 
 the Superintendent wishes." There were constant alarms 
 of this kind about the detailed men. " The hospital sub- 
 serves the army," said the Surgeon in Charge ; " my 
 business is to return every man to the field as soon as 
 possible." So they were swept away. Sometimes en- 
 treaty prevailed, as in the case of Sullivan. Later, the 
 organization of an Invalid Corps solved some of these 
 difficulties ; but a sorrowful day came when request was 
 made for even the best of the 'Invalids' to garrison 
 
34 
 
 forts and guard roads, and set the strong regiments 
 free for fighting ; and all the good men, clerks, nurses, 
 and cooks, fitted out with various little camp-comforts — 
 headed by Sullivan — marched away under the window of 
 the Superintendent, who waved them a tearful good- 
 bye. Sullivan came to no harm ; and many months 
 afterwards, when his corps was at last disbanded, he 
 went home, married his old sweetheart, bought an 
 interest in another blacksmith's shop — and the man who 
 can make the best beef-tea in Pennsylvania is pounding 
 his anvil again. 
 
 After supplies are issued, and instructions for supper 
 given, there are stores to unpack and arrange, letters 
 to write and answer, applications of all sorts to attend 
 to from patients and nurses, and ward officers who 
 look in to request this or that article sent down to 
 the wards. The women-nurses usually take this time 
 to report special cases and special needs, talk over ward 
 business, and get Sanitary Commission or other outside 
 supplies for the men. The Sanitary Commission made 
 the Superintendent their representative at the post, and 
 always promptly and generously filled her requisitions, 
 sending out goods from the nearest station in their own 
 wagons. 
 
 Visitors from the City come in at all times, out of 
 friendship, out of interest, out of curiosity. Some are — 
 
35 
 
 how delightful! how refreshing! They lighten the 
 day's work, they make a bright day brighter, and a 
 dull day bright by their presence, their silence, and 
 their speech. And some are — how wearisome ! when 
 the work must go on before them, and they throw the 
 columns into confusion with volleys of trivial talk ; 
 and if 3-011 but offer a modest lunch out of a mess- 
 basket for two. keep calmly asking for clean plates 
 and tumblers. Then they compel you to go about the 
 wards with them, and witness the distribution of their 
 little gifts to all the most unworthy. Sometimes it is 
 a party of old gentlemen, in civil hats and tumbled, 
 yellow dusters — a Board — for the Hospital is much 
 infested with Boards out of which nothing is ever 
 builded. 
 
 The men come freely, all day long, to the store-room 
 to ' draw,' as they call it, tobacco, stationery, games, 
 socks, etc. ; to tell their little stories, and show their 
 home pictures and letters. It goes to one's heart to 
 hear the clatter of the crutches on the stair, and the 
 door is never shut except in the hours of necessary 
 absence. The stream of visitors of this class is almost 
 unbroken. They are the last before Tattoo, and some 
 one is always waiting, pale and patient, for the opening 
 of the door in the morning. It makes a little change 
 from the ward for a convalescent. A soft cracker and 
 
36 
 
 a tumbler of some harmless drink is always ready. 
 How they love these harmless, anonymous drinks ! 
 Who does not know the bottle ? Short and thick ; 
 twine across the cork — as if the contents were lively ! 
 a little over-leaked in the filling ; sawdust sticking to 
 the leaky spot ; labelled, " Shrub for the soldier, from 
 the East-Hallelujah Aid Society ;" a slow, sugary drip- 
 drop, after patient pounding and shaking ; this, mixed 
 with water and with a bit of ice in it, ' goes jest to 
 the right spot ;' this ' makes him feel twice the man he 
 was when he come up the stairs.' 
 
 Then the little rest and talk, and the newspaper or 
 magazine, and some trifle of a 'comfort-bag,' or pocket- 
 comb, or the like, with the suggestion that the women 
 at home are working and thinking for him, send a poor 
 fellow back to his ward with a little freshness in his 
 weary day. Many a glimpse of family history we get 
 in this way ; many a simple, pathetic story of suffering 
 and unconscious courage ; sometimes, very seldom, a 
 wondrous tale — a tale to ' make your flesh creep' — 
 of more than human valor and endurance. 
 
 Between six and seven the duplicate ''Commissary 
 Steward's evening report" rattles into the tin box on 
 the door. This is taken in, the quantity of stores on 
 hand compared with the probable needs of the next day 
 or two, and the order on the tradesman filled out for 
 
37 
 
 the steward's morning journey into town. The records 
 of the day are filed away, the last draughts for the night 
 mixed and sent to the wards, the last inquiries made 
 and charges given concerning the worst cases, and then 
 the slow, sweet bugle calls down rest — blessed rest — 
 upon the camp, and the Superintendent's day, with its 
 digressions, is ended. 
 
WOMEN-NURSES 
 
Was the system of Women-nurses in hospitals a failure ? 
 There never was any system. That the presence of 
 hundreds of individual women as nurses in hospitals was 
 neither an intrusion nor a blunder, let the multi- 
 tude of their — unsystematized — labors and achievements 
 testify. So far as I know, the experiment of a compact, 
 general organization was never fairly tried. Hospital 
 nurses were of all sorts, and came from various sources of 
 supply ; volunteers paid or unpaid ; soldiers' wives and 
 sisters who had come to see their friends, and remained 
 without any clear commission or duties ; women sent 
 by State agencies and aid societies ; women assigned by 
 the General Superintendent of Nurses ; sometimes, as in 
 a case I knew of, the wife or daughter of a medical 
 officer drawing the rations, but certainly not doing the 
 work of a 'laundress.' These women were set adrift 
 in a hospital, eight to twenty of them, for the most part 
 slightly educated, without training or discipline, without 
 company organization or officers, so to speak, of their 
 own, "reporting" to the surgeons, or in the case of 
 persons assigned by her, to the General Superintendent, 
 which is very much, in a small way, as if Private 
 Robinson should "report" to General Grant. 
 
42 
 
 There was a standing misunderstanding on the 
 question, for instance, who was authorized to supply 
 women-nurses. An attempt was made, late in 1863, 
 ostensibly to clear up this question. In order No. 351 
 of the War Department, clause Two says : Women-nurses 
 will be assigned only on application to the General 
 Superintendent, unless, adds clause Three, they are 
 specially appointed by the Surgeon General. Of course, 
 surgeons in charge wishing to retain or employ nurses 
 without the "certificate" of the General Superintendent, 
 applied for their "special appointment" by the Surgeon 
 General, which was promptly obtained. This, with other 
 provisions of the order, practically abolished the office of 
 General Superintendent of Nurses, and threw the selection 
 into the hands of surgeons in charge, which, where the 
 surgeon in charge was an 'honest gentleman' and a 
 faithful and efficient officer, was a wise enough measure. 
 
 The Roman Catholic system had features which com- 
 mended it to medical officers of a certain cast of mind. 
 The order and discipline were almost always good. The 
 neatness, etc., were sometimes illusory. There were 
 grave objections to the general introduction of such a 
 system among American volunteer soldiers. There was 
 nothing good in it that we also might not have had ; and 
 taking the good, leaving the bad, and adapting the result 
 to the uses of the country and the spirit of the time, we 
 
43 
 
 might have had an order of Protestant women better 
 than the Romish " sisterhoods." by so much as heart and 
 intelligence are better than machinery. 
 
 A friend, an officer in a neighboring hospital, once 
 wrote to me : " You will be interested to know that we 
 are just now in the midst of a war among the women- 
 nurses, which has continued with varying intensity and 
 fortunes, but with uniform clangor, among changing par- 
 ticipants, and through different administrations, since the 
 days of W. and McA. Nevertheless I stand by the sys- 
 tem, convinced that the good which the faithful ones do 
 far outweighs the mischief of the idle and the ' tonguey.'" 
 The last sentence expresses, I think, the general experi- 
 ence. The whole air and tone of a hospital ward change 
 and rise after a few days of a woman's presence, and she 
 is an invaluable auxiliary in the special diet department. 
 Alack ! there be women and women, but let a nurse be 
 ever so obstinate, ignorant, and flabby-minded, she will 
 eagerly, even gaily starve herself to feed a sick soldier. 
 She may be totally impervious to ideas of order ; she 
 may love "hugger-mugger" and roundabout ways of 
 getting at direct objects ; she may hopelessly muddle the 
 ward returns, and interchange sentiment with the most 
 obnoxious of the stewards, but she will cheerfully sacri- 
 fice time, ease, and health, to the wants or whims of a 
 wounded man. 
 
44 
 
 Mrs. A had "come out," she told me "to cresh 
 
 the rebellion," which she conceived she could best do by 
 distributing inordinate quantities of what she called 
 
 " sanitary jel." She had a difference with Mrs. C , 
 
 who considered pickled cucumbers the proper weapons 
 to use against the enemies of the country. 
 
 Mrs. M announced with dignity, at our first inter- 
 view, "I am a Daughter of Pennsylvania. You must 
 have heard of Curtin's Daughters ? I have been in the 
 
 field with the brigade, in such and such battles and 
 
 such and such skirmishes. All this may be found in my 
 journal." Then, after a little conversation, she revealed 
 that she had given us the ' sign ' or pass-word of two or 
 three orders, and as none had been 'taken up,' she 
 inferred we ' was all right.' She had registered a vow 
 not to serve with any "Sisters," or with members of any 
 secret society. She gave also the details of an interview 
 with the General Superintendent, who had visited the 
 Hospital not long before. The nurse-corps paraded. 
 " Here," said the child of the Keystone State — she looked 
 hard at me, and says she, " So you're the regiment 
 woman !" at which I drew myself up and looking back as 
 good as her, says I, "No, madam," says I ; "I am not 
 the regiment woman, I am the brigade woman !" 
 Whether the new administration was disappointing or 
 fresh fields of laurels unfolded elsewhere, I do not know, 
 
45 
 
 but in a few weeks ' letters requiring her presence at 
 home ' arrived, and the Daughter of Pennsylvania was 
 seen no more. 
 
 Miss D was an excellent little creature, gentle- 
 mannered, delicate, tremulous, full of intense and indig- 
 nant patriotism. Night and day found her unflagging in 
 her place. Watch had to be kept over her lest she 
 should never get proper food or rest. She could not 
 work by rule or method. She lost the law in the excep- 
 tions. She took what she thought "short cuts," and 
 hand-to-mouth ways of doing what systematic effort 
 would have accomplished in half the time. She was full 
 of goodness and devotion. When she was not at a 
 patient's pillow she was hurrying eagerly to the store- 
 room to collect comforts and tell the abuses and atroci- 
 ties she had seen. She thought all military restriction 
 atrocious. She wanted "to go and see Mr. Lincoln 
 about it." Her health gave way before the end of the 
 war and she went home. We were very sorry to part 
 with her. I am afraid the generous heart that beat so 
 fast is scarcely beating now. 
 
 Mrs. H- , wife of the commissary sergeant, one of 
 
 the most capable and faithful of our men, had a placid, 
 sweet face, that might do a sick man good to look on. 
 Her dress was simple and fresh, her voice, even her 
 manner, quiet and soothing She had a fever while she 
 
46 
 
 was at the Hospital, and was too delicate to do much 
 service in nursing ; but it was comfortable to know that 
 she was moving about the ward, restraining roughness 
 by her gentle presence, and overlooking the distribution 
 of the food and stimulants. 
 
 Miss S was a German who had followed a relative 
 
 to the Hospital, and asked for employment as a nurse. 
 She had her virtues and her uses, chief of which was in- 
 terpreting between the ward surgeon and the German 
 patients. She was a famous knitter of nice woolen socks. 
 She supplied and repaired the whole ward. But she 
 could not resist feeding her ' browthers ' clandestinely, 
 with the delicacies of their native land, made in the 
 nurses' mess kitchen. One of these was a warm and 
 washy beverage called " beer-soup," and another was an 
 anonymous mixture of something like glue, cabbage, and 
 "pot-scrapings." We rather winked at the beer-soup, 
 for beer in any shape is such a comfort to the brave 
 Teuton, but the pasty compound was too much for pro- 
 fessors of Special Diet, to say nothing of exasperated 
 surgeons. 
 
 Mrs. B showed the advantage of some previous 
 
 training in a civil hospital in Massachusetts. Although 
 of lower grade in refinement and education than 
 most of the other nurses, she came in more intelli- 
 gently to system and worked more efficiently under it. 
 
47 
 
 She was keen and wary. No cheat or malingerer could 
 deceive her for a moment, "though there's a verse of 
 scripter in the Bible," she said, "which tells us they'll 
 deceive the very elect." Trim and neat as wax in person 
 and work, her qualities soon told on her ward. Bed- 
 quilts hung no more awry, and blankets were folded over 
 straight and smooth. Crusts and parings, sloppy and 
 cloudy cans and tumblers, crumpled newspapers and 
 greasy cards disappeared from the little bedside tables. 
 A glass as clear as light, with a flower in the season, or a 
 little green spray, a smooth napkin, a freshly- washed 
 feeding cup for the drink, a game-box, a book from the 
 library, took their places. White curtains appeared in 
 the windows, or green where the light needed softening 
 to the sick eyes, prints on the walls, rocking-chairs 
 swinging to and fro with heroes, up and down the long, 
 board floors. The cups and plates in the little ward- 
 room glistened wiih cleanliness, and even the ugly stoves 
 began to shine. 'Loud conversational blasphemy' and 
 the banging of doors went out of favor. One of the first 
 things she ' drew ' from the ' Sanitary ' — why do so 
 many honest people always use the qualificative instead of 
 the noun ? — was a lot of soft, light slippers for the men- 
 nurses in the ward. She knew that the heavy creak of a 
 boot is almost as intolerable to a patient as a ' sympa- 
 thizer' sitting on the edge of his bed. She knew what to 
 
48 
 
 ask for and what to do with it. No discharged, disabled 
 man, or helpless, furloughed man ever left her ward with- 
 out a report of the case at the store-room and an outfit of 
 comforts for the journey. No crowd of new patients 
 came in, in ever so great confusion, without a quick, dis- 
 criminating survey of their real and immediate wants and 
 a similar report and supply. She possessed what many 
 better educated women never attain — the ability to post- 
 pone the non-essential to the essential, and to distinguish 
 clearly between them. 
 
 For more than three long years she served in her place 
 without a furlough. A ' little good black tea ' was the 
 only luxury, an occasional drive to the City to take a sick 
 boy to the Commission's lodge the only holiday she 
 wanted. She had quinsy, dysentery, and small-pox 
 during her term of service, and would hardly give up for 
 either malady until threatened with a sentinel at her 
 door. From morning till night, and often through the 
 cold, dragging hours till morning again, she could stand 
 unwearied, or sit within call in her little ward-room, with 
 her spectacles and her Bible, the only book she ever 
 opened, or her half-knitted sock or mitten. Alas ! she 
 was scarcely ever ' on terms ' with the other nurses, and 
 finally boasted: "Me and them don't speak — none of 
 us." This was all very well till she was taken ill with 
 small-pox, when Miss H., who had curls, and feelings, and 
 
49 
 
 testimonial bracelets from her patients, and a sentimental 
 correspondence with two or three discharged ones, and 
 who for these amiable weaknesses had suffered much from 
 Mrs. B.'s criticisms, volunteered to nurse her, and did it 
 so faithfully and kindly that Mrs. B. was melted and took 
 her into superfluous forgiveness again. The only touch 
 of sentiment I ever saw in Mrs. B. was over some delicate 
 china tea-cups, sent as a present for the Superintendent's 
 little mess. "They jest make one dream of home," she 
 said ; she ' wanted to cry over 'em.' 
 
 The men-nurses fared scarcely better than the women 
 at her hands. "I don't take no orders from a reduced 
 corporal /" I inadvertently heard her answer one clay to 
 a mild suggestion of the wardmaster, whose military 
 career she had been looking up. But she was loyal to 
 the powers in office. A malcontent went to her room 
 with some grievance concerning the Surgeon in Charge. 
 " I jest opened the door, and sot a chair outside, and says 
 I, will you please to take a seat in the entry, sir ? I don't 
 want no one in my apartment who comes a grumbliu to 
 me with acquisitions against my superior officers !" 
 " He's a father to me !'" — she insisted, of the Surgeon in 
 Charge, who might be thirty years her junior — "he was 
 always a father to me !" 
 
 The patients were very fond of her, as well they might 
 be, for most of her quarrels and all her little plots and 
 
50 
 
 wiles were in their service and favor. She left the camp 
 with the last of the sick in August of 1865, and after too 
 short a rest, took a place again in a civil hospital in 
 Massachusetts, where she died in a few months, broken 
 down, no doubt, by her toils and vigils in the army. 
 
GIFTS TO SOTDIERS 
 
The Sanitary Commission generously filled all our re- 
 quisitions. We did not very often call on them, believing 
 that their supplies were more useful and more necessary 
 on the field, or in the wake of the armies. Private 
 friends, and some, friends though strangers, sent us many 
 good things, part of the great mass of offerings taken no 
 account of in any published estimate of the gifts of the 
 people to their soldiers. Barrels of flannel shirts and 
 socks, gallons of choice wines and liquors, casks of home- 
 made pickles very different from the coppery cucumber of 
 the regulation ; all these could be had unasked, or for the 
 asking. "Why send the very old Port?" I heard some 
 one remonstrate with Mr. W. of New York ; "wouldn't 
 the next best do?" "No!" was the answer ; "it is the 
 best a man has that belongs to God — and the army." 
 Among many such gifts came four boxes of London Port, 
 which had this little story : The wine was sent by an 
 English gentleman to Miss Nightingale, in the Crimea. 
 It arrived just after the hospitals were broken up, and was 
 returned with other parcels to the storehouse in London, 
 where it was kept for a long time, and finally sold for 
 some army charity. The purchaser sent it, for the sake 
 
54 
 
 of its history, to his friend, Mr. D., of New York, and so 
 it came to ns. 
 
 Here is a list of one lot of gifts among many from Mrs. 
 : Eighty-six flannel shirts, thirty-six pounds con- 
 densed milk, one cask sherry, one cask brandy, one cask 
 porter, one box tea, ten gallons wine, twelve gallons 
 sweetmeats, one cask pickled mangoes and tomatoes. 
 Mr. A., of New York, sent forty-eight Boston rocking- 
 chairs. Mr. Ware, of Boston, known and blessed in many 
 camps and hospitals, sent a large and excellent box of 
 games. Others sent saws, files, chisels, bits and bit- 
 stocks, knives and tools of all kinds for carving, drawing- 
 paper and pencils, slates, puzzles, and books — good stand- 
 ard books, travels, biographies, and stories, not reports of 
 societies for 1850, exploded Railroad Guides, and Child's 
 First Readers with one leather cover torn off. Of these, 
 indeed, we received altogether about a barrel full, and 
 turned them in to be sold for the local fund. One hos- 
 pital worker in bone, who learned to carve in relief, and 
 to cut cameos with great delicacy, was, on his discharge 
 from the army, furnished by his father, a New England 
 farmer, with money to go abroad and study, and is now 
 one of the honorable band of American sculptors in 
 Italy. 
 
 No one can count up the value of these things, not 
 only in the flannels for discharged, broken-down men, and 
 
55 
 
 woolen socks and mittens for convalescents going on 
 guard in puddles of snow-water, but the distraction from 
 pain in wounded men, the occupation and interest fur- 
 nished to wretched, bored, half sick, half well, wholly 
 demoralized men who huddle in a hopeless way round the 
 "red-hot sheet-iron stoves." I have seen a bagatelle 
 table revolutionize the sulkiest "convalescent" ward in 
 camp. In another a dull despondent set of yesterday will 
 be carrying on a brisk match from the spelling-games to- 
 day, and here is poor little F. with tremulous lips and 
 bright eyes, being slowly dragged up with port-wine and 
 arrowroot, but ready to cry at a word — sitting up with 
 the solitaire board, pegging away, all over smiles. Ser- 
 geant Gr. has established an arithmetic class, and all the 
 new slates are in request. A German is learning English 
 on his, and writes me a little note on it at every visit, and 
 the wardmaster, a bright, kind, and capable young fellow, 
 has made excellent progress on his, in French, with the 
 help of an old grammar, interpreted by the courtly and 
 cheerful Charmoille, the Frenchman with the right arm 
 gone. 
 
 But who shall count the comfort of the rocking-chairs ? 
 The little swinging motion seemed to work off some- 
 thing of the nervous irritation and pain. They were 
 covered all over with a blanket and stuffed with pillows. 
 The high back gave rest to the weary head, and a bit 
 
56 
 
 of board laid across the arms supported the wounded 
 hand, or the book, or game-box. Clyruer, of a Penn- 
 sylvania regiment, had one side of his face, with one 
 eye torn away, and could not lie down at all. He said 
 never an Impatient word during the many weeks of his 
 suffering, and when his rocking-chair came, ' thought lie 
 didn't want anything more now, in the whole world.' 
 The Book of Nonsense-verses, 
 
 " There was a young lady in Spain 
 
 Who couldn't go out in the rain, 
 So she married a fella' who owned an umbrella. 
 
 This artless young lady of Spain, etc., etc., 
 
 had a great run, beginning with a long-faced "party* - 
 who 'didn't care about it, well, really now, no, thank 
 you,' and 'wondered what in the world people could 1 
 — etc., etc., and ended by shouting over it, and keep- 
 ing it a great deal too long for the patience of the next 
 man. " Brown, Jones, and Robinson" made the tour of 
 the wards. B. of the 12th Maine, was particularly fond 
 of them. B. was himself an amusing spectacle. He was 
 really badly hurt, but drew such a fishy expression over 
 his eye, and was so dismal for three minutes while 
 you were asking about him, and made something be- 
 tween a grievance and a virtue of not having eaten his 
 breakfast, and thought he could ' worry down ' an oys- 
 ter or two, and took a pint of them on the spot, and 
 
57 
 
 then laughed all over — dangerously — at Robinson's dog 
 being carried off by the Austrian mouchard, which he con- 
 sidered much the funniest thing in the book. Then there 
 was a delightful black boy scuffling on a spring-board. 
 The wards were continually sending up to borrow him, 
 and offering to ' whistle all day ' for him to dance. 
 
 The Reading Room, with maps and pictures, files of 
 papers, books, and stationery, was a great resource for 
 those who were well enough to get to it, and an induce- 
 ment to convalescents to leave the moody circle round 
 the stoves in cold weather. Books circulated in the 
 wards, and there were always half a dozen daily "Chroni- 
 cles," and plenty of picture-papers for the men in bed. 
 They enjoyed looking up their own skirmishes, and one 
 couldn't delight them more than by affecting to recognize 
 them ; "There you are, over the parapet, waving the 
 colors ; I should know you in a minute !" There was a 
 Dore-like sketch once in 'Harper's Weekly,' a troop-train 
 of open cars rushing through the great Cumberland Cut. 
 With the deep shadows and the little points and dashes 
 of light touching a thousand confused and clustered 
 bayonets, it was very effective. This was popular among 
 the men ; they would have it torn out and fastened 
 against the barrack walls. The barrack walls showed the 
 changes, too, in popular sentiment. One hero came down 
 and another went up. First, there was Major Anderson. 
 
58 
 
 Then there was " Little Mae." in every size and color ; 
 Mac. leading the skirmishing fight in Western Virginia ; 
 Mac. at the head of his gorgeous staff ; Mac. the husband 
 and father ; Mac. by the camp-fire, planning a (Peninsu- 
 lar) campaign ; Mac, alas ! going on board a gunboat. 
 Then he came down and, Burnside's wounded men coin- 
 ing in, Burnside went up. 'Burnside's wounded' wouldn't 
 suffer a word to be said against him. " He's every inch 
 a gentleman and a soldier," one of the worst hurt said to 
 me. Then came Hooker and Sherman and Sheridan 
 and Grant, and Thomas with his placid, fatherly face and 
 slouch hat. Later, General Howard was a favorite. 
 " He's a Christian," said Thomas Tully, of the New York 
 73d ; " I've lived near enough to him to know him for a 
 Christian, though I am but a poor one myself." These 
 appeared and disappeared on the barrack walls. Mr. 
 Lincoln was always there ; crowned with immortal green 
 at Christmas, garlanded with field-flowers in May, draped 
 with flags after victories and after defeats alike, till the 
 dark day in April when the men came with streaming 
 tears to beg a bit of crape to cover the face. 
 
 Soldiers were omniverous readers, but many wanted a 
 better order of books than novels and magazines. One 
 of the frowziest of the ' inv'lids ' was a devourer of 
 everything Mr. Sumner wrote. Files of the Scientific 
 American were in demand. The parsonage Cicero 
 
59 
 
 and the store-room Shakespeare went about the wards. 
 Dickens was very popular. I think David Copperfield 
 was the favorite story. Devotional books were cheerfully 
 accepted and often faithfully read. Dr. Newman Hall's 
 "Come to Jesus" was always liked. Once only, this 
 happened : a Defender came for a needle-book, and hav- 
 ing unrolled and carefully examined it, naively took out 
 a tract he found in it, and left it on the table, as some- 
 thing he had no use for. 
 
 The voluntary gifts of friends were very useful in fitting 
 out discharged, helpless men for the journey back to the 
 poor home. These men had often lived up to their pay, 
 sending it home, and having no further claim on Govern- 
 ment, would have been utterly destitute but for outside 
 supplies. We felt that men returned to duty too, if they 
 had families dependent on them, had peculiar claims upon 
 us. In December of 1863 there was a general clearing 
 out and sending to the field of men who were determined 
 to "go straight to Richmond, batter down the prison 
 doors and let the prisoners out." These went away in 
 fine spirits and good flannel shirts, with mittens to handle 
 the cold fire-arms and do the camp work with. The 
 mittens and gloves were capital for the hospital guard. 
 There were some days when 
 
 " The wind was turned to bitter North 
 That was so soft a South before," 
 
60 
 
 when the .sponge baths in the quarters were solid, and the 
 sponges round and hard as paving stones, and every 
 barrack window had to be curtained and stuffed with 
 blankets. Looking out of the store-room window we 
 could see the tall sentinel tramping by underneath, up 
 and down, up and down. The ' relief comes occasion- 
 ally, but it is cold work for men not over strong. We 
 look at his big, red, cold hands, and wonder if it is 
 conduct unbecoming a Superintendent and a lady to 
 astonish him with a pair of mittens dropping out of the 
 sky. He disappears round the corner ; appears again ; 
 great paws redder and stiffer than before. We seize a 
 pair from the shelf, and as the tramp, tramp, comes under 
 the window, say sternly, " Guard !" drop and fall back. 
 Sometimes one catches us, looks up, grins, bows, and 
 says, "Oh! thank you!" Sometimes one doesn't, and 
 stealthily looking out again we observe him tramp, 
 tramping away from us, pulling on the mittens and 
 spreading out his fingers fan-wise, and eying them with a 
 satisfaction which seems to come out through his back. 
 
 The choice wines and liquors sent us were always 
 useful. Government provision was ample and even 
 munificent in many things. In others the supply was 
 inadequate, or the quality poor, or the routine process of 
 ' drawing' a little too deliberate for emergencies. One 
 might think for instance, that in the ordinary wear and 
 
61 
 
 tear of hospital use and washing, old sheets, shirts, etc., 
 might be had in quantities sufficient to supply all the rags 
 needed. But not a garment or fragment of a garment 
 can be used until it is regularly inspected and condemned, 
 and all must be laid away in the linen-house till the 
 inspecting officer comes down on his regular tour. The 
 operations cannot wait for the Inspector and we must 
 have rags, bandages, etc., always ready in abundance. 
 
 Then what a resource were the Borden's cans of con- 
 densed milk, when now and then after heavy rains the 
 country wagons could not ford the streams and the milk- 
 man never got in at all, or in the hot mid-summer, when 
 in spite of precautions the milk got in all sour. "Tarra- 
 gona," the hospital substitute for port-wine, so useful in 
 chronic Diarrhoea cases, was wretched stuff. All the 
 port-wine and all the good brandy we used came from 
 private sources. The quarterly supplies of porter and 
 sherry were entirely inadequate, even with the close 
 watch of the Surgeon in Charge over the Dispensary ; so 
 were the supplies of corn-starch and farina, while of 
 cocoa, barley, gelatine (requiring brandy, loaf-sugar, 
 lemons and much time and trouble to make it available in 
 jelly which scarcely a Yankee would touch) and one or 
 two other things, we had preposterous quantities. The 
 gelatine we made useful chiefly in clear-soup, but vast 
 accumulations of barley over and above all possible broths 
 
62 
 
 and gruels, must have gone back at last upon the hands 
 of the purveyor. That wretched man must have been 
 buried in barley-cans at the end of the war. 
 
 It was a pleasant task to receive and give out these 
 voluntary supplies. They were hampered with no regu- 
 lations. All articles, except those for eating and drink- 
 ing, were free as air to any who were in need, and the 
 others were worked into the Special Diet system or 
 reserved for the gravest cases. No rule was more neces- 
 sary than the one forbidding the indiscriminate giving out 
 of food and drink in the wards. No evasion of the rule 
 was tolerated. Permission in proper cases was always 
 easily got. I suppose the restriction bore sometimes 
 hardly upon the ' sympathizer ; ? perhaps occasionally on 
 the patient ; but think of the labor and anxious nursing 
 and watching and preparing of delicate little messes for 
 weeks, made naught by the visitor of an hour with his 
 clandestine pie and sausage. 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge directed us to aim at strict 
 impartiality in all our distributions. He was often 
 annoyed by the visits of special agents who singled out 
 men here and there and left the others disappointed. 
 A nice basket of comforts pushes in at the door ; air of 
 expectancy and pleasure on every pale face ; all the 
 frowzy heads come up above the blankets. "Any 
 Alaska soldiers here?" asks the cheery voice behind 
 
63 
 
 the basket. None, evidently, for all the pale faces 
 and frowzy heads retire despondently under the blankets 
 again. The Surgeon in Charge, present on one such 
 occasion said, — "These are United States soldiers, my dear 
 madam ; pray treat them all alike as nearly as possible." 
 He was usually at war with State Agents, a veritable 
 ' Ursa Major' we told him, with them, and evidently 
 deprecated their existence. I believe he would if he 
 could, have blotted out all evidence of State organization. 
 
CHAPLAIN'S DAY. 
 
The Hospital acknowledged the blessing of a faithful 
 
 Chaplain. Chaplain was ready at the lightest call, 
 
 from sunrise to moonrise, and no night was too black or 
 stormy to find him in the farthest corner of the camp 
 bringing comfort to some soul in pain. The duties of 
 the office were many and laborious. Besides the regu- 
 lar church services and writing of sermons, the singing 
 and prayer-meetings, Bible and Sunday School classes, 
 funeral rites and constant ministrations to the sick and 
 dying, there were the official Death and Burial Records 
 to keep, the ' Moral condition and History ' of the 
 Hospital to write up for the Adjutant General ; the 
 Reading-Room and Post Office to overlook, including 
 the franking of soldiers' letters, sometimes thirteen 
 hundred in a week ; "effects" to box and send home, 
 and letters, perhaps twenty-five or thirty a day, to 
 write to soldiers' families. 
 
 It was always touching to see the poor little bun- 
 dles of " effects " going over to the parsonage ; they 
 were sometimes so very small ; I remember one 
 entry ; — " Effects, one pair of shoes." And the shoes 
 told such a story ; tied together and slung across the 
 frayed and faded coat, the knapsack of varnished cloth 
 
68 
 
 all cracked and shabby, — the poor, broken, trodden- 
 down shoes, still stained and furrowed with the mud 
 of so many weary marches. 
 
 The letters to soldiers' families were no common, 
 formal statement of facts. They must be framed with 
 care and conscience. They carried precious things; the 
 note-book leaf, the hymn-card, the lock of hair, the plain 
 gold ring ; they carried the last look backward of the 
 parting soul ; " Tell her I kissed her picture and wished I 
 had been a better man ;" the little, little gleam of light 
 across the darkness of the invisible country; " He said 
 some words at last that seemed like prayer." How 
 difficult such correspondence must often be, the Chaplain's 
 memoranda show. 
 
 "Irrational since the day of his arrival. 
 
 Died in the ambulance at the door. 
 
 Does not want me to write home ; has no message. 
 
 Says he 'does not get ahead any with religion.' 
 
 Wandering; one minute charging with his regiment and 
 the next with his mother at home. 
 
 Irrational ; cried out, "Mother, you are wanted," and 
 died. 
 
 Dying said ; " The room is growing dark ; are they put- 
 ting out the lights ?" On the fly-leaf of his little diary 
 was written : ' It had been better for them not to have 
 known the way of righteousness.' 
 
69 
 
 Could not understand ; commended him to God's mercy, 
 could not hear." 
 
 Part of the Chaplain's burden was the hourly watch 
 that no chance of speaking for the better life, should by 
 any means be missed. It was literally speaking — 
 
 " As never like to speak again, 
 And as a dying man to dying men." 
 
 It was patiently, painfully following the wandering soul 
 through the perplexed mazes of fever, through the exalta- 
 tion and horrible reaction of drugs and stimulants, through 
 the craze of chloroform, to find the one sane and clear 
 moment in which the name of the Lord Christ could be 
 spoken. 
 
 Perhaps the saddest service was receiving soldiers' 
 friends who came, often too late, or came to see ' those 
 who had tended him,' or to hear ' something more about 
 him;' — always the craving for 'something more' — or to 
 see ' the place where he was lying.' After H.'s death and 
 burial, his mother came to see him. She was a gentle, 
 sweet-faced old lady, with soft, pale cheeks and lovely 
 gray hair. G. took her out to the graveyard, neat and 
 quiet, where he lay. "Will you plant something on his 
 grave?" she asked. "Oh, yes," said G., "what would 
 you like?" "I would like a white rose, dear." G. prom- 
 
70 
 
 ised. " Would you kiss me, dear?" she said ; and Gr. put 
 her arms round her neck and kissed her soft, old cheek 
 with tears. I heard a strange moaning in the lower hall 
 one day, like the cry of some wounded creature, and 
 going quickly down the staircase, found S.'s poor old mo- 
 ther, who had come alone from far out West, to see him, 
 not knowing how rapidly he had failed. She had stopped 
 at the Registry Office door, and, giving in the name, was 
 thoughtlessly answered by the clerk in one word, "Dead." 
 We got her up stairs and made her some tea, and she sat 
 in a chair by the window, bending to and fro, and moan- 
 ing softly all the afternoon, and saying not a word. Only 
 the next day she was able to hear how good and faithful 
 he had been as a nurse to his comrades, and how peaceful 
 in his death. 
 
 The Chaplain was called on frequently to visit and 
 bury the ' contrabands' whose poor little huts hung upon 
 the edges of the camp and were scattered over the fields 
 all the way to the City. After the second Bull Run 
 battle large numbers of blacks gathered about the 
 Hospital and were kindly treated, the men being 
 employed in policing and the women as laundresses, all 
 receiving Government rations. So great however was 
 the temptation afforded by their abject ignorance that 
 they were at one time nearly starved by an acting 
 commissary steward, who was summarily dealt with by 
 
71 
 
 the Officer in Chief and made to discharge his evil-gotten 
 gains. 
 
 We always had a representative or two of the race at 
 work in our quarters, delighted with wages and spending 
 them chiefly in ribbons and copper trinkets in the town. 
 Coming back after a furlough we find the last new Topsy 
 of the establishment seated over against us at the 
 bedroom wood-fire, a magnificent heap of blazing, 
 crackling hickory logs, for we have begged to have the 
 black cylinder with the roar, taken away. Topsy sits 
 and gazes at us, and says from time to time ; — "I know 
 what your name is." — " 'Miss' Leighton's got a baby." — 
 "That there sack you've got on 's pretty." — "I dunno as 
 ever I see a breast-pin like that, afore." She goes out, 
 and presently returns, without knocking, actually to 
 re-examine the bath-gloves, which fill her with astonish- 
 ment, ostensibly because ' she thought she heered me 
 call,' and indicating with her shining elbow the letter- 
 paper scattered on the table, she wants to know if I am 
 writing to my " beau." 
 
 The huts about us, first homes of the wandering, 
 sorrowful race, were strange patchwork ; bits of shelter- 
 tents and blankets, ends of plank, barrel staves, logs and 
 mud, but most of them were neatly whitewashed and 
 with the likeness of a little, fenced garden behind, and 
 
72 
 
 near many and many, by the roadside, was a rough grave 
 with a red-wood cross at its head. 
 
 The huts and the gardens are gone, and the forlorn 
 graves were trodden long ago into the fine, white dust of 
 the Virginia highway. 
 
 In some of the Chaplain's cares nurses and Superin- 
 tendent could share, as in writing of letters, etc., but the 
 regular, methodical business was of necessity in his own 
 hands, and was performed with utter devotion ; ' done to 
 the Lord,' heartily, and not to men, and done through 
 circumstances of peculiar domestic anxiety and trial. 
 The Chaplain's wife, herself an invalid, constantly visited 
 and distributed comforts among the sick, and the 
 parsonage children carrying their oranges and their 
 bunches of wild-flowers and their picture-papers, were a 
 real ' streak of sunshine' in the wards. It was pleasant 
 to see the men fondle and talk to them, taking out their 
 family pictures and comparing height and color ; "He 
 was a bit of a baby then — but he might now be just 
 about as big as you." They were always pleased with 
 little stories of the parsonage children's plays and talk ; 
 especially, I remember, with this one : Says little 
 Johnnie, "Mamma, do the angels come down to us in 
 the night? and" — with anxiety — "could I see one if I 
 was to wake up quick?" — "Oh no, Nonnie" — answers 
 
73 
 
 Eddie the youngest, "we haven't got the rigid hind of 
 eyes." 
 
 Occasional help in preaching, etc., was to be had from 
 the City and the near forts, and from among the patients. 
 The Superintendent sometimes found time to sing and 
 read hymns in the wards, and was rewarded by the com- 
 ments of such a slow boy as Bailey who drawls, — "Dear 
 me, those hymns sound altogether different when you 
 read 'em and when I read 'em myself." Reverend Mr. 
 Dickerson a detailed man, nurse in Ward E, sometimes 
 held service. Captain A. assisted at the meetings. He 
 was one of seven sons of a widow. Four brothers were 
 in the field ; one was at home disabled from wounds and 
 the youngest was an invalid. When the sixth son 
 enlisted, the Captain followed the Chaplain's advice, — 
 as he would not be ready for heavy duty for six 
 months, — resigned and took up his theological studies 
 again. 
 
 The Chaplain's labors had their compensations even 
 at the moment. Many owed their acknowledgment of 
 Eternal Truth to him. Many simple, heroic, Christian 
 souls passed in his review, some going homeward, some 
 heavenward, some back into the smoke of the fight 
 refreshed and renewed for either death or life. I quote, 
 from memoranda made by him, a case or two among 
 hundreds. 
 
74 
 
 "J. B . Sinking ; knew no one, but recognized the 
 
 name of Jesus and the tune, but not the words of the 
 hymn we sang. 
 
 W. J says, "Write to my wife and tell her 
 
 before this reaches her I shall be no more. I rest on 
 Jesus and on Him alone. I see His blood. Tell her to 
 let my bones lie here. — / shall be in Heaven. I leave 
 her and the children in God's hands.' 7 
 
 W. . Chronic Diarrhoea ; emaciated to the last 
 
 degree ; says, " Write to my father just how I am ; don't 
 conceal anything. I am giving you a great deal of 
 trouble but it strengthens me to have you here." I 
 asked 'do you rest your hope of salvation on Christ?' 
 He answered "I can do nothing else." 
 
 James T . Had both feet amputated after wounds 
 
 at the second Bull Run fight. Dictated a letter to. his 
 mother; "I am as comfortable as can be; doing first- 
 rate. God has supported me. My trust is in Him. I 
 hope I shall have no discouraging word from you. It 
 was you who taught me to trust in God. Before my 
 
 legs were amputated I gave the Bible to to send 
 
 to you not knowing how it would fare with me. I have 
 the best of attention and food. Send me an account of 
 how they got along with the hop-picking. I always 
 enjoyed that season. Don't be scared. I consider myself 
 
75 
 
 worth a number of dead men yet." This noble fellow 
 got well and went home. 
 
 Wm. McC . Peacefully trusting in Christ. Ex- 
 pressed no anxiety to recover. As I was trying to 
 repeat a psalm from memory, prompted me in the 
 verses. Said, "Write to my father and tell him I am 
 very ill ; that my whole trust is in Jesus." Later he said 
 "I want my family to know that religion has sustained 
 and comforted me," and stretching out his arms cried, 
 " Jesus I am coming," and so died. 
 
 Color-Sergeant D . Shot through the right shoul- 
 der, had repeated hemorrhages. When sinking he said, 
 "Tell my mother I die in a good cause. I have carried 
 the flag over the land of the brave and the free ! Don't 
 let those traitors run away with the country ! Don't let 
 them destroy the country ! They should not as long as 
 I could stand on my feet." I said ' Thanks be to God 
 who giveth us victory.' He answered, "Yes; He con- 
 quers for me. I look to Christ for pardon." He died 
 that night." 
 
 The chapel services were always well attended, except 
 now and then in times of great sickness and heavy 
 work, or when the Hospital was temporarily thinned 
 out. The week-day prayer meetings were greatly en- 
 joyed by the men. The Chaplain was an Episcopalian, 
 but instead of discouraging these assemblies as some 
 
76 
 
 Chaplains 1 have known, he quietly took possession of 
 them and so secured their being carried out with order 
 and decorum. The prayers were like what only the 
 the prayers of men in the almost visible presence of 
 death will be, if they pray at all. There were some 
 men with special gifts of fervor. How H. prayed ! We 
 called him "the man who prayed so loud." I remember 
 one night in particular ; H. was to go back to the field 
 next morning ; it was the eve of some great movement or 
 battle. He prayed for himself and his comrades ; for the 
 Surgeon in Charge ; for the country. He took hold on 
 Heaven. How the strong voice rang out again and again 
 through the deep stillness of the camp ; "I will not let 
 Thee go, unless Thou bless them all ! It may be the last 
 time I can call on Thee, Lord ; I will not let Thee go !" 
 A few days afterward word came back that H. was shot 
 through the heart in a charge of the regiment. And 
 how they sang ! Was there ever anything like the singing 
 of two or three hundred men in the shabby blue coats, on 
 crutches, with heads bound up, and arms in slings, or 
 empty dangling sleeves, — pale and wasted, lifting up their 
 voices and pouring out their hearts upon the ' Rest for 
 the Weary,' or 'Homeward Bound,' or 'Shining Shore/ 
 or ' Glory Hallelujah' ? Once the night prayer meeting 
 was kept up till near tattoo, when an officer from one of 
 the neighboring camps who was present with a dozen of 
 
77 
 
 his men, rose, called out in a clear, ringing voice in the 
 midst of the services, " Men of the Artillery, For- 
 ward — March I" and they clattered out. The officer was 
 a devout helper in the meetings, but military rule was 
 strongest in those days. 
 
 The extempore speech and prayer sometimes took odd 
 turns. I was present at a meeting when a Defender rose 
 and said he wished to confess to the brethren some partic- 
 ulars of a sinful life. There was once, in such a town, a 
 godless youth — said he, and went on to paint his career ; 
 how at the age of twelve he smoked cigars and threw the 
 Bible at his grandmother ; at fourteen he played tenpins 
 and went sailing on Sunday ; at sixteen he ran away from 
 home, etc., etc., and when we expected the usual conclu- 
 sion, ' and I who address you to night, my friends, am that 
 forsaken lad,' surprised us by clapping his hand on the 
 shoulder of an innocent, blushing youth in front of him, 
 one of the steadiest boys in camp, and shouting his 
 climax, " Which his name is Asy Allen and here he sets !" 
 
HOLIDAYS 
 
We kept all the holidays at the Hospital ; feasts and 
 fasts. The fasts were observed, not literally but with 
 chapel services. The feasts we were more exact about ; 
 fire-balls on Fourth of July, roast-beef, pudding and 
 holly-boughs at Christmas ; but Thanksgiving was per- 
 haps the best of all. There was the sermon on the 
 blessings of the time ; there was always enough to be 
 thankful about, in the darkest days ; and Rally round 
 the Flag, Boys, and My country 'tis of thee, and then 
 the turkeys with their lovely gizzards chopped up in hot 
 gravy, the mashed potatoes and onions stewed in milk, 
 the cranberry sauce, the pickles, the fruit-pies and pud- 
 dings and iced-cakes trimmed with pink lightning, and 
 the oyster-supper in the evening, crowning all. It was 
 wonderful how little harm came of these feasts. Almost 
 unlimited permission to join in them was given by the 
 surgeons and I have reason to suspect that generous 
 portions were smuggled in by their comrades to the water- 
 gruel patients ; but there seemed to be a charm in the 
 home holiday strong enough to divert the pie-crust and 
 the stuffing from their natural consequences. 
 
 Poor Sergeant S didn't think he cared about 
 
 any Thanksgiving. What was Thanksgiving to him ? Now 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 if he were at home and could have it all quiet and nice 
 with his friends, — but the mess-hall and the crowcl and 
 the quantities of things and the smell and the noise, — 
 and then he didn't believe there would be a single bit of 
 celery, or even cranberry sauce. Poor Sergeant S. 
 had come to the field full of the right zeal and spirit at 
 first, giving up a salary of a thousand dollars for thirteen 
 dollars a month " and the country," but he was utterly 
 broken down with over-marching, exposure and long 
 sickness. Wouldn't he like to have his dinner brought 
 in to him? 'No. He didn't want any dinner. What 
 had lie to do with Thanksgiving?' In the great wings 
 of the central building were many little rooms set apart 
 for patients. To very ill, or nervous and sensitive 
 men their quiet and cheeriness were a great blessing. 
 Each room had one or two white beds for patients and 
 one for an attendant, each its little open fire-place and 
 crackling wood-fire and high, wide window letting in 
 the sweet sunshine and the sight of the sailing clouds, 
 the pleasant fields, the far-oif, gleaming river. Sergeant 
 S. had one of these rooms. At dinner time he was 
 enticed for a moment into one next door and when he 
 came back, his little table was set out for dinner with a 
 white cloth, a fresh damask napkin folded over the block 
 of bread, a change of hot china plates, the Superin- 
 tendent's silver fork and spoon, a covered dish with the 
 
83 
 
 turkey, another with vegetables, a little bowl of cran- 
 berry sauce and a crisp spray of celery in a tail flower- 
 glass. The poor Sergeant melted and came to again, 
 forgot his vapors and ate every crumb of his little feast. 
 I think he got better from that day. 
 
 Sometimes, when the Hospital was thin, we took a 
 holiday hour ourselves, and walked out into the sweet 
 brown waste beyond the camp to see how the seasons 
 got on. 
 
 All seasons were delightful here, even the hot midsum- 
 mer ' when the hay was down ;' when walking was im- 
 possible before dusk and impracticable after it ; when the 
 town and the river lay invisible in pure heat ; even then, 
 though the store-room thermometer rarely got below 86° 
 and stood from 96° to 101° for days together, — little 
 breezes were always blowing about the papers on the table, 
 and on the tower top in the rare evenings when we found 
 time to go up, it was another country. From the tower 
 top we watched the swallows in broad flights, wheel and 
 scatter and close again and drop by twos and threes and 
 handsfull into the wide chimneys. There was one swallow, 
 a gay young bachelor swallow, who came home with the 
 family, but when all was quiet popped his head out of the 
 chimney again, looked about him, hopped up on the top 
 ledge, fluttered a little and was off like an arrow. We 
 caught him at it two or three times. ' He had only come 
 
84 
 
 back for his latch-key ; he meant to make a night of it ;' 
 said the Surgeon in Charge. 
 
 First after our Hospital life began, came the long and 
 late Indian summer when the river was a line of smoky 
 blue and the dome hung a great white bubble in a purple 
 sky. Then came the light pure snow-falls of January and 
 the wonderful February ice-storms turning everything to 
 glass and diamond, as if a fairy godmother had touched 
 the whole world with her wand ; and then more beau- 
 tiful, if possible, the unlocking of the spell ; — all about the 
 place such a rattling and clashing, sliding off the roofs, 
 loosening from spouts and rails and cornices, klinketing 
 against the window-ledges, showering in rains of jewels 
 with every light wind in the trees ; — all the fairy frost- 
 work going to pieces ; and through the clinging white 
 mist of the soft morning, a sudden splendor of clear 
 sunshine flashing over all. Then came wild March days 
 with flying clouds and ink-black streaks and spots of 
 shadow on the river and the distant shores ; the white 
 line of the City coming out with startling distinctness in 
 every momentary gleam. 
 
 The March days were sometimes wild indeed. One 
 fearful wind-storm overtook us. Looking out of the 
 store-room window in the morning I saw the first sign of 
 its coming in a sudden swirl of light leaves into the air. 
 Then a huge white cloud came all at once across the 
 
85 
 
 levels from the City, with the scream of a fiend behind it. 
 The dome was just visible, a lead-colored ball through 
 the white dust-storm. Then all the red-brown leaves 
 from all the bushes in the fields were in the sky at once, 
 pouring in over the open top of the window, even driving- 
 down the chimney. Then John put his head in at the 
 door, with the grin of one who announces a calamity and 
 said, " Ward A. and Ward B. has went and Ward Gr. is a 
 going." I ran to the window, and in an instant, with a 
 powdery crash, over went Ward Gr. all its length on its 
 side. A crowd of men carrying others came out at its 
 upper end, then a puff of smoke from the roof. The 
 stoves were upset. For a moment I was very anxious, 
 expecting to see the whole tar-roofed range one sheet of 
 wind and flame. There was a rush of the 'Fire Brigade' 
 for the buckets standing, always filled, with the axes and 
 ladders on the first landing of the central building. I 
 tried to get out at the front door. The wind stood up 
 against me like an iron wall. There was nothing to do 
 but to collect and fill the store-room cans and buckets 
 and set them out ready. Happily a great burst of rain 
 came with the next stroke of the gale, and the fire was 
 soon got under. All the patients were taken out 
 unharmed, except by the shock and a scratch or two, and 
 transferred to other wards. The barracks were so utterly 
 wrecked that repairs were impossible, and in their places, 
 
86 
 
 by and by, rose beautiful, airy, fresh tent-wards in which 
 it was almost a pleasure to be ill. 
 
 By middle-March the trees in the grove began to look 
 alive. A sort of green mist softened the distance. From 
 the store-room window Spring could be plainly seen ; the 
 sweet, early, half-southern Spring, with its inexpressible 
 charm. Getting shrubs and trees in mass and fields 
 aslant in wide spaces gives the tender greens and yellows 
 a chance to show. The air is full of vague, earthy 
 sweetness. One little bird begins to sing in a leafless 
 tree near the store-room window, and sings all day the 
 same little song ; sings persistently, never heeding 
 spiteful dashes of wind and rain ; sings 
 
 * 
 
 pii 
 
 * 
 
 - ft v \ -~- 
 
 dacapo and dacapo. 
 
 Patches of snow lie by the road- side and in the fields ; 
 a fair, stiff crust, — like the rebellion we say, looking hard 
 and defiant till you set your foot on it. Crocusses push 
 up among the weeds in the old garden-place, and we 
 think it must be time to go out and look for trailing 
 arbutus. Over the sweet brown waste, beyond the 
 earthworks, half way down the first ravine we find it. 
 Light mats of snow lie over it ; snow-mats shrunken 
 away at the edges, pierced by a hundred grass-blades- 
 
87 
 
 Under the red-oak shrubs, under the dry, rustling leaves, 
 under the yellow fern we find it, bed after bed of it ; just 
 not in blossom ; buds all streaked with white and pink. 
 A week afterwards, after a day or two of soft rains, we go 
 again, — and all the slopes of the ravine are fairy-land 
 with thousands of downy pink and white blossoms, all 
 fragrant with the blessed odors of the woods. We take 
 them up in handsfull and baskets full, and by the strong 
 fibres in the moss-beds as they grow, and the store-room 
 and wards are filled with their sweetness for days. 
 
 A little later other spring flowers came ; liverwort, star- 
 flowers, anemones, low blossoming shrubs and millions of 
 violets. Everywhere the ground was only one great 
 tufted mat, yellow, white and blue ; along the roadside, 
 creeping up to the very edges of the earth-works ; fol- 
 lowing in fairy-rings round the circles where the old 
 Sibley tents stood last year ; broad-sown in the wide, 
 empty fields — millions on millions of wild flowers. They 
 were a constant delight to us all. The men dug them up 
 and planted them in short-lived gardens by the barracks, 
 the children brought them in tin-cups full and aprons 
 full, and every ward was gay with garlands and bunches 
 of them. 
 
 This freedom of the fields now and then, with the 
 •glimpses of the lovely changing seasons was a wonderful 
 relaxation and refreshment after the anxiety and sadness 
 
of the wards and the endless routine of the store-room. 
 These were our sweet and priceless holidays. 
 
 One evening near the May of 1864 the Surgeon in 
 Charge came to the door and asked if we would like to 
 see the camp-fires of an army. There were at least ' a 
 thousand fires,' he said, ' between Xanthus and the ships, 
 and fifty warriors to each, and the horses were no doubt 
 munching their heaps of barley and wishing for the morn- 
 ing.' From the tower top we saw the camps lying, 
 twinkling, a field of fire-flies toward the North ; big fights, 
 little lights and a sort of luminous mist where the lights 
 all ran together. The next morning we went through 
 the camps, and the hundreds of shelter-tents, rows of 
 glittering brass gnns, pickets of horses, red blankets, blue 
 uniforms, — half a dozen black regiments drilling, among 
 them ; — all grouped and scattered over the green fields 
 by the river made a gay and charming picture. 
 
 Again, the next morning, seeing a line of dust moving 
 towards us through the grove, we knew it was a march- 
 ing column and must be Burnside's men, so we went to 
 the bottom of the field and waited on the grass to see 
 them go by. They looked so well, so cheery. It was a 
 delight, accustomed as we were to the gaunt faces in 
 the wards, to see so many healthy-looking men. They 
 marched at ease, laughing, singing, calling out now and 
 then, "Goodbye, ladies! Goodbye !" One tall fellow 
 
89 
 
 dipped his tin cup in a little spring by the road-side and 
 drank our healths in passing, " Ave Cossar ;" said the 
 Surgeon in Charge ; " Morituri te salutant." The sod 
 was thick with violets, and bunches of them were stuck in 
 many caps and coats. A soldier took the cluster from 
 his cap-band and gave it to me. Gr. unfastened a little 
 gilded horse-shoe from her chain and tied it, by the blue 
 ribbon, in his coat. He lifted his cap ; " This will keep 
 me safe in the next battle ; I did not expect such good 
 luck in Virginia." One company was singing in parts ; 
 
 " Rally round the Flag boys, 
 Rally once again /" 
 
 A new Hampshire regiment, a New York and a Pennsyl- 
 vania regiment looked very finely ; toughened through 
 and through, red-brown faces, dusty, blonde hair and 
 white teeth ; looked as if no camp-sickuess could get hold 
 of them. ' Didn't know where they were going ; only 
 were going after Jeff and meant to give it to him when 
 they got him.' So they passed, marching and singing, 
 the bayonets disappearing at last southward in the Spring 
 sunshine, in the dust of the Leesburg pike. 
 
 In the wake of the column crept a shabby, stealthy 
 country wagon with a dirty, canvas cover, conducted by 
 two dun-colored natives of the class called ' loyal residents 
 of the neighborhood.' Armed with his rank and his sus- 
 picions the Surgeon in Charge ordered a halt and found 
 
90 
 
 the wagon packed full of blue overcoats thrown away on 
 the warm, dusty inarch. He took possession of course, 
 and turned the property over to the nearest quarter- 
 master. 
 
 One day when the Great War was drawing to a close, 
 we heard that the troop-ship Atlantic was at the wharf 
 below, taking on a part of Schofield's Army Corps to re- 
 inforce General Sherman, and drove down to the town to 
 see the embarkation. The ship was not quite ready and 
 the wharf and the near streets were blue with uniforms. 
 One Indiana and two Illinois regiments were to go on 
 board. We went up into the great ship for a moment 
 and looked down on the wharf. It was heaped with 
 boxes, bales, barrels, knapsacks, little leather trunks, 
 camp-chairs and all the indiscriminate ' plunder 7 of the 
 regiments. Muskets were stacked all up and down the 
 streets running from the wharf, and the men were ' house- 
 keeping' on the curb-stones. Commissaries were breaking 
 open barrels and boxes and giving out rations ; fifty little 
 camp-fires made of the staves and boards were smoking 
 away and fifty coffee pots and tin cups simmering over 
 them. An officer with a charming face and manner came 
 up and spoke to the Surgeon in Charge. " Rough work 
 this and hard fare," — pointing to the biscuit the men were 
 carrying off in their blankets, — " but I've seen more than 
 one day when we were after Hood when I would have 
 
91 
 
 given five dollars for one of those hard tacks, aye and for 
 half a one." The men he said, were in the finest spirits 
 with the prospect of going to Sherman. They were a 
 noble-looking set. ' Where are you going V we asked one 
 and another. " Ah ! to Sherman ! He's the soldier !" 
 ' May I warm my hands at your fire V I asked one group. 
 It was early February and very cold. " That you may,' 
 said two or three at once, jumping up, though they had 
 nothing better than the curb-stone to offer me as a seat— 
 "That you may; only" — looking at me, "you musn't 
 mind having the smoke in your eyes." But I don't think 
 it was the smoke. They told me they left Thomas on the 
 15th of January at Clifton and expected to enjoy the 
 voyage and seeing ' new countries' very much. 
 
 We had just heard of Mr. Lincoln's journey to Fort 
 Monroe to meet the rebel commissioners, but the result 
 was not yet known. " If it's a patched-up peace the 
 soldiers won't see it," said one of the group about the fire, 
 and another, — " I guess old Abe will come out about 
 right. He generally suits me whatever he does." 
 
 1 Do you lose your men' we asked our unknown officer, 
 'when they scatter in a town like this?' "Oh no," he 
 said; "in all our marches I have only lost, once four, 
 once six men, and they joined us at the next halt. Our 
 regiment never lost a man in that way." 
 
IN THE STORE-ROOM 
 
The store-room fire crackles and sparkles, catching at 
 the little crisp scrolls of bark on the edges of the birch 
 logs and sending light, flashing flames up the chimney. 
 The store-room window is open ; it is almost always open 
 all the year round. They are raising the flag. It stops 
 at the half-mast this morning and a voice under the window 
 says: — " Robinson got his discharge last night." Other 
 distant flags here and there, little bits of light and color, 
 toss in the soft wind. A long drawn strain of far-off 
 band-music comes in, cut sharply across by the kling! 
 kling! of the office orderly-bell. This frequent stroke of 
 the office bell gives a wonderful sense of comfort and secu- 
 rity. The Chief Officer is at his post ; when is he not at 
 his post? and all the machinery is in swift and even 
 motion. 
 
 A grievance or two are lying in wait for me at the door. 
 Sullivan holds a can of butter in silent protest under my 
 nose, and seeing plainly my acquiescence in his own views, 
 says : — " I wouldn't cheat the slush fund of that there 
 butter, ma'am, no how." It is Steward Blank's last 
 'bargain.' By and bye I hold a little conversation with 
 Steward Blank on the subject of butter, but he soon 
 diverts it to the religious interests of the Hospital and 
 
96 
 
 what ' we officers' owe the men in the way of example. 
 But the caduceus even when worn across the shoulder, as 
 Steward Blank wears it, to give an air of rank, inspires 
 me with very little respect. 
 
 I know a Steward fair to see, 
 
 Trust him not ! 
 
 "No boiled eggs in Ward D. for breakfast." Investi- 
 gation shows that the eggs of Ward D, — a rare accident, 
 were set on the wrong tray and quietly partaken of by the 
 ward next above without any attempt to right the blun- 
 der. Sullivan anxiously offers to avenge on E, D's injury, 
 but it is not too late to send a fresh supply, and it is per- 
 haps asking too much of the Defenders that when fortune 
 places unexpected eggs before them, they should reject 
 the gift. 
 
 Ben, the cheerful and profane butcher, — why are we 
 called on to tolerate so much ' language' in the butcher ? 
 comes to assure me that something is the matter with the 
 4 specific levity' of the mutton and poultry, ' for things 
 weighs entirely different here and in town,' and remind- 
 ing me that there is a ' special' for broiled chicken for 
 one, wants to know ' if he shall kill half a chicken.' 
 
 Little Wood, carpenter, undertaker, and unreserved 
 veteran, is putting a new lock on the store-room door. 
 'It is well known ma'am/ say certain of my ward friends, 
 1 that more than one key in this institution unlocks your 
 
97 
 
 door.' Wood is weazened and elderly, small and sharp, 
 with a keen lookout for objects connected with his profes- 
 sion, and eager to entertain us with professional anec- 
 dotes. It is a great trial to him to see so much punch- 
 making going on in the store-room "and he not in it." 
 " A good many pretty bad off in the 'ospital," he says : — 
 "There'll be one in Ward L. to-night, and one in K. 
 or me name's not Wood;" — begins to wheeze — "I'm 
 pretty bad meself!" — appeal to my sympathy ; — "thought I 
 should have to give up me job altogether ;" — appeal to my 
 interest. — "I'm sorry you don't feel well ;" wheezes rise 
 into groans accompanied by appealing glances at the rows 
 of punch bottles waiting for Ward D. It is enough to 
 melt a heart of stone. I don't give in. I know it will be 
 the costly first step ; that Wood will be taken ill on the 
 premises every day thereafter ; I urge peppermint tea 
 upon him and settle our relations on the whiskey question 
 forever. 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge is making rounds this morning. 
 The kling-kling! ceases for awhile and Templeton, best of 
 men-nurses, arrives and says, breathless with haste and 
 importance : — " Some of the good brandy please'm and a 
 lot of soft handkerchiefs — Surgeon in Charge — operation 
 in G." 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge made a midnight round last 
 night, the nurses say, to see that all was well. 
 
98 
 
 We are proud when special orders signed by him come 
 in, and fill them with the very best in store. He often 
 sends us a word or two from his notes, to help us, 
 he says, to cook with intelligence. 
 
 Number 822 had swallowed nothing for a week. It 
 was good to get such a bulletin as this : — " Finding 822 
 pulseless, a sharp knife down his throat reached and 
 evacuated the abscess. He is taking nourishment. 
 
 Have just trephined N. and W. As soon as I raised 
 the bone both shewed consciousness and spoke. Make 
 some weak, sloppy gruel for them. 
 
 Am going to M. to tie the gluteal artery and to 
 remove a ball behind the eye. Have a quart of wine- 
 whey and a quart of egg-nog ready. 
 
 Saw H. Made an opening in the thigh and intro- 
 duced a drainage tube. He will do well. Eggs and 
 brandy, as much as he will take. 
 
 D. P.'s hand can be saved. Shall see that it is done. 
 ' The man with the head ' in G. is doing finely. 
 
 L. is a humbug. I will restore him to the bosom of 
 his family. 
 
 Number 403. Shot through the neck. Send only 
 the thinnest liquids, wine-whey, liquor of oysters, etc., 
 till further notice. 
 
 Send Keith one raw egg beaten in a tablespoonful of 
 brandy every hour. 
 
99 
 
 Send James C. twenty-four ounces of port-wine for 
 twenty-four hoars. Also, boiled milk and one soft or 
 raw egg every two hours. 
 
 Send Weitinan a quart of milk-punch madi with 
 brandy, and some crackers and dried beef in place of his 
 rations ; he goes home discharged. Send him also a 
 pair of large leather slippers. 
 
 Went to Ward G. to amputate C.'s right arm. 
 
 Explained why I think it necessary to the poor fellow 
 who acquiesced quietly but sadly. After he was ether- 
 ized, put my finger into the wound, saw a chance and 
 excised the elbow. He will do well. Eggs and brandy." 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge believed in Food as a curative 
 agent. He ordered it in large quantities for men who 
 had suffered severe operations ; and our experience 
 certainly justified his theories, for these men got well, 
 went home, had the small-pox, married their sweethearts, 
 set up shops and wrote back for all our photographs to 
 hang up in them. Vandenhoff, Sawyer, Tyler, McClain, 
 Ripley, Brown, Gregg ; a host of names suggest them- 
 selves. All these took large quantities of beef-essence, 
 and brandy-and-eggs to the extent of one half-pint 
 tumbler full every two hours. 
 
 Sergeant G. exsection of shoulder, Dec. 25th, 1863, 
 took oyster soup, chicken soup, eggs at every meal 
 prepared in different ways, besides forty-eight c inces of 
 
100 
 
 egg-nog and two to three bottles of porter every day for 
 several weeks. He then came under the ordinary Special 
 Diet table and took roast beef, vegetables and pudding 
 with one or two pints of milk-punch every day. Early 
 in March he was able to travel and was discharged and 
 went to Philadelphia, where he was promised a good 
 place as watchman. The Sergeant enjoyed all his meals 
 and showed no failure and certainly no delicacy of 
 appetite, as he had an immense craving for an article, 
 furnished he declared, in perfection only by the Philadel- 
 phia markets, the intestines of a hog compounded with 
 spices. To gratify him inquiries were made, but this 
 savory dish could not be obtained. 
 
 Lafayette R . Tenth Vermont Vols., exsection 
 
 of elbow, was able to eat almost immediately after the 
 operation, and consumed an extraordinary amount of 
 food. He began with beef-tea and egg-nog, taking, 
 in the first twenty-four hours after the operation, twenty- 
 four eggs beaten in twenty-four ounces of brandy with 
 the usual proportion of milk, and a table spoon fid Of the 
 strongest essence of beef every two hours. This was 
 prepared by semi-broiling the beef, cutting it into dice 
 and expressing the juice with lemon-squeezers. I gave 
 him in this way, in one day, the juice of thirteen pounds 
 of lean beef besides his other food. In three days he 
 began to take porter, decreasing the quantity of brandy 
 
101 
 
 and eggs and increasing the porter till he took seven 
 pint-bottles a day, besides three meals of the ordinary 
 Special Diet, such as beefsteak, large quantities of 
 potatoes mashed with milk and butter, stewed oysters, 
 scrambled eggs, chicken, custard, etc. He lay in his bed 
 and fed, serenely, ' without haste, without rest.' His 
 capacity astonished all beholders. When able to travel 
 he was transferred to Vermont. A letter from him four 
 months afterwards, says, — "' My arm gains strength 
 rapidly, and I think it will be nearly as good as the 
 other. I am in charge of the Dispensary and my 
 general health is perfectly good." 
 
 McC. exsection of the shoulder, began to take oyster 
 broth and milk-punch soon after the operation, and 
 consumed regularly, large quantities of food. He took 
 steak, baked potatoes and milk toast for breakfast ; roast 
 beef, vegetables and custard for dinner ; a bowl of oysters 
 between meals, and egg-nog. ale or porter every two 
 or three hours. He improved rapidly, was contented and 
 merry and said he wanted nothing but a copy of ' Ras- 
 
 selas to see if the Happy Valley was anything like 
 
 Hospital.' His recovery was a little hindered by the 
 arrival of an elderly relative with a large box of dough- 
 nuts, sausage and pound-cake with the ' heavy streak,' 
 in which the patient privately indulged as long as they 
 lasted. He travelled comfortably to Michigan in seven 
 
102 
 
 weeks after the operation, and soon after his arrival was 
 taken ill with small-pox which was prevalent in his 
 town, but afterwards wrote expressing his gratitude to 
 the Surgeon in Charge and saying he ' had no pain, that 
 the arm gained strength very fast, and that he could use 
 it and the hand quite well. 7 
 
 Walker, the Store-room Orderly, was a valuable assist- 
 ant and faithful friend. He ran about untiring, all day, 
 carrying puddings and pickles and shirts and sherry- 
 bitters to the men. If he saw any one he fancied very ill 
 or overlooked, he was sure to bring the story with kind 
 eyes full of sympathy. They all knew Walker's shining face 
 — he was a fresh young fellow — and often sent their little 
 messages by him. " There's a man in M. says he's awful 
 empty and wishes he could have something to fill him up. 
 Couldn't I take him a corn-starch pudding ?" — " I wish 
 Henry in Ward K. could have a woolen shirt. He 
 won't ask for it, and those two men-nurses are so slow 
 they're as good as dead." His kind heartedness over-ran 
 the bounds of camp. "There's a man out there in the 
 fields," — a loyal Virginian so called, — "sick in a hovel 
 with nothing to eat." So we get a chicken from the 
 mess and let him have the pleasure of taking it out and 
 showing the wretched family how to make it into broth, 
 a process of which they seem to have no idea, and he 
 trudges away with it merrily a mile or two in the mud. 
 
103 
 
 The business of looking over the special returns and 
 written requests to classify them for filling, reveals abysses 
 of evil spelling. " Lemons and sugar for 3 patience." 
 — "Number 35 has one egg each meel." — " Beaf-tea and 
 a bole of gruel." — " Rags for poletasses." — " Milk porage 
 for two." — I find with concern that evil spelling hardly 
 seems to me the atrocity it seemed two years ago. 
 Colonel W. of the Judge Advocate General's Department 
 declares to me, — "What we really need, as a people, is 
 punctuation ; if we could only mind our stops all might 
 yet be well." I am astonished to find, in a land of 
 spelling books and omniverous readers, such defiance of 
 the laws of orthography. 
 
 I am astonished too, to find so much helplessness in 
 the use of the ordinary means of communicating ideas. 
 A sheet of white paper, ghost-like, seemed to frighten 
 and confuse, and hindered instead of facilitating business. 
 From the letters received from enquiring friends, down 
 to the smallest blank employed in hospital, where every 
 device was used to get at just the information needed, 
 all seemed sometimes a hopeless 'muddle.' The Chief 
 Officer soothed his irritation by the printing of a large 
 placard behind which he took refuge, refusing to notice 
 "mutilated scraps," but for the Superintendent there 
 was no such relief. 
 
 Assistant cook John comes in and presents four 
 
104 
 
 ' specials ' for dinner today and wants to know ' what- 
 ever shall he do for chicken and steak and mutton and 
 custard to be ready at twelve and it's now half past 
 twelve and they're always a doin' it a sending in fresh 
 orders after dinner when the surgeon don't get round 
 early and all the things drawed this morning and I to 
 leave the pots a bilin' and come up to you.' — I give him 
 instructions, and requisitions on the commissary steward 
 which calm his troubled soul. 
 
 After dinner hosts of visitors from the wards pour in, 
 pale, limping and frowzy, mud stained and ragged. They 
 are late arrivals and many arm-slings are in demand. — 
 "I was a tailor ; no more work for me now." — says C. with 
 two thirds of his right hand shot away. People grumble 
 because there's ' no more play for me now ;' how deso- 
 late the life must be in which is left neither work nor 
 play. Here are scarves which must eke out the slings. 
 On one is a writing : " Twice around the neck and once 
 across the chest of the Union soldier, and the Young 
 Ladies' Society of South Socrates, Maine, will be much 
 pleased with a line from the recipient." I unroll several 
 slings with the S. C. mark, made of an old-fashioned 
 yellow-ilowered fabric like faded bed-curtains. Pinned 
 on the parcel is a slip of paper on which is written in a 
 tremulous hand, — " This material was so strong I thought 
 the color would be no matter. It was all I had. I am 
 
105 
 
 old and poor and cannot do much." The unknown 
 maker may be sure that more than one man read her 
 words with tears in his brave eyes. 
 
 At last the arm-slings are all gone but two. One is a 
 white silk scarf, a funeral scarf worn long ago at Doctor 
 Kane's funeral. I fasten it over a tall man's shoulder 
 and tell him what it is. He is delighted, for he has 
 read the story of the strange North regions which are 
 neither land nor sea and 'Kane was always a hero of his.' 
 Now there is only one left and the last soldier, the blonde 
 big sharpshooter from Michigan, positively refuses to 
 take it. — "Somebody will certainly come along this after- 
 noon who wants it more than I do." — I offered a pair 
 of loose slippers in the ward today to a man taking his 
 first steps out of doors. — " Give 'em to that fellow over 
 there." he insisted, — " he needs 'em a heap more than 
 I." A tall skeleton comes in to see if he can get an 
 orange for a sick man who cannot come for it. "But 
 don't you want anything for yourself?" — "Oh no, I'm 
 ever so much better off than he is ; I'd rather take 
 something for him," ' Thy necessity is greater than 
 mine.' 
 
 Two men in tattered clothes hobble in. The clatter 
 of their crutches goes to one's heart. Am I ' the 
 Sanitary ?' they ask. so I produce my reddest flannels, 
 and they prove a flaming torch through all the camp. 
 
106 
 
 Twenty more come at once for red flannel shirts ; blue 
 will not answer ; red is the color that suits their con- 
 stitutions. I fall an easy prey. 1 give them out as 
 far as they go, to the lamest and most ragged. Better 
 that ten unrighteous should have two shirts apiece than 
 the one model of the virtues go shivering. 
 
 A Zouave looking seven feet high wants many things. 
 1 give him socks ; I give him handkerchiefs ; I give 
 him letter paper ; I give him tobacco ; I give him every- 
 thing he asks for ; he is so big. They tell me about 
 their journey into Fredericksburg ; a march of horrors. 
 It is always the same story ; marching and halting and 
 marching, over frightful roads with endless delays ; the 
 'lighter cases,' shattered arms, etc., having to walk; 
 nothing to eat or drink ; no care, no shelter ; — " And 
 there were fellows left in the swamp who couldn't move," 
 one says : — " I don't believe they were ever found." 
 
 Patient from Ward D. calls to say he would like the 
 ladies to join the Hospital Temperance Union : meeting 
 for organization to-night: speeches and resolutions: hopes 
 all will be present : feels as if he had been raised up 
 as an instrument. 
 
 Ward surgeon calls to say that several ladies of his 
 acquaintance are coming down to visit the forts and 
 camps, could we supply them with bedding? Explain 
 to the kind hearted old Doctor whom I should be very 
 
107 
 
 glad to oblige, that the only pillows, etc., under our 
 control are sent for the exclusive use of the sick in 
 hospital. 
 
 Another patient from the wards comes with a plea 
 for tobacco. We hope he will not get small-pox which 
 has appeared in his ward. — "Oh no!" — he says, — "My 
 family physician, old Doctor Stiles told me I'd never 
 ketch anything, I chewed too much tobacco for that." 
 "But" — sententiously — "that was encouraging a bad 
 habit." "Well" — jocosely — glancing at the big box 
 just opened, — " It is a bad habit, but I'm too old to 
 leave it off, and anyhow I shan't ketch the small-pox 
 for it only goes about in cold weather ; my family phy- 
 sician old Dr. Stiles says so." 
 
 A nurse calls to say that the men will steal the towels. 
 Show her that towels are a sacred trust of the Govern- 
 ment, and if any towels are to be stolen she must direct 
 the men to steal ours and not hospital property. 
 
 Poor Mason sends a message for pie. He wants pie 
 on the brink of eternity. He seems turning all animal 
 just before he turns all spirit. The surgeon says nothing 
 will make any difference so I send Mm an apple turn- 
 over. Among the New Englanders especially, there 
 appeared to be a strange affection for "pie." The sick 
 clamored for it and the assistant medical officers pre- 
 scribed it. It appeared to them a light and pleasant 
 
108 
 
 article of diet, much to the disgust of the Surgeon in 
 Charge who issued more than one edict against it. 
 
 Three Defenders call to say that they have seen some 
 needles and thread that 'Jones got here,' and would 
 like to have some too. Three more Defenders who had 
 seen the gentlemen who had seen the needles and thread 
 that 'Jones got here,' would like more of the same sort, 
 and the chairman of the delegation performs a bow 
 and says, — ' you're welcome ma'am,' meaning ' thank 
 you.' 
 
 A jolly Blue-boy announces himself as the ' near 
 wheel horse of the Diet car ' and wants some dominoes 
 and promises not to play on the top of the car on the 
 out journeys. He says — "Mr. French, 'the off horse,' 
 is on a pass to the City to hear the debates." 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge gave passes in large num- 
 bers to the men to hear the speeches and see the public 
 buildings. He said many soldiers were from Western 
 towns and might never have another chance. I do not 
 remember any case in which this kindness was abused. 
 These visits were well talked over and public questions 
 well fought over in the wards. The Emancipation Proc- 
 lamation, and the Message of December 1863, with its 
 plan of amnesty and reconstruction, ending with the 
 words : — " We do honorably recognize the gallant men 
 from commander to sentinel to whom more than to 
 
109 
 
 others the world must stand indebted for the home of 
 Freedom disenthralled," etc., etc., were folded down in 
 the Morning Chronicle and handed approvingly from bed 
 to bed. The Soldiers' Voting Bill, the Bounty, back Pay 
 and Appropriation Bills, the Peace plans and the Consti- 
 tutional Amendment to abolish slavery, were thor- 
 oughly and intelligently discussed. Some of our men 
 were present at all the great speeches of those days and 
 many of them joined in the hurrahs and the ' Glory Hal- 
 lelujahs' of the 31st of January 1865, when the Amend- 
 ment was carried in the House. 
 
 At the re-inauguration every man who was well 
 enough went over, the Surgeon in Charge, then and 
 always, ordering that the enlisted men should have the 
 first claim in the ambulances. 
 
 Looking out of the window in a break in the stream of 
 visits, I see a poor, shabby, country wagon stopping at 
 the main entrance and a pale woman putting her head 
 out, covering and uncovering her face, searching the^ 
 windows of the Hospital, looking for something she is 
 afraid to see. Going down quickly in fear lest it should 
 be Mrs. Robinson whose husband died last night, I meet 
 the man helping the woman gently in. " Mrs. Bendon, 
 ma'am, my wife ;" and she, — " Is my son alive?" — "Oh 
 yes ! alive and better." 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge, who has been interested in this 
 
110 
 
 case, beckons me from the office and says he will go with 
 me and see Robert. He stands by him and speaks to 
 him about a furlough and going home, or having his 
 friends come to see him; how would he like that? — " Oh 
 I know !" whispers Robert with the color all up in his 
 forehead ; "They've come ; — they're here now ; I knew it 
 the moment you came in." So the father and mother sit 
 by him, one on each side, happy to find him alive, happy 
 to find a hospital a comfortable place ; they 'wouldn't 
 have believed it ; they have heard such stories !' 
 
 Robert has a sunny little room in the south wing, 
 with his rocking-chair and wood-fire and pictures and 
 geranium-plant. " The Mother would never have 
 believed it," — says the father ; — " I wouldn't have brought 
 her, only I was afraid she would go crazy if Robert were 
 to die. Two other mothers in our place in Ohio have 
 lost their minds when their boys died, away in the army 
 and they never saw them." They left the other children 
 at home and helped by all the little settlement about 
 them, set off on their long journey. " How did you get 
 means for it?" — "Oh, the neighbors were very kind when 
 they heard about it, and they came in, one after another, 
 and brought us little packages of food, and we sold our 
 horse ; the neighbors got together and bought it at a good 
 price." 
 
 And sitting by Robert's fire they told the simple little 
 
Ill 
 
 story, one among so many ; the story of the quiet little 
 settlement, so quiet, now that the boys were gone to the 
 war ; the anxious hearts, the daily toiling for the children 
 left, while father's and mother's thoughts were following 
 the weary, patient army ; the gloom, when for two 
 households in the very small village only the story of a 
 soldier's grave was left ; the horror when insanity covered 
 the grief of two mothers. All this they told, in their 
 simple way, never seeing how pathetic it was, and how 
 paltry it made much that the rest of us call sacrifice. 
 
 In a few days Robert was better able to travel, and 
 furnished with all the comforts of the Sanitary Commis- 
 sion, they set out on their slow journey to the log cabin 
 and the carpenter's bench, — to privation sometimes, I am 
 afraid, but to the home, where the neighbors were look- 
 ing for them and the children had the warmest nook by 
 the fire saved for Robert ; home, where he lived tranquil 
 and happy till the Spring passed and the Summer brought 
 him Heaven. 
 
 Now, four or five discharged men come in to say 
 1 Good bye' and get little comforts for the morning 
 journey. 
 
 Bates, — left hand amputated. 
 
 Adams, — hip crushed at Chancellorsville. 
 
 Couch, — chronic diarrhoea. 
 
 Clark, — right arm amputated. 
 
112 
 
 Christian Spann, — an amiable, patient German from 
 Michigan, fracture of both jaws and end of tongue taken 
 off. 
 
 C. N, — was buried alive in the explosion of the mine 
 at Petersburg and has lost hearing, speech and almost all 
 sensation. He has a piteous expression of face and 
 makes signs, as best he can, of gratitude for even a look 
 of sympathy. 
 
 J. C, — ophthalmia; losing the sight of both eyes, having 
 several children at home depending on the work that he 
 will never do again. 
 
 A, — on crutches, is ' really ashamed to ask for any- 
 thing, but has lost his wife since he came out and must 
 save and look out for the children ; three of 'em ; oldest 
 is thirteen and trying the best she can to keep the little 
 place together till he can get home to her.' 
 
 A Connecticut man from Ward I. comes in he says, 
 ' for a little talk, if I don't mind.' He is a typhoid con- 
 valescent and begins the ' little talk' by asking if I have 
 ever had a fever. "Yes," — I answer — "I had a fever 
 when I was in Rome." He smiles ; something in the 
 phrase 'reminds him of Cassius.' — "In Rome?" — he 
 says, — "You have been in Italy?" — "Yes." — "And 
 have seen the antiquities and the Florence galleries and 
 Raphael's frescoes and Michael Angelo's Last Judgment 
 and Pompeii and Vesuvius!" — all in a breath — "Oh! 
 
113 
 
 you have seen all these?" — I admit the fact. — "How 
 happy I should be if I thought I should ever see what I 
 long so much for." — I suggest the theory that every 
 intense, legitimate desire is prophetic of its own fulfil- 
 ment, not necessarily here, but in another world if we 
 fulfil the conditions of entering it. — "I accept the 
 theory" — he rejoins, kindling, — "but what then must we 
 think of the future of such men as Chesterfield, for 
 instance, who have expended themselves within the limits 
 of life and time ?" 
 
 The sun goes down beyond the sweet, brown waste 
 with a touch of fire, here and there, on shining objects in 
 the far-off town. The outline of the finished figure of 
 Liberty — finished at last — grows dark against the redden- 
 ing sky. The early evening is so fresh, so still. At dusk 
 the men come under, the window and sing, in parts, 
 "Beautiful Star" and "Do they think of me at Home," 
 and Walker goes down with hands full of tobacco and the 
 assurance that they do. I don't think they sing " Glory 
 Hallelujah" quite so much now, as "When this cruel War 
 is over." 
 
 The store-room fire is a heap of glowing brands, just 
 not fallen into glowing coals. The window is always 
 open. How the whippoorwills cry ! Bird-ghosts, invis- 
 ible, haunting the grove and calling to each other out of 
 the heart of it, in clear, shrill notes, sometimes faster and 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 faster, as if one were trying to outcry its mate ; 
 poor-will! whippoor-will 1 wlvippoorwill ! whippo'will ! 
 w'pw'll! then a little silence, then a solitary cry and 
 answer, and the airy duel over again. 
 
 Fragments of bugle-music from the distant forts float in 
 on little puffs of wind. The Hospital bugle takes up the 
 golden call and seems to say, sweet and slow, 
 
 " Hence, away ; — all is well ; 
 One — aloof — stand — sentinel." 
 
IN THE WARDS 
 
Besides the daily detective rounds, much of the time 
 that could be saved from the store-room was spent in the 
 wards. Seeing the men constantly, learning their fancies 
 and home habits, noticing the changes m their condition 
 from day to day gave real assistance in the special business 
 of feeding them ; and talking with them, writing for them, 
 helping them invent occupations and amusements, hearing 
 their "views" on public questions and witnessing always 
 their wonderful courage and cheerfulness were never-fail- 
 ing sources of refreshment and pleasure. A current of 
 men was always flowing in and out of the wards. Some- 
 times only a few at a time came and went. Sometimes 
 hundreds arrived or were swept off in a day. On the 
 thirteenth of June 1863 seven hundred, and on the twen- 
 tieth of January 1864 five hundred and sixty sick and 
 wounded came in. These were the two largest single 
 trains. On a cold midnight of December 1863 two hun- 
 dred and fifty badly wounded men from skirmishes in the 
 Army of the Potomac crept wearily up. Then four hun- 
 dred came in two days and a hundred and eighty more at 
 midnight of the second day. Large numbers arrived in 
 Midsummer of 1864, many of them •Hundred Days' men' 
 broken down at once by camp sickness and more exacting 
 
118 
 
 and discontented than any other class of patients. In a 
 fortnight or little more, of the May of 1865, after the 
 ' quick march' home' which sounded so finely in the news- 
 papers, we took in fourteen hundred and ninety men. 
 There was now and then a general clearing out of conva- 
 lescents for duty, a large number of transfers or discharges 
 at once, or a sweep of ' able' men in some sudden alarm 
 for the safety of Washington. Generally speaking how- 
 ever, the arrivals and departures were by small squads 
 and happened every few days, so that it needed constant 
 watchfulness to see that the comers and the goers were 
 properly cared for in all respects. 
 
 Our ' alarms' were never very serious, but every pre- 
 caution was taken against their possible consequences. 
 In September of 1862 after the 'Second Bull Run' a line 
 of earthworks was thrown up a little outside the camp 
 limits. In March of the next year a line connecting all 
 the forts was finished and strengthened. A tidy little 
 redoubt lay just on the edge of the grounds. In June a 
 detachment of the Signal Corps escorted by a troop of 
 horse took possession of the tower as a signal station and 
 the dipping of little flags by day and waving of colored 
 lanterns by night was picturesque and curious. Fitz- 
 Hugh Lee was reported at Annandale close by, with cav- 
 alry. In April of 1864 one hundred of our men of the 
 Second Battalion, Invalid Corps, were suddenly marched 
 
119 
 
 away to take the place of ' Augur's reinforcements' from 
 the forts about Washington. In July the rebels advanced 
 northward ; Washington was ' threatened' again ; every 
 convalescent able to march was sent off ; sounds of cannon 
 were heard and there were soft alarms among the ladies 
 of the ward officers' mess on the subject of what they 
 called the "Grillers." . Guerillas were known indeed to be 
 just at hand, and one agent, or delegate, or sympathiser, 
 in a yellow duster, wandering off beyond the earthworks 
 'for a walk,' was popularly supposed to have been cap- 
 tured and eaten by them. 
 
 Once in the middle of the night we were wakened sud- 
 denly by the ' assembly call' from one of the forts, start- 
 lingly clear in the deep silence, followed by a roll of 
 drums. There was nothing to hear or see out of the win- 
 dow, in the sweet darkness, but the birds twittering softly 
 and a sort of expectancy in air and sky. We listened 
 long, but nothing came of the expectancy; nothing but 
 the wonder of the dawn, and we thought no more of 
 guerillas till six o'clock when we learned that the garri- 
 son had turned out on some false fright. In days like 
 these the wards were thinned ; once we got down to 
 ninety-seven patients and reported a large number of 
 empty beds. A friend coming then to see us from the 
 City and looking up and down the barracks, says the 
 empty beds make a keener impression on her than if they 
 
120 
 
 were full of maimed and suffering men ; they look so 
 grim, so ready. 
 
 The Surgeon in Charge always notified us of arrivals, 
 discharges, etc. "I send you," he writes on a slip of 
 paper for the store-room, " a copy of order just issued by 
 me, transfer of a hundred men to northern hospitals. I 
 know you will want to be kind to some of these men." 
 He told us to call his attention to any man who seemed 
 to us a subject for discharge who might by chance have 
 been overlooked, and made a conscience-matter of hurry- 
 ing through the discharge papers as rapidly as possible. 
 
 " I could not fulfill your request to-day," he sends 
 word, " because I had a pile of discharge papers on my 
 table and did not feel justified in doing anything but mak- 
 ing them out and sending them forward. Think how 
 many sad wives and poor little children depend on my 
 promptness in this duty. I wish I had two heads and four 
 hands." The broken-down men were always eager to be 
 discharged and sent home. Once only, a poor fellow 
 said when I asked him about getting away ; — " It's but a 
 poor home I have to go to ; I'd rather stop here till I 
 die." 
 
 The arrival of a large ambulance train was almost 
 always announced by a mounted courier in advance, and 
 word came at once to store-room and kitchen, so that 
 every preparation could be made. Strong soup, beef-tea, 
 
121 
 
 bread and butter, and milk-punch in vast caldrons were 
 always ready, and all hands were notified to be on the 
 spot to help lift the patients and distribute the food. 
 When the work in kitchen and store-room on such an 
 occasion was well over, the wards were visited to see if 
 any one had been overlooked. 
 
 There was never a critical case in Hospital on which 
 G-.'s intelligence was not brought to bear in some shape. 
 On one of these nights a nurse came hurriedly up with 
 
 the word, — " There's a man dying in Ward ; we can't 
 
 do anything for him." — " Has he taken anything since he 
 came in ?" — " No'm, can't eat nothin', doctor says musn't 
 give him no stimulants, stomach's too weak." " I'll have 
 a look at him," says Gr. — and after the nurse goes out — 
 "the surgeon doesn't know a bronchitis from a broken 
 leg. There's not a man in that ward who ought to die. — 
 If he is dying, he is dying of starvation." She hunts up 
 the doctor and asks if wine-whey, the lightest of stimu- 
 lants, may be tried. Doctor didn't know what it was, but 
 had no objection ; ' man couldn't live anyhow.' The man 
 took the cup full eagerly, was ' out of danger 7 in the morn- 
 ing, got well, — the doctor directing the nurse to be very 
 particular to ' give him his wine- whey ' reg'lar,' — went 
 back to the field and helped to take Richmond. 
 
 It was delightful to see what changes rest, clean clothes 
 and a few good meals often made. Miserable heaps 
 
122 
 
 brought in on stretchers might be found in a week's time 
 sitting up in dressing-gowns with newspapers in their 
 laps ; and in a week more with paper collars and poma- 
 tum in their hair. These articles I am commissioned to 
 buy ; also patent hair dye. I have more than once 
 bought patent hair dye for the wards. Gregory had hair 
 and barbe WAfrique of the reddest red our eyes endure. 
 I never saw anything so red ; it gave out light and heat ; 
 or so pink as his eyes and so milk-white as his complex- 
 ion. He devoted the first moments of his convalescence 
 to applying the preparation which is not a dye but which 
 instantaneously turned beard, hair and eye-brows purple- 
 black. The effect was horrible — spectral. He got no 
 quarter in the wards, however, and returned, by streaks, 
 to the more harmonious colors of nature. 
 
 Men sometimes came into Hospital lost in delirium, or 
 too deeply exhausted to give the home address, and so 
 died. T. D. was brought in far gone in fever and speech- 
 less. In his pocket were found a red morocco testament 
 and a poor little note-book half soaked through with rain 
 or swamp-damp, in which a few wandering pencil notes 
 were still legible, and the little couplet — 
 
 '■ Not a sigh shall tell my story, 
 Silent death shall be my glory." 
 
 The discolored leaves said here and there : '• Camp, 
 bank of James, I am on guard. The sun is very hot. 
 
123 
 
 Moved camp for the third time and went to digging. 
 
 Another hot day — I am sick. July 14th — We are getting 
 
 our pay to-day ; I say we, but I am not getting any — 
 
 digging wears out so many clothes. 16th — Another hot 
 
 day ; I am sick ; I am hardly able to do anything. We 
 
 are here in the old camp again. Have had no letter for 
 
 three weeks. On the march — sleeping out of doors. Lay 
 
 in the rain all night — sick — don't know where I shall go. 
 
 Marched again — lay out of doors — very wet — no shelter." 
 
 Through a photograph of a dark sad-eyed young girl, with 
 
 the name Mary on the back of it, we communicated 
 
 with his friends and saved for them a lock of light brown 
 
 hair, fine, thick and soft as a little child's. 
 
 The mother wrote from Wisconsin : 
 
 "It was with a sad heart that I read the contents of your 
 letter to Mary telling her of the death of my son. I feel very 
 thankful to you for your kindness, and oh ! how much more will 
 I be, if you will be to the trouble to send me the articles you 
 spoke of and the lock of hair you mention in your letter. Please 
 answer this at onceJ' 
 
 The soldier-nurses deserve good words. Many of 
 them were the most faithful and devoted of men. Clumsy 
 and tender, kindly, eager, and heavy-handed, they did 
 what they could. Only here and there one was found 
 who was capable of drinking up the milk-punch and 
 setting the scrambled eggs aside for private banquets, and 
 boldly wearing the flannel shirt given him for a patient. 
 
124 
 
 Old Smith meets me on my morning visit and tells me 
 that he thinks the doctor in M. ought to give Williams 
 more stimulants ; that he has a discharging wound and 
 faints after every dressing. I advise him to go and 
 find the doctor and put the case to him. He comes 
 back in glee with an order on the store-room for punch 
 and porter. Old Smith's patients always do well. He 
 had a son in the army who was wounded and died far 
 away from home, " and then I couldn't stand it any 
 longer, ma'am, and I went in myself, and now whenever 
 I get a young fellow like Williams to take care of, it 
 seems like as if I was a doing for my own boy and it 
 makes me feel better." 
 
 In another ward I encounter Vincent who ' spells it 
 with a Wee,' and who addresses me all in a breath ; 
 
 " Well Miss four doctors is after me for their wards 
 
 but I think I'll stick by the old gentleman in the specs or 
 Doctor Havens who as fur as I can see is a gentleman too 
 I objected to Doctor Davis though I won't say but what 
 he's a nice little man enough I hated to give him up 
 but them stairs and now when you see anything wrong 
 in my ward don't you be afraid to say so though I do 
 allow that my ward is the cleanest on the hill." 'Win- 
 cent' endorses the Surgeon in Charge. " He's a quick 
 man and a kind man," he says; — "He's a wiolent and 
 a patient man — He'd get out of his bed and sick him- 
 
125 
 
 self any time day or night to go and see a sick soldier 
 me and him never had no words whatever." 
 
 Here is a ward-master much elated with the import- 
 ance of having small-pox break out in his ward, and a 
 ' difficult ' one with whom I make an appointment to 
 thread lint after his instructions, "for I want some much 
 better than any kind of lint that ever came into this 
 Hospital, ma'am.' 1 
 
 We were often troubled by the changes and transfers 
 among the detailed men and the need of teaching new 
 sets of cooks and nurses. When three companies of the 
 Invalid Corps came down to us, we thought these cares 
 were over. Soon after their arrival however, forty were 
 discharged as perfectly useless. Then we began to fill 
 in with transfers of our own men to the corps. Poor 
 fellows ! What with being terribly ' chaffed ' in the wards 
 by the sick men who took this base advantage of their 
 own weakness, and what with hating the corps and the 
 strange officers and the dress parade, and above all 
 things the toy sabres they carried, their lives were a 
 burden to them. I did not see that changing the name 
 to " Veteran Reserves " made matters much better. They 
 could not bear to give up the comradeship and tradi- 
 tions of their own old regiments. " I came out with the 
 Massachusetts 18th and now I'm to go home with a 
 pig-sticker, and a pair of white cotton gloves !" If there 
 
126 
 
 was any disturbance in camp it was always ' ' them 
 Inv'lids." If the ward pet cat was killed or the apples 
 stolen from the mess hall kitchen it was " one of them 
 Inv'lids." If a man hung about the stoves in the ward, 
 — "Oh, you're no good, — go and get yourself condemned 
 for an Inv'lid." Disparaging doggrel was handed about, 
 of which a verse or two from one "poem" may serve as 
 a specimen. 
 
 O who are the men in skim-milk blue 
 
 Who grumble and grumble the whole clay through ? 
 
 ' Too little to eat and too much to do ?' 
 
 Them Inv'lids. 
 
 Who ' serve the country ' in hunting rats ? 
 And stealing the chops from the kitchen vats ? 
 And docking the tails of harmless cats ? 
 
 Them Inv'lids. 
 
 Who hob and nob with their own commanders 
 And converse like the British troops in Flanders ? 
 
 Them Inv'lids. 
 
 Who nourish swords like the Thane of Cawdor's 
 And snap their fingers at General Orders ? 
 
 Them Inv'lids. 
 
 etc., etc. 
 
 The ward medical officers, 'Contract Surgeons,' were 
 more or less victims of a system which made them an 
 anomalous civil element in a military establishment, with 
 but little military restriction and no military incentive in 
 the shape of promotion. They had no position, small 
 pay, and mere nominal rank. They began in a tern- 
 
127 
 
 porary expedient — and who shall say what better one 
 could have been devised for the emergency? — but the 
 emergency went by, and the expedient was stretched into 
 a corps of fifteen hundred men to whose hands were com- 
 mitted the wards of almost all General Hospitals. They 
 served their little term, made their little experiments and 
 disappeared. The class was bad • it was under no bonds 
 to be anything else ; the exceptions were many and most 
 honorable. I have known a ' contract surgeon for three 
 months' — six months — refuse to attend a dying man, or 
 attempt to ease his mortal agony because the patient was 
 ' no good anyhow ' and the surgeon ' had company.' I 
 have known one operate on the slightly injured member 
 and let the shattered one go, and on being ' relieved ' for 
 drunkenness, begin in a neighboring hospital a fresh career 
 of cutting off your wrong leg ; and one who recom- 
 mended a man for field duty with two inches of the bone 
 of his right arm gone, and explained by saying he was 
 'sure he wouldn't have sent him up if he had only 
 known it.' 
 
 But I have also known contract surgeons faithful, 
 sagacious, tender-hearted, carrying their professional skill 
 and their professional honor into the meanest contraband 
 hut at any hour of the day or night, spending day and 
 night with their soldier patients, watching them, devising 
 every manner of expedient for their relief, humoring 
 
128 
 
 their fancies, telling them cheerful stories, tending them 
 like brothers and sons. 
 
 In the wards were representatives of many nations, 
 Germans, Italians, French, Swiss, but the large majority 
 were Americans, of New England and the West. There 
 were loyalists from West Virginia and Tennessee, one 
 or two stray rebel prisoners, a few blacks and three 
 Chippewa Indians, sharp-shooters from Michigan. One 
 of these wanted a letter written to his mother, Sliaivonega 
 Pahwequa, and on being asked to dictate, said, "Oh, say 
 whatever you would say to your mother if you were 
 sick." Besides all these, there was a strange soldier who 
 drifted into the hospital or rather was found there after 
 some arrival, whose name, regiment, State and very lan- 
 guage were utterly undiscoverable and who remained 
 an unsolved mystery, appearing everywhere in camp 
 and silently presenting arms to the Surgeon in Charge 
 whenever he passed, till that officer began to believe 
 himself haunted by the ghost of some man in blue whom 
 he had innocently aggrieved. 
 
 The sick were almost always patient and cheerful ; 
 only now and then one, utterly broken down, was de- 
 spondent and peevish. The wounded men were marvels 
 of good and even gay humor. An access of pain once 
 over, they were actually jolly. McC. went across with 
 the volunteer party in the boats to Fredericksburg an I 
 
129 
 
 his thigh was shattered in storming the heights. He 
 is an apple-cheeked, blushing boy who ' doesn't see as he 
 did anything.' Salmon, a noble man full of courage and 
 patience, had the carotid artery tied after a gunshot 
 wound of the jaw and throat. When asked if there is 
 anything he wants, he writes on the slate, — "Only to 
 get well and go at 'em again !" 
 
 The brothers Hinton lie side by side, the corporal and 
 the sergeant, each with the right arm gone. They are 
 very fine fellows, with frank, handsome faces of the Saxon 
 sort, resolute for any treatment the Surgeon in Charge 
 thinks necessary, light-hearted and merry over their 
 games and arithmetic problems and practice of left-hand 
 writing. Corporal Hooker with the right arm taken 
 off at the shoulder, says, — "I want you to write to my 
 mother and tell her she mustn't take on about it. She 
 hasn't any right to feel worse than I do and I guess 
 I can stand it." The last we heard of the corporal 
 he was offering to break his left arm over the head of 
 a man at home who spoke disrespectfully of the service. 
 
 S. was a dear boy, patient, cheerful and lovely-tem- 
 pered. He was very anxious to get well, and faithfully 
 followed all instructions. The nurses heard him softly 
 praying in the night, " Dear Saviour, give me strength 
 to see the morning." His serene temper was in his 
 favor and to the surprise of all he began to improve 
 
130 
 
 slowly and was able at last to get home. David W. 
 died of fever and scorbutic disease, exhausted by long- 
 hardship and neglect. He was courtly even in his last 
 agony. I fanned him a great deal, as he liked it, but 
 he said repeatedly, "Your arm must be tired, pray don't 
 tire yourself." — "Do you like it?" I asked ; — "Oh, yes! 
 It is delightful, but don't tire your arm for me, I couldn't 
 bear that." 
 
 One wounded man was very sullen, poor fellow. He 
 had the look of a city ' rough.' He said he had been 
 ' dragged about so since he was shot, he didn't believe he 
 would ever be well.' He ' thought he should like a reg'lar 
 novel.' So I took him the " Arkansas Avengers" — sent by 
 some good soul for just that use, — a chequer-board and 
 a comic almanac, for all which he was very grateful. I 
 wondered whether I ought not to try and elevate his tastes, 
 but decided it was hardly fair to take the time when I had 
 him helpless at my mercy. "Convalescents" were the 
 most pitiable class. Illness is itself an occupation. These 
 men, able to get about, but too weak and spiritless to 
 do anything or care for anything, sickened by the sight 
 of food in quantity, fretted to pain by noise and by the 
 very light of day, thrust aside by busy nurses, rather 
 contemned by surgeons as " lame-backs" and " good for 
 nothings," — how did they ever get through the long and 
 weary hours ? 
 
131 
 
 The men were all fond of flowers. Hot-house flowers 
 sometimes came down to us, and the lovely white and 
 crimson carnations were a delight to a sick sergeant who 
 touched and fondled them and had them fastened to the 
 frame of the bedstead close by his head and died with one 
 clutched in his thin fingers. One spring morning I carried 
 a bunch of the first lilacs to a very sick New England 
 boy. — "Now I've got something for you," I said, holding 
 them behind me, "just like what grows in your front 
 door-yard at home : guess!" — "Lalocs!" — he whispered, 
 and I laid them on his folded hands ; — " oh, lalocs! How 
 did you know that?" The lilacs outlived him. 
 
 All classes of men were pleased with a little kindness, 
 grateful for the smallest attention, always thanking us, 
 each in his own way, from the long, solemn, lank-haired 
 New Englander who, just fitted out with home-made shirt 
 and socks, writing materials, moral fiction and 'Jel,' 
 expressed the climax of his content in the words : — 
 " Wall, I aint got no complaints to make," — to the 
 blonde, blue-eyed German who called G. to his bedside 
 one morning to tell her his dream of her. " Last night I 
 dreamed," he said, "that I was walking by myself in a 
 great city and came to a bridge over a deep river. As I 
 crossed the bridge it broke and I fell into the water and 
 was sinking, when you came and drew me to land. I was 
 all dripping and you took me to your own house and 
 
132 
 
 gave me a whole new suit of clothes all dry and warm. 
 Then you said, ' You may go into the garden and take a 
 flower; take any flower you like.' So I took a rose ; but 
 as I was picking it I died and went to Heaven. You 
 called aloud to me : ' don't drop the rose ; take it with 
 you and plant it in Heaven for me.' So I went to Heaven 
 and planted it and it grew and blossomed. And when the 
 blossoms came I sent you down word and you died and 
 came to Heaven and found there all ready a rose-tree, 
 blooming for you." 
 
 The Frenchmen in the wards were always light-hearted, 
 sweet-tempered, and graciously polite. Charmoille, with 
 the right arm gone, taught himself an elaborate and beau- 
 tiful manner of writing with the left hand, in the hope of 
 getting some little clerkship when he should be dis- 
 charged. Louis L. with amputation of the thigh, seemed 
 to gain strength too slowly, so he was asked one day, — 
 " Is there nothing you think of that you would like, — 
 that you used to like at home?" — " 0, Madame, I want 
 for nothing ; I have everything that one could desire." — 
 "But try and think of something that would do you good 
 and perhaps we can get it for you." — "Ah! There is 
 nothing, Madame, — but — since you say it — two drops of 
 red wine, du vin de mon pays, Madame ; — but you could 
 not — here in Virginia." With the cheerful consent of the 
 surgeon a small ration of Burgundy was sent down every 
 
133 
 
 day, and with it poor Louis made a little daily fete of his 
 dinner and sang a little song about not forgetting to pass 
 the red wine and dying for the country all-so-gay. The 
 deux gouttes de vin rouge seemed to brighten the whole 
 ward. 
 
 Patrick D. was earning twenty dollars a week as an 
 engineer when the war broke out. "Sure," he says, "I 
 didn't see why I hadn't as good a right to fight for the 
 country as the other boys." When his illness took a bad 
 turn we sent for his wife and she happily arrived in time, 
 bringing a white, wailing baby which was laid in a sol- 
 dier's empty bed in sight of the father who gazed on it 
 with great content. " Sure you're all very good to me 
 here," he says, " but I just put my head under the blanket 
 and cry a little now and then about the five at home and 
 no one to feed 'em when I am gone." 
 
 K. was a loyal Virginian of the 1st Virginia Volunteers. 
 He was taken with fever, swept up with a crowd of 
 others to make room for the wounded after a battle and 
 shipped for the North where he had a relapse of typhoid 
 and was very ill for many weeks. He was a tall, strik- 
 ingly handsome fellow of twenty-three or four, with dark 
 eyes and hair, regular, fine features, small feet and long, 
 taper, beautiful hands. He was very careful of his clothes 
 and personal appearance, and clamored for a tooth-brush 
 and a ' perfectly fresh' towel. His regiment had been 
 
134 
 
 badly thinned. — " They are very hard on ns loyal Virgin- 
 ians,' 7 he says ; — "They call us traitors. Traitors indeed!" 
 flushing and sparkling ; " What are they? We were badly 
 off at first ; there were the rebels all among us ; we had 
 no arms ; no supplies ; no Governor ; Letcher didn't 
 count ; and they tormented us ; but when we got a Gov- 
 ernor and equipments they began to sing dumb." He 
 scorned the idea of a discharge and went back to the field 
 declaring he ' would fight it out while he lived.' 
 
 PRISONERS AND PRISON RINGS. 
 
 We had but one or two rebel prisoners in the wards, 
 and very few National soldiers who had been in rebel 
 hands. Hospitals nearer the sea-coast received this class 
 of men. Now and then a returned prisoner came to us. 
 The first thing these men wanted after food, was paper 
 and ink to write home. Sometimes the happy letters 
 came back from home before the soldier was furloughed. 
 One wife wrote to her husband who had not been able to 
 communicate with his family for nearly a year ; " We 
 
 were sitting round the stove reading Mr. 's speech 
 
 about how Union prisoners are treated, when a knock 
 came at the door and your letter was handed in. First I 
 thanked and blessed God, and then I kissed the lines 
 wrote by that dear hand I lost so long." 
 
 Hunter, a loyal Tennessean, told me the story of his 
 
135 
 
 enlisting, and gave me a little ring he had made in prison. 
 What hospital nurse has not a bone ring or trinket carved 
 by her men in the wards or in prison. Strung on this 
 ribbon are specimens of the art in all its stages, from the 
 plain box-wood circlet of the early days, through the 
 inlaid foil and sealing-wax phase, to the period of deli- 
 cately finished ornament in relief ; rings with a rose, a 
 little cannon, a dog couchant, two clasped hands, an open 
 book. Here are a Greek cross finished in roses, a Latin 
 cross inlaid with black and the name of the Hospital; a 
 cross pure white ; the dear boy who made this, said to me 
 before he died : — " I thought of putting your initials 
 on it, but I could not bring myself to put even yours on 
 anything of that shape." Here is a scarf pin in the form 
 of a shield with the word ' Constancy' relieved on it in a 
 garland of flowers. Here is a ring of hard wood made by 
 a rebel prisoner. He modestly offered it in return for 
 something given him, saying, — "I am a rebel ma'am, but 
 
 if you will take the ring" What could one do but take 
 
 the ring and make the wish that it might be a token of 
 better days coming. 
 
 Hunter, the loyal Tennessean, told me the day he first 
 sat up in his rocking-chair, how he came to be a soldier. 
 His home was in the hill country of East Tennessee. 
 "They watched us a long time," he said ; "me and some 
 others. They thought we was a going for the Union. 
 
136 
 
 We had made up our minds what to do. One night we 
 went off. We made for where we thought the army 
 was." " What army ?" I asked inadvertently. " The 
 army," he repeated, reprovingly ; "there aint but one." 
 The National army was the only one to him. " The first 
 night we spent in the woods. I laid the fire before I 
 went. I laid her a good fire. At daylight we got to 
 the top of the mountain, where we could look down at 
 our homes behind us. They were getting up and lighting 
 the fires. I saw my little house. The smoke was com- 
 ing out of the chimney. She had to light it herself. I 
 sat down on a flat rock and looked down into the valley. 
 I wanted to see if the fire burned. — Well ! (with a long 
 sigh) — It was my home ; I suppose it was as sacred to me 
 as another man's home to him. I turned my back on it, 
 me and the others. We travelled nine days and nights in 
 the woods, hiding days and travelling nights, and once 
 we passed the rebel picket with a cow-bell tied round 
 Robert's neck, and got to the army in Kentucky, and 
 three days afterwards we went in and took the Gap. We 
 were taken prisoners there, my brother and me, and 
 went to Knoxville and then to Macon, and there I saw 
 my dear brother die in the filth of the prison and I not 
 able to help him. After eight months we were taken to 
 Columbia and Salisbury, and then to Richmond and after 
 a while to Aiken's Landing. I made this ring in Macon 
 
137 
 
 jail. You see we had almost nothing to work with ; — and 
 when we made anything we put on it Union, or Forever, 
 or two clasped hands to mean True till Death, or something 
 like that. I wish you'd take the ring." 
 
 Let those who have one of these rings with two 
 clasped hands to mean True till Death, keep it as a 
 sacred relic. It is the prison sign. The fashion seemed 
 to travel underground. Everywhere the prison sign pre- 
 vailed. I have had it from Texas, Atlanta, Columbia, 
 Belle-Isle, Anderson ville. It is as characteristic as the 
 palm branch of the Catacombs. 
 
 With Hunter came Sergeant F of Michigan. He 
 
 had been sick in the prison in Georgia for nearly a year 
 and had no care and no medicine except when he could 
 sell a little of his wretched food and buy some. ' He kept 
 up,' he said, ' and kept moving about, for he observed 
 that when a man once gave out and lay down he didn't 
 get up again.' 
 
 Captain came to us direct from his imprisonment. 
 
 He was a young officer of refined education and habits 
 and had ' suffered many things ' of the enemy. Such 
 little preparation as we could command was made to do 
 him honor. A bath, a suit of clothes 'a world too wide ' 
 belonging to one of the officers, fresh linen, a delicate 
 handkerchief, cologne and toilet apparatus were set out 
 in his little room. A modest nosegay was folded in his 
 
138 
 
 napkin at dinner. At table he scarcely ate or spoke. He 
 could not handle knife and fork. He seemed benumbed, 
 — body and soul. He clumsily singled out a flower to 
 put in his coat. Some one offered a pin to fasten it. He 
 tried in vain to pick it up and stretching out his poor 
 shrunken and stiffened fingers, pleaded; "Excuse me; 
 it is so very small." After awhile he looked about, 
 cloudily, and said; "You are like angels. — These — are 
 the courts of Heaven." 
 
MAIL DAYS. 
 
A large collection of Hospital letters lies under my 
 hand. Some of these are from men cured and sent back 
 to the field. Some are from men on furlough, or worn- 
 out men discharged and sent home. Some are from 
 transferred nurses giving their experiences in other 
 hospitals. Some, the most touching, are from friends at 
 home asking for news of their soldiers, or acknowledging 
 tidings of illness or death. But they are all touching 
 enough, — in the struggle for expression of persons not 
 used to putting their thoughts on paper ; the elaborate 
 folding ; the pathetic ill-spelling ; the patriotic device, the 
 red and blue edges of the sheet ; sometimes in the perfect 
 correctness and delicacy of the little document in all its 
 parts. Some are restrained and quiet ; some are full of 
 j noble courage and patience ; some are the pouring out of 
 helpless love and sorrow. So many beg for further par- 
 ticulars ; — " Write more ;" " Tell me everything ;" — 
 " What did he say of me ? " — " He must have left some 
 word about the children ;" — ■" If I could only know his 
 thoughts as he went away from earth." — I take a few of 
 them up at random. 
 
 Very early in the war a father writes : 
 
142 
 
 My Dear Miss 
 
 I am very glad to know by your writing that my son died 
 among Christians instead of among rebels. My only fears are 
 that he had not the care when he was first taken sick he ought 
 to have had. There are many stories that the sick are not well 
 cared for in many places. I am sure that had any one known 
 how good my son was, they could not have misused him. I should 
 like to know what he said about his home, and also how he was 
 buried. My son is dead ; — through this rebellion. If I, his 
 father, were Abraham Lincoln, I would kill the cursed cause of 
 it, slavery, before many suns went down. Write all particulars 
 of my son's death and relieve broken hearts. 
 
 E. T. 
 
 And a sister : 
 Dear Miss 
 
 Will you be so kind as to give the enclosed letter to my bro- 
 ther. I have not heard from him since we parted and it would 
 give me both pleasure and courage to know how he is situated. 
 I am taking a liberty, but I have heard persons say that you too 
 have a brother in the army, and would be more apt than another 
 to understand the anxiety of a sister's heart. 
 
 A.M. 
 
 This mother is more anxious for her son's honor than 
 for his safety or her own relief: 
 
 New York, June 5. 
 
 Dear Madam, 
 
 I am glad to hear from you that my boy is better. Do you 
 think he is likely to be soon strong enough to rejoin his regi- 
 ment, or would it be better for him, as he is so young, to return 
 home ? I am anxious to know too, what character he bears as a 
 soldier. I cannot think he is strong enough for the hardships of 
 
143 
 
 camp life, but as I have his own honor at heart more than my 
 desire to see him again, I hesitate to apply for his discharge. 
 
 Julia M. 
 
 William H. was furloughed, and in a few days, from 
 far up in the country, came a little box with eggs packed 
 in oats, and butter-pats wrapped in linen and broad, 
 green leaves. He had learned to knit in hospital, and 
 made two wonderful and beautiful pairs of fine, red 
 stockings, for the shaping of which he borrowed one 
 of ours, and insisted on giving them to us as a parting 
 present. The occupation was good and the idea seemed 
 to give him constant amusement ; the turning of the 
 tables ; a sick soldier knitting socks for a lady. He 
 writes : 
 
 Eespected Friend, 
 
 I write to say that I have sent by express a small box with a 
 few eggs for your own private use and a little print of butter for 
 yonr own use, and some for the other ladies, I want to send 
 you some little notion from home, and thought this was the best 
 I could send. I feel a desire to hear from the hospital how you 
 all are. Remember me to the Chaplain. I trust the Lord will 
 bless his labors. I feel a great desire to see you all, and enjoy a 
 day or two at the hospital. I hope your life will be precious in 
 God's sight. I have not been so well since I got home, and get 
 low-spirited and nervous, but when I review the past and see 
 how God's Providence has been around me, I feel to thank Him 
 and take courage. 
 
 Your grateful friend, 
 
 William H. 
 
144 
 
 What a characteristic story is this ; what glimpses of 
 a noble soul ! 
 
 March 31, 1864. 
 
 My Deak Miss 
 
 When I first opened your letter I dare not look at the com- 
 mencement, but glanced my eye toward the bottom and read, — 
 " Your dear husband had good care during his illness." I tried 
 to think he was better. I jumped up and clapped my hands, and 
 said, ' Oh ! it's news from John.' I sat down and began to read 
 again until I read, " At half past eight God took him ;" when I 
 fell to the floor. Little did I think when he left his family that 
 he never would return to them on earth. At the time he enlisted 
 tho recruiting officer promised him a furlough of eight days, but 
 after he had been at New London a day or two, he was, with 
 others, sent away without coming home. When he wrote to me 
 from Philadelphia, he said, — " It is all right ; if it were not, God 
 would not permit it to be so." After he made up his mind to 
 volunteer he seemed perfectly happy and said his duty in life was 
 only just begun. The night after he went I taught Frankie a 
 new prayer, — " God take care of my dear papa," — and little Rosa 
 has learned it too. I can never see you or thank you for your 
 kindness to him. If I could know what his thoughts were as he 
 went away from earth ! I sometimes think we loved each other 
 too well and he was taken home to draw my heart after him. 
 
 J. B. 
 
 Letters often came into the Superintendent's hands 
 after the death of the soldier. 
 A young sister says : 
 
 , Indiana, Oct. 9, 1 864. 
 
 Dear Brother, 
 
 We wrote yesterday and the day before, so there is not much 
 to write, only that mother wants you to keep up good cheer. 
 
145 
 
 You will get this on your birthday, and mother says she wishes 
 she could get there with it. She says if you feel sad and lonely 
 you must look to God for comfort. She feels almost too nervous 
 to try and write tonight. 
 
 Minnie : — . 
 
 Another letter, found in the pocket of a dead man, 
 is from his wife and says that her landlord has threatened 
 to turn her out with her little children into the cold 
 and begs her husband to come home and see her and 
 the children and get some shelter for them. 
 
 It was frequently a painful task to decide whether 
 friends should be summoned ; whether there was need 
 of it ; whether there was time. These friends were often 
 poor and burdened with the care of children, and the 
 journey was often long. 
 
 , New Hampshire, Jan. 2 H i, 1864. 
 
 Deak Miss 
 
 I received yours of the 21st last evening. I thank you very 
 much for writing about my husband. Please read him the 
 enclosed if he is not able, and will you write me as soon as you 
 get this, and ask him if he thinks it best for me to come. Tell 
 me just what he says. Tell me just what is thought about him. 
 I want to know the worst. I ask you again to write as soon as 
 you get this. If he expresses the least wish I will start immedi- 
 ately. I shall be so disappointed if I do not hear again this 
 week. I am so anxious about him. 
 
 A. G. 
 
146 
 Furloughed : 
 
 , January 26, 1863. 
 
 In compliance to your request, I write to say that I got home 
 on the 17th and found my family well. How glad to be at home 
 again! And we feel thankful to our Heavenly Father for his 
 care over us during my absence, so that at our family altar we 
 feel to say when I review the dangers and escapes I was in, that 
 goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life and 
 that He has covered my head in the day of battle. I can never 
 forget you. My daily prayer is that God will spare your life to 
 labor for the poor soldier. The day never passes but I think of 
 the many favors received from Surgeon in Charge and officers. 
 I was nowhere since I left home where I felt so satisfied as at the 
 Hospital. May the Lord bless you and all those who labor with 
 you, and at last may you hear the sweet voice of your Savior 
 say, ' In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye 
 have done it unto me.' 
 
 Wm. H. . 
 
 Furloughed : 
 
 , Wyoming County, N. Y., Dec. 14, 1863. 
 
 My Dear Friend. 
 
 This is to inform you that I arrived at home on the 12th. We 
 stayed at the Soldiers' Home in New York, so it cost us nothing. 
 I got home next day and took them by surprise. You can 
 imagine how happy we were. I think she looked a little older, 
 though not so sad as when we parted. I was much fatigued, but 
 think I shall be better in a few days. I can never half thank 
 you for all your kindness while I was there. 
 
 G. C. 
 
 / think she looked a little older. Who shall tell the story 
 of the women at home, or measure the hope and the fear 
 
 and the "constant anguish of patience "? 
 
147 
 
 These are sons and fathers worthy of each other : 
 
 , Wisconsin, July 29, 1863. 
 
 Dear Miss 
 
 I take my pen to let you know that I received your kind but 
 distressing letter telling of the death of my dear son. But he fell 
 on the field, defending his country ! My stranger friend, I am 
 happy to think you respected my son to take such care of him 
 during his illness. I hope you will answer this letter and give 
 me more particulars about his death, and if he said anything 
 about anything at home, or if he mentioned any of the family, or 
 if he said anything about dying, and if he was buried with the 
 honors of war. But I have said all that I can say by thanking 
 you a thousand times, and bring my letter to a close by asking 
 God to bless you. 
 
 C. S. 
 
 No man was buried without the "honors of war," as 
 prescribed in the Army Regulations. The Colonel of a 
 raw regiment encamped near by, once complained to the 
 Surgeon in Charge that the firing over the grave made 
 his men "nervous" and begged him to discontinue it, but 
 with no avail. 
 
 , N. Y. Oct. 13, 1863. 
 
 Miss 
 
 Yours of the 8th was received informing me of my son 
 Lorenzo's death. Great as is his loss to me yet from the tone of 
 your letter I feel reconciled to the will of our Divine Master. I 
 have four sons in the Federal Army ; would I had four more. I 
 would give them freely, hoping for their welfare and trusting in 
 God. God's will be done. In your letter you wrote you wanted 
 to write more fully soon. Do so, and let \ le know if he was con- 
 scious of his situation, his last words a: d feelings, and all his 
 
148 
 
 sayings in his last hours. Should you know of anything which 
 may have been desired by him, please inform me. 
 
 B. M. 
 
 , Ohio, Feb. 25, 1864. 
 
 Dear Brother, 
 
 We received your letter to-day. Father says you must take 
 good care of yourself. He says he is going to keep a pair of 
 white-faced oxen for you. Mother says the time seems long since 
 she saw you. She wants you to take care of your health and be 
 a good boy. She wants you to write once a week certainly. If 
 you want anything you can't get, let us know, and we will try to 
 get it for you. Give our best respects to Luke if he is there. I 
 will get you some good story papers. 
 
 Annie H. 
 
 Private H. languished and died in Hospital ; the mother 
 at home counting the time long since she saw her boy, 
 and the ' white-faced oxen' waiting in the stalls. 
 
 What a noble and pathetic letter is this last in the 
 handful ! The father and the mother write : 
 
 , N. Y., March 1864. 
 
 Dear Friend, 
 
 We feel very thankful to you for the respect you have shown 
 our dear son. We feel to bless God that He raised up such good 
 friends. We felt you did all you could for our son, and more for 
 being so kind as to write to us and let us know where are laid 
 his mortal remains. You wrote you thought he was praising 
 God. It was the greatest comfort to us of anything. To think 
 that we shall one day meet where there is no war, no enemies, no 
 blood and carnage ; where our suffering is all done with ! We 
 should like to know if Amos bore it patiently. He was always 
 very patient at home. We are old and infirm. It was hard part- 
 
149 
 
 ing with him when he left home. It seems sometimes that I 
 could almost hear him praising God and beckoning* It will not 
 be long. We will pray for you in your station, and for those 
 who administered to the wants of our son. We feel for others as 
 well as ourselves. We are not alorie by thousands. We have one 
 son left ; he has lost part of his hand ; and one son-in-law with 
 Banks. We would like to know if Amos said anything about his 
 friends. Was it so that he could not talk much ? How did his 
 mind appear to run? It seems he would have said something 
 about his father ; he always thought so much of him. Was his 
 mind on prayer or on the Bible ? He wrote to me that if he fell 
 he should fall safe. He said he prayed for us and for himself. 
 But his place is vacant. But we have One to go to who can be 
 touched with our infirmities. If you think of anything more let 
 us know. We should be glad of anything more. 
 
 From your friends Geoege and Lucy , 
 
 His father and mother. 
 
 On the 12th of May 1864, keeping a standing engage- 
 ment with the Sanitary Commission, G. got a furlough of 
 a few days and went to Fredericksburg ; and presently, 
 into the order and comfort of the Hospital came, in sharp 
 contrast, two or three letters from her, written on odd 
 leaves of paper, mercilessly abbreviated in every other 
 word. 
 
 Belle Plain, Va., May 13, 1864. 
 On the S. C. boat, pulling up to the shore Government flat- 
 boats of horses and cavalry recruits. There are no docks and 
 the army supplies are being landed from barges connected by 
 pontoons with the shore. A constant stream of contrabands 
 passing with bags of grain and barrels of pork on their shoul- 
 ders. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Agnew are here. Good Dr. Cuyler 
 
150 
 
 is here. Senator Ponieroy is on board going down to bring up 
 General Bartlett of Massachusetts who went into the fight with a 
 
 Palmer leg and was wounded again. Col. tells me there 
 
 has been great anxiety at the War Department. Mr. Stanton 
 said to him, — " When we have a victory the whole North shall 
 
 know it." — "And when there is silence?" said Col. . "Then," 
 
 said the Secretary, — " there is no communication with the front." 
 We have a Feeding-Station on shore and are putting up another 
 two miles away, on the hill, where ambulance trains halt some- 
 times for hours, owing to obstructions in the road. The mud is 
 frightful and the rain is coming on again. We are directed to 
 take the return train of ambulances for Fredericksburg. 
 
 Just as I finished, the train from Fredericksburg arrived. Noth- 
 ing I have ever seen equals the condition of these men. They 
 had been two or three days in the ambulances ; roads dreadful ; 
 no food. We have been at work with them from morning till 
 night without ceasing ; filling one boat, feeding the men ; fill- 
 ing another, feeding them. There is no sort of use in trying to 
 tell you the story. I can scarcely bear to think of it. All the 
 nurses and cooks from the Invalid Corps of our Hospital, who 
 marched off that day, Sullivan, Lewis and the rest, armed with 
 muskets again, are down here guarding prisoners. Yesterday 
 a squad of rebel officers was marched on board a boat lying by 
 ours. I had to pass through their ranks to get supplies from our 
 boat, and shook hands with our boys and saw the officers ; Stew- 
 art and Bradley Johnson among them ; strong well-fed, iron 
 looking men, all of them. There's no ' give in ' in such looking 
 men as these. Our soldiers from the front say the rebels stand — 
 stand — in solid masses, giving and taking tremendous blows and 
 never being shoved an inch. It is magnificent ! 
 
 No words can express the horrible confusion of this place. The 
 wounded arrive one train a day, but the trains are miles long ; 
 blocked by all sorts of accidents, wagon trains, bad roads, broken 
 bridges ; two, three days on the way, plunged in quagmires, jolted 
 
151 
 
 over corduroy, without food, fainting, starving, filthy ; frightfully 
 wounded, arms gone to the shoulder, horrible wounds in face and 
 head. I would rather a thousand times have a friend killed on 
 the field than suffer in this way. It is worse than White House, 
 Harrison's, or Gettysburg by far. Many die on the way. We 
 found thirty-five dead in the ambulances yesterday, and six more 
 died on the stretchers while being put on board the boats. The 
 boats are anything that can be got hold of, cattle scows, any- 
 thing. Barges of horses are landed by the side of the transports 
 and the horses cross the deck where the helpless men lie. Mules, 
 stretchers, army wagons, prisoners, dead men and officials as 
 good as dead are tumbled and jumbled on the wretched dock 
 which falls in every little while and keeps the trains waiting for 
 hours. We fed the men at once. We fed all the five boats that 
 got off yesterday. There is no Government provision for this, 
 beyond bread ; no coffee, no soup, no cups or pails, or vessels of 
 any kind for holding food. The men eat as if starving. These 
 had been three days without food. We are ordered to Fredericks- 
 burg today to report to Dr. Douglas, as there is more misery there 
 than here. 
 
 Fredericsburg, Va., May 19, 1864. 
 All right. Hard work, dirt and death everywhere. Mrs. Gib- 
 bons arrived last night. She and her daughter are assigned to 
 a fearful place, where they are working hard. I am in the Feed- 
 ing-Station. Men are continually brought in and stowed away 
 in filthy warehouses called distributing stations, where for three 
 or four days no one in particular seems responsible for them- 
 They are frightfully wounded and die in numbers in the stations. 
 No provision whatever for feeding them is made by Govern- 
 ment, beyond hard-tack and coffee. We go about among them 
 and feed them. I have good men as assistants and can have 
 more. I have a room of special cases near by, besides the general 
 station. Three of these died last night. Care came too late. 
 They had been several days on the field after being shot ; in and 
 
152 
 
 out of the enemy's hands ; taken, retaken. Mr. Clarke of Paris 
 and Mr. Thaxter are busy everywhere ; Mr. Clarke with a tear 
 in his eye and a rose in his button-hole. More straw stealing, 
 corn-shuck stealing, plank-stealing (the townspeople refuse to 
 sell and we steal everything we can lay our hands on for the 
 patients) ; more grateful, suffering, patient men ; more dirt and 
 unnecessary shifting about of the wounded. 
 
 May 22. 
 
 Dr. Buck and Dr. Markoe went this morning. Dr. Clark of 
 Boston is still here. More like these three gentlemen would 
 have been an unspeakable blessing. Orders about transporta- 
 tion of wounded have been given and countermanded and given 
 again. Tent hospitals have been put up and then surgeons 
 ordered not to fill them. No confusion was ever greater. Orders 
 came from Washington that the Rail-road should be repaired — 
 why was it not done ten days ago ? and the wounded sent by it. 
 Then orders came withdrawing guard from Rail-road. The 
 Medical Department refused to send wounded over an un- 
 guarded road. Telegram from "Washington that wounded should 
 go by boat. Telegram back that trains of wounded were already 
 over the pontoons, ready to go by Rail-road if protected. Tele- 
 gram that they should go by boat. Trains come back to boat. 
 River falling ; rumors of blockade. One boat full got painfully 
 off. Second boat off. Ambulance trains at many hospital doors. 
 Go round and feed the w r orst cases for embarking. Get on an 
 ambulance of the train and feed some poor fellows with egg- 
 nog ; one, shot through the lungs, one, through thigh, and move 
 on with the slow-moving procession, — at every moment a jolt 
 and a " God have mercy on me !" — through the darkness, over 
 the pontoons, to the Rail-road again. 
 
 The moving of the men is what no one likes to think of. No 
 selection is made ; such and such places are ' cleared' without 
 regard to cases, and every day six or eight men are taken out of 
 
153 
 
 the ambulances at Belle Plain dead, who would have lived if 
 they had been quiet, while the city is full of men slightly hurt. 
 
 I cooked and served to-day 926 rations of farina, tea, coffee, 
 soft crackers and good, rich soup, chicken, turkey and beef, 
 out of those blessed cans. The great confusion in regard to 
 Governmeut feeding of the men in Fredericsburg, after the 
 difficulty of getting up enough food over the road, comes from 
 the stupid division of the hospitals into so many parts. Each 
 little shop full, or room full, or collection of woimded men has a 
 surgeon, usually civilian contractor. He reports to the surgeon 
 in charge of the group of rooms, shops, etc. This officer reports 
 to surgeon of division ; surgeon of division to corps surgeon ; 
 corps surgeon draws on the commissary for number of rations 
 he needs for the day. The rations are divided and sub-divided ; 
 so much for corps, so much for division, so much for each 
 hospital, and then the ward-master for each hospital takes the 
 food in the rough and has it cooked, and all the little shops and 
 rooms send and get it in tin cups and old pails. It has often 
 been ten o'clock at night before ' dinner was ready,' and when 
 you consider that many of these men require feeding every hour 
 or two, you may easily see how important have been the ' irreg- 
 ular' supplies of the Sanitary Commission and other organiza- 
 tions. 
 
 We are lodged with a fine old lady, mild and good, in a garden 
 full of roses. We board ourselves. We have crackers, some- 
 times soft bread, sometimes beef. We have plenty and are well. 
 Last night we had a slice of ham all round. The wounded are 
 being removed. The town will be deserted in a few days. We 
 
 are sweeping and cleaning Mrs. 's rooms to leave the old 
 
 lady as well off as we can, for all her servants have packed their 
 feather beds and frying-pans and declare they will go with us. 
 
 Having a moment of leisure Gr. wrote once more, and 
 this time it was about the roses in Fredericsburg. 
 
154 
 
 Augur's reinforcements have passed through. As the troops 
 went forward along the street, they were met by the ambulances 
 of wounded from the front who thrust out their poor hands and 
 
 waved and Aveakly cheered them. Mrs. 's house has a large, 
 
 old-time garden full of roses ; indeed the whole town is brimming 
 with early flowers. We begged and received permission to take 
 all we could gather, and filled our baskets, trays and the skirts of 
 our gowns with snow-balls, lemon-blossoms and roses yellow, 
 white and red. The 8th New York Heavy Artillery was in the 
 column. In the headstall of Colonel Peter Porter's horse we 
 fastened a knot of roses, and tossed roses and snow-balls in 
 showers over the men. They were delighted. — " In Frederics- 
 burg /" — they said ; — " Oh, give me one ;" — " Pray give me one ;" — 
 " I will carry it into the fight for you ;" and another, cheerily, — 
 " I will bring it back again !" 
 
 Three days afterwards the ambulances came ; and in them 
 came some of the same men, shattered, dying, dead. We went 
 out, but this time it was with pails of soup and milk-punch. One 
 and another recognized us ; all were cheery enough. — " A different 
 coming back ma'am." — "No roses to-day!" — and one said, point- 
 ing over his shoulder, — " The Lieutenant is there on the stretcher, 
 and he's brought back the flowers as he promised." I went to 
 the side, hoping to help a wounded man. The Lieutenant lay 
 dead, with a bunch of dead roses in the breast of his coat. 
 
 A woman-nurse transferred to a General Hospital 
 farther North writes of her experience : 
 
 I have one hundred men in my ward, all in bed. The surgeons 
 appear to give very little care to the diet but are down on any 
 one else who does. The food is very poor and insufficient. The 
 cooks seem to have it all their own way. The ladies are not 
 allowed to superintend in the kitchen or have anything to do 
 
155 
 
 with it. For thirty-eight of my men the ward surgeon orders in 
 general terms, milk and eggs. It is grimly amusing to hear him 
 say day after day ; " milk and eggs for thirty-eight." One egg 
 apiece, each meal, is all I can ever get from the cooks and for 
 two days there have been no eggs at all. The milk rations are 
 always short. At least once a day a clean sweep is made by 
 some one, of all the light diets ; so all that these thirty-eight 
 men, many of whom are fearfully exhausted, have often had from 
 the hospital, has been a little rice which they can't bear and a 
 slice of bread. No steak and potatoes, no egg-nog, no milk- 
 punch, nothing generous whatever comes into the ward. 
 
 All this wears upon one infinitely more than the hard work. 
 What shall we give in place of the missing eggs ? How shall we 
 make up these miserably scanty rations ? I have opened a pri- 
 vate account at the village store for bread, butter, eggs and milk 
 enough for the ward, and we shall provide brandy and whiskey 
 for the punches. I am told to ' exercise my own judgment ' in 
 giving these out. No stimulant list has ever been furnished me. 
 Our ward surgeon has gone to a horse race which seems to be a 
 pretty long one, and a strange surgeon looks in now and then. 
 The surgeon in charge seems kind in manner, visits the wards 
 and attends to serious operations himself. He appears to do his 
 part in the routine of the hospital, drawing rations, issuing them 
 to the stewards, etc., strictly according to regulations, but seems 
 to think that stewards are the best persons to manage the food 
 business. The hospital fund could and should provide every- 
 thing. The object of the minor officers seems to be to subsist 
 the men on nothing and avoid making a row. All that we women 
 can do is to keep up a steady glare with the ' eye of justice' 
 and that, I assure you, we do. Our own quarters are poor, cold 
 and leaky. For three nights we have been all crowded together 
 while wash-tubs, standing in the places of the beds, caught the 
 rain beating in through walls and roof. 
 
 A set of regulations was promulgated this p. m. regarding 
 female nurses, of which I give you as a specimen, Number Five ; 
 
156 
 
 'All deliberations, discussions and remarks having the object of 
 expressing comparative praise, or censure of the medical officers 
 of this hospital, or of their individual course or conduct are 
 positively prohibited.' The provision against our praise is truly 
 judicious ! 
 
 But the worst of it is we cannot keep the men alive. Eleven 
 have died in three days. Our usual three died last night from 
 what the Chaplain facetiously calls the " dying corner." This 
 officer's ministrations are something in this style ; — " Do you 
 believe in a future state ; yes ; well ; ah ; then you hope for better 
 things ; then ; ah ; yes ; you will die happy ; good morning 
 brother." This to a man who thinks he is getting well is some- 
 thing of a damper. This afternoon, Sunday, he made a few re- 
 marks to the effect that death was waiting for them all, prolong- 
 ing the subject till the usual afternoon funeral passed by, and 
 bringing it in neatly ; ' Even now one of your comrades is being 
 carried to the grave.' 
 
 We wrote many letters for the men. These differed 
 curiously sometimes. One young fellow very badly hurt 
 wishes it said that he is ' bully ' and will be ' round in 
 a few days.' Another, slightly wounded, dictates a fear- 
 ful epistle to his friends evidently meaning to ' make 
 their flesh creep ;' — " So they put me on the table, blood 
 and bones sticking out in every direction," etc. "But 
 shan't I add that you are better now?" — "Well never 
 mind that ;" says the hero. The indignation of an old 
 Irishman on being asked if he wanted to write to his 
 wife, was droll, but rather justified by the style of her 
 last letter to him ; "My cherished husband, it is with 
 
157 
 
 intence sorrow that I hear you are wounded. I never 
 expected to see you more. I thought by this time your 
 blood like others of your countrymen was watering the 
 soil of Virginia/' etc., etc. He presented the letter to 
 G., saying he had no use for it. 
 
 These are from the parcel labelled ' letters from the field ;' 
 they are from six or eight different soldiers and are taken 
 in the order of their dates. All show more or less of the 
 men and the time. 
 
 A+. '' 1862. 
 The brandy and other things you gave me just before going 
 off were very valuable. A soldier of the 5th Maine, on picket 
 with us a few nights ago, was struck by a ball which broke his 
 leg. He crawled through the rain and cold of that miserable 
 night, half a mile, on his hands and knees to the reserve picket, 
 and was just fainting when I came up with the brandy treasured 
 for just such a moment. I hope we shall not be cheated out of 
 a good fight. I hope J. and F. will contrive to have a good 
 fight. 
 
 Poor boys, they were at it already, thinking it would 
 be all over in sixty days : 
 
 Co. 6, — N. Y. Vols. 
 July 6, 1862. 
 
 We are watching with fearful earnestness the operations be- 
 fore Richmond. With what a will we gave ' three times three,' 
 when the Colonel told us on parade that he had heard from 
 reliable, though not official sources that Richmond is ours ; how 
 dreadful the shock when we found McClellan had fallen back, 
 losses 15,000, and it was very little comfort that our army is in a 
 better position for a fight than ever. I ought not to call in ques- 
 
158 
 
 tion the doings of my superiors, but it seems as if everything were 
 put back for weeks. 
 
 Near Falmouth, Va., 23 Jan., 1863. 
 
 On the 20th the greater part of Hooker's and Franklin's Divi- 
 sions began to march up river, to cross and fight the " final de- 
 cisive battle " which McClellan forgot to fight on the Chicka- 
 hominy. Then came the dreadful storm of wind, rain and sleet 
 of the night of the 20th, lasting till now. After struggling with 
 mud for forty-eight hours the whole expedition is countermarch- 
 ing miserably ; stragglers by thousands ; the road strung along 
 with guns and wagons ; everybody wet, miry, cold, hungry and 
 dreary. Just before this last movement some thousands of sick 
 were sent to Aquia Creek. When they got there they found 
 little or no provision made for them, so in a few days nearly all 
 were sent back, some almost dying. They returned here in the 
 midst of the storm with orders to " rejoin their regiments ;" — their 
 regiments meanwhile had marched away. I begin to long a 
 little for a short deliverance. If we were only always fighting 
 and marching — but muddy camps are tiresome. We have read 
 the testimony before the McDowell and Porter court martial, 
 the Prince de Joinville and Gurowski. The sun is coming out. 
 I will go out and dry in it. 
 
 What could we do here without the Sanitary Commission. 
 Many of our medicines, our stimulants, blankets, bedding, etc., 
 for the field hospital come from the S. C. I would rather have 
 Mr. Olmsted's fame than that of any General in this war since 
 the beginning. Direct to me Co. N. Y. Vols. 
 
 Camp, August 7, 1863. 
 We are sweltering in the middle of a large field in a full glare 
 of the hottest sun. Our camps are selected in this way : an 
 officer takes a thermometer and casts about for the hottest spot 
 and there the flag is planted. Our tent, is at ' water boils.' We 
 are delighted to see the draft progressing and hope we shall soon 
 
159 
 
 have large batches of men, and one more campaign will finish up 
 tJie war. 
 
 October 9, 1863. 
 
 The drafted men come in by driblets, but like the ' little drops 
 of water ' may in time make a swelling flood. So far they only 
 make up for sick men and men on detached service. When they 
 first began to come there was a disposition to make fun of them, 
 but now we take very kindly to each other. They look as new 
 and clean as the Seventh New York did in Maryland. The other 
 day when a batch arrived, the place was full of loafers and a 
 band was playing. " If I'd a' known it was like this, I'd a' come 
 long ago," — one of them said. I hope he'll say so the first time 
 he charges on a battery. 
 
 No furloughs are granted now, except under extraordinary 
 circumstances. John Doyle sent up yesterday with his applica- 
 tion the telegram he had from home. — " Phil and Sophy are dead 
 and the four others are expected to die." He got his fifteen 
 days. 
 
 Many of the drafted men and substitutes who found 
 their way to us in Hospital, at this time and later, were 
 of the most worthless character, mere bounty-swindlers 
 and refuse of foreign countries. One lost in their 
 unblushing frauds all pity for their hopeless disability. 
 One man in our camp for instance, who had received 
 nearly a thousand dollars in bounties and had been two 
 months in the service, applied to his ward surgeon for dis- 
 charge on the ground of epileptic fits of fourteen years 
 standing. These, — mother and wife, — were the men who 
 came down to stand beside your 
 
 ' Stainless soldier on the walls.' 
 
160 
 
 Some in their heroic deaths made us forget their 
 shameful lives ; many deserted ; a few let us hope, went 
 home better men ; hundreds drifted into hospitals, were 
 discharged and re-enlisted for another bounty elsewhere. 
 The men who ' stood the draft' and came down were of a 
 far better class than the substitutes. Now and then there 
 was a curious case among these. S — . H — . of New 
 Hampshire was drafted in May, 1864, sent to Concord, 
 thence to Boston Harbor, to Alexandria and to Camp 
 Distribution near Alexandria. He was then set to work 
 on Arlington Heights' fortifications, taken ill and sent to 
 us. From us he was sent to Cliff burne barracks to be 
 examined for the V. R. C, was declared unfit for the 
 corps and returned to us. Never having been assigned 
 to any regiment he could draw neither pay nor clothes. 
 He had eight children. He was an excellent, faithful 
 nurse, being put on that duty in the Hospital and doing 
 it admirably. 
 
 The Sanitary Commission afterwards arranged the case 
 and secured pay for the time he had been in service, and 
 he went home rejoicing. 
 
 In Camp, 6tJt April, 1864. 
 Grant has not pulled ns out of the mud yet. I think the 
 " side issue " at Fort Monroe must have been only a trip to see 
 how the land lies. If it lies as loose and moist as it does here, 
 he certainly doesn't mean fight. Dr. H. came down to stay 
 over Sunday, and preach to us soldiers, but he addressed his 
 
161 
 
 city congregation. — " You who see every day in the streets and 
 shops " — much we do ! — " and in your own comfortable dwell- 
 ings," etc., or, " There is no child before me too young to," etc., 
 etc. General Sheridan said to be a first-class cavalry officer 
 has come to Headquarters. Great things are expected of him. 
 He is said to be an ordinary looking little man who tells with 
 a peculiar accent how well his men " done" in the West. 
 
 Sootii of Germanna Ford, May 5, 1864. 
 
 We have had probably the hardest fight of this campaign. 
 Our losses have been great, for the fighting on both sides was 
 desperate. But all goes well, and we are in good spirits, and 
 confident of finishing up the thing this time. The ground is the 
 very worst kind for fighting, a perfect wilderness of dense 
 forests and underbrush where you would suppose it impossible 
 for anything to get through. Your note reached me today 
 when the musketry was very loud. Hurray for the American 
 eagle ! 
 
 May 16, 18G4. 
 
 I can't begin to give you any account of the fight at Spott- 
 sylvania. We are resting after hard marching and fighting 
 and waiting for more men ; some have come. While the enemy 
 cannot make good his losses we shall fill up the gaps by Augur's 
 men. We have whipped the enemy. Don't say, ' Why don't 
 they follow it up.' Remember that to follow up rapidly and 
 destroy such an army as Lee's, through this country after nine 
 days of hard fighting is simply impossible. There has been a 
 large amount of straggling. The weary marches through the 
 mud after hard fighting during the day, have done much of this. 
 They are scattered and lost through the woods. We are in 
 great straits for rations, but hopeful and in good spirits. " Ain't 
 I glad " to be out of the Wilderness ! A little way from our 
 camp we see the enemy's line — a dirt-colored human fence 
 against the green trees. 
 
 11 
 
162 
 
 June 30, 1864. 
 We are on the left near the Weldon K. R, and are looking 
 for news from Lynchburg. If Lee would only come out and 
 fight — the army above all things desires it. We are marching in 
 intolerable heat and dust, building miles of works, fighting day 
 and night, never relieved and never safe from bullets. Some- 
 times I have laid down at night on the ground feeling that I 
 could endure it no longer. Then I go and get behind the breast- 
 works and listen to the talk so full of hope that one can't help 
 feeling better for it. 
 
 In Camp, September 4, 1864. 
 
 The convalescents and recruits come in slowly. They are 
 often improperly marched and give out on their way to their 
 regiments and have to be returned to hospital. Poor little 
 squads of companies now make up some of the regiments. Com- 
 pany commanders, corporals, have been heard to say — " Fall 
 in Company A. Fall in men, both of you." It is rumored there 
 will be fighting to-morrow, owing to Early's return from the 
 Valley. I suppose if we have had the great victory that is 
 rumored we shall know it soon. As for McClellan, no matter 
 what personal frienship may exist for him among the soldiers, I 
 don't see how a soldier can endorse the Chicago platform. 
 I cannot think that the people of the North mean anything 
 but a continuance of the war until it is finished in the entire 
 subjugation of the South. The soldiers have never known 
 General McClellan in the dress he now wears. I, for my part, 
 don't want to think I have spent two years in the army for 
 nothing at all. We are to have a national salute in honor of 
 Atlanta to-night. 
 
 September 9, 1864. 
 
 Yesterday some of the men of both sides were stealing out 
 between the lines to talk and trade together, exchanging papers 
 and comparing views on politics and the war. They had a little 
 
163 
 
 dog for mail-carrier, and wrote each other notes in loving terms, 
 as "My dear Johnny Keb," or " My dear Yank," in which they 
 compareu the price of cheese and tobacco and enclosed the 
 orders of the General inviting deserters. There is no sign of 
 discouragement out here. It is like the old times of 1861. The 
 adherents of McClellan are dropping off daily. 
 
 Camp 120th Vols., Feb. 12, 1865. 
 
 It is a bleak, desolate day and we are at work building for the 
 third time this winter our little city of logs. I cannot under- 
 stand what we have accomplished by the week of fighting and 
 exposure, to which another week must be added before we can 
 be comfortable, unless it is a diversion in favor of Sherman. 
 When we came away the two chapels were none too large ; the 
 Dinwiddie Literary Association was a capital institution. Then 
 we had every Thursday evening a general singing exercise, a 
 class in the rudiments of music two afternoons a week, a Bible- 
 class, and an old-fashioned spelling-class in prospect. It is to 
 the chapel that my heart turns back most regretfully. It was 
 unhewn and rude, but Ruskin might well enough mention it 
 along with the mediaeval cathedrals as an illustration of the 
 Lamp of Sacrifice, for it was built as to the Lord, with a loving- 
 spirit. By the end of the week we hope to have a new chapel 
 up, though by the end of the week we may have made another 
 move by the left flank. 
 
 Hilton Head, S. 0., Feb. 23, 1865. 
 One of the regiments here is the 3d U. S. C. T. the Inspector 
 says, the best drilled of the Colored Troops, with as much snap 
 in the manual of arms as any white troops he has seen. 
 The orderly-sergeant of one company was a field hand, slave, 
 five months ago ; now he keeps all the company books in excel- 
 lent condition. The 103d recruiting here, is made up altogether 
 of men who were slaves, who came into our lines in the wake 
 
164 
 
 of Sherman. We heard of the evacuation of Charleston last 
 night. The ships in the harbor made a show of fireworks. 
 
 12 Miles from Farmville, Va., 8lh April, 1865. 
 It is hard to realize that the rebels are at last pushed to the 
 wall, and that it is quite probable that Lee will surrender to- 
 morrow. If you could have heard and seen the Sixth Corps 
 marching through Farmville last night you would think they 
 alone could finish up the rebellion — and they could. We have 
 outrun our wagon train two days and nights. The roads are full 
 of the wreck of Lee's army and his men are hustled to the rear 
 by hundreds. They say that 10,000 have thrown away their 
 muskets in the woods. Who would have thought ten days ago 
 that things would come to this pass ! 
 
 Appomattox C. H., 10th April, 1865. 
 We find it hard to realize the state of things ; no Army of 
 Northern Virginia; no lines beyond which it is dangerous to 
 
 last night. I looked for G. among them. I hear he is all right. 
 They gave our men for rations three ears of raw corn, each day. 
 That Johnston will surrender and that the end of the war has 
 really come we do not doubt. It is a good thing to have had a 
 part in this wonderful campaign. 
 
 City Point, Va., April 12, 1865. 
 It has been a tiresome march, but think of the results! A 
 long column of prisoners coming in, with Custis Lee, Ewell 
 and other rebel Generals at its head. We shall probably start 
 for Richmond to-day. 
 
 April 24, 1 865. 
 I trust General Giant will i?et General Sherman on the right 
 track again. How he could ever have been switched off at such 
 an angle I cannot imagine. Think of the rebels walking off to 
 
165 
 
 their State arsenals with their guns in their hands. It would be 
 a surrender of Sherman to Johnston, instead of the other way. 
 I think the Ninth Corps will encamp in the neighborhood of the 
 Hospital soon. 
 
 This letter comes from the field accompanied by a gor- 
 geous blue and gold photograph book, bought of some 
 wretch of a camp sutler at an exorbitant price. 
 
 Camp before Petersburg, July, 1864. 
 
 Esteemed Fbiend, 
 
 A proposal was agreed on between Corporal F. and me last 
 winter to present you with a suitable present worthy of your 
 kindness to us, but owing to Corporal F. being sent home on 
 furlough, it was put off. Then, I had joined my Regiment and 
 we have had no time to do anything owing to the campaign we 
 
 have just passed through. The Corporal is in Hospital. 
 
 I have been through the campaign with only slight bruises for a 
 wonder, as the boys of the company say that I cannot go into 
 battle without being wounded. I am expecting a commission 
 this month. I am confident of a speedy success over the rebel- 
 lion. I am in good spirits and determined to do my duty. Our 
 regiment has behaved with great gallantry, though our loss is 
 heavier than ever. We have but 136 men for duty. Please 
 accept this gift in remembrance of us and our suffering comrades. 
 
 W. H. Sergeant. 
 
 J. F. Corporal. 
 
 The Sergeant received his commission, was wounded 
 again before Richmond, recovered, was mustered out 
 with his regiment at the close of the war, and wrote to 
 me that he was on his way to the Rocky Mountains to 
 seek his fortune. I have no doubt that he will find it. 
 
166 
 
 THE SUPERINTENDENTS SERVICE OF PLATE. 
 
 One morning after a large number of soldiers had been 
 returned to duty, this letter without name, was found in 
 the Post-Office box at the store-room door. 
 
 Miss 
 
 These few imperfect lines are designed to express the grati- 
 tude of one of the many grateful hearts indebted to you, by the 
 mauy kind words and deeds you have bestowed on us, the sick 
 and wounded soldiers of this Hospital. 
 
 When in your presence we find it impossible to express our 
 thankfulness, and fearing that you may think us incapable of 
 appreciating your kindness, and in justice to our own hearts, I 
 have, with the approval of my comrades, resolved to try to com- 
 municate to you some little evidence of our regard. Though I 
 am confident my poor pen will not do our feelings justice still I 
 hope to be able to convince you that the soldiers sometimes 
 think of you and are not forgetful of your kindness. 
 
 The many expressions of sympathy and encouragement that 
 have dropped from your lips are treasured up and prized by us 
 with reverence and honorable pride. We know that to you we 
 are indebted for many of the comforts and good things we en- 
 joy here. Please accept this acknowledgment of our gratitude 
 with the assurance that if our prayers are answered, your jour- 
 ney of life will be one of uninterrupted happiness and prosperity, 
 and your final reward such as God only can bestow. 
 I am very respectfully 
 
 One of many soldiers. 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
The last few months of Hospital life were full of excite- 
 ment and toil. There was great rejoicing when the news 
 came that Richmond was fallen and the war ended. 
 Thunder and smoke ran at once round all the circle of the 
 forts, an improvised salute without orders ; and pistol- 
 cracking, shouts and music filled the air. The men 
 moved about in little squads, in marching time, singing 
 by snatches, "Rally round the Flag," and 
 
 % ' The star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, 
 O'er the land of the Free and Jeff Davis his grave." 
 
 Certain of the cripples hobbled out of the barracks, 
 turned southward and long and solemnly waved and 
 brandished their crutches in the air. It seemed to do 
 them good. At night the City was illuminated, and we 
 saw from the tower the long lines of buildings and the 
 great dome pricked out in light upon the dark-blue dis- 
 tance, and the red glare of the joy-fires reflected in the 
 sky. 
 
 Presently a large number of wounded men, the men 
 who had taken Richmond, came up on the steamers and 
 kept us very busy for a time. It was delightful to work 
 for these men. Their spirit was magnificent. The tide 
 
170 
 
 was at the full. The rush to break all bounds and get 
 home had not yet begun. — " You have left one foot for 
 the rebels?" " Oh yes, the rebels have got it, but then 
 you know Richmond's gone up." " It was your right 
 arm?" — "Yes, but the war is over and the country is 
 saved ; they might have had the other arm if they had 
 wanted it ;" — and, " So say we all of us !" half sang, half 
 shouted all the maimed men within hearing. The little 
 groups about the doors were always breaking into hurrahs 
 on the slightest occasion or allusion. 
 
 Very coldly on the thunder and the shouting fell the 
 dark April morning on which a vague rumor of the Tra- 
 gedy in the City crept through the camp like a deadly, 
 chilling fog. A trivial matter made the rumor known at 
 first. John came to the store-room to say that the 
 market wagons were turned back from the outer guard, 
 and the Special Diet supplies had not come ; that no milk- 
 carts or mail riders had got through ; that " something" 
 must have happened. By degrees, no one knew how or 
 whence, the story came ; a darker and darker version 
 every hour. We believed nothing, till the Surgeon in 
 Charge being well known, passed the guard as a medical 
 officer, went to Headquarters in the nearest town, and 
 after two or three hours delay, got back with authentic 
 information. 
 
 Hard work was a blessing in those cold and heavy 
 
171 
 
 hours ; all our expedients with reserves of canned meats 
 and soups were called into use ; no supplies came out for 
 a day or two ; every house and hut in the neighborhood 
 was surrounded and searched, and comers and goers were 
 sharply questioned. 
 
 How the sun shone and how loud the birds sang on 
 that Easter Sunday ! I remember the keen impression 
 made by little things. I can smell the lilacs now. In 
 intervals of work when we sat down to rest we sat with 
 folded hands looking at each other in silence. The men 
 came with streaming tears to ask for bits of crape and 
 ribbon to fasten on their sleeves. " It's with me, night 
 and day ;" they say, — " I can't sleep for thinking," — " If it 
 had been nxy own brother, "—and the roughest of all con- 
 traband women in the quarters, drawing the back of her 
 hand across her eyes, says — " Oh Missis ! I feel like as if 
 my own kin was gone." 
 
 On Easter Monday the Chaplain went to a meeting of 
 ministers of the District and the whole body waited on 
 Mr. Johnson at the Treasury Building. The President 
 replied with apparent emotion to the address and resolu- 
 tions, saying in closing ; "The American people need to 
 be educated to see that Treason is a Crime." 
 
 On the Funeral Day the chapel was crowded for the 
 solemn service. We had, unhappily, black shawls and 
 crape veils enough among us, and the pulpit and chancel 
 
172 
 
 were hung with the soft, dark folds. The men all wore 
 tokens of mourning. There was not a contraband hut 
 in all the fields between the Hospital and the City but had 
 its poor little rag of black above the door. 
 
 Homeward coining troops began to arrive in the neigh- 
 borhood. First came the Ninth Corps and spread their 
 tents just beyond our fields, and soon on every slope and 
 ridge about us lay the camps of Sherman and of the Army 
 of the Potomac, musical by day, smoky and twinkling by 
 night, picturesque always. From the tower top in the 
 twilight we saw low belts of smoke marking the outline 
 of " the watch fires of a thousand circling camps," and 
 all day long we heard the shouts and the brass-music. 
 Squads of sick men came in, hourly, from all the outlying 
 regiments, some in ambulance trains, some wearily creep- 
 ing up on foot ; — measles, chronic diarrhoea, typho-ma- 
 larial fever ; — men dragged about with their regiments, 
 some in the third week of fever, came in speechless or 
 wandering and died just after getting on a clean bed. 
 This was the ' grand march home.' 
 
 Convalescents from among these men and the men 
 from the camps thronged the store-room all day long. 
 The tower was a beacon ; one said to another — " Do you 
 see that ' cupalo' ? There's a sanitary up there" — and as 
 far as the stores held out they were gladly given to all, 
 the Hospital inmates of course having the first choice. 
 
173 
 
 " Sherman's men" were generally tall, loose-hung, hand- 
 some fellows, and wore the slouch hat and bit of feather. 
 The Eastern men wore the trimmer foraging cap and 
 were shorter and more compactly built. East and West 
 ' chaffed' each other now and then, but on the whole 
 there was very little friction and a great deal of brother- 
 hood. 
 
 The patients who came to us were many of them very 
 ill, thoroughly worn out ; we had scores of cases of ma- 
 lignant fever besides other camp diseases ; they came 
 weary, broken down, dusty, ragged, and what I never 
 saw before, barefoot. 
 
 This was the ' grand march home.' 
 
 It was a keen pleasure to supply these men with shirts, 
 socks, slippers for their travel-sore feet, tobacco, books, 
 anything. In the wards it was good to see the bright- 
 ness go up and down the lines of beds, following the 
 plentiful supplies of illustrated papers and magazines. — 
 "The Atlantic? Oh yes! I always used to read it." — 
 "Just let me see that Harper. My folks always took 
 that, but it's three years since I saw a copy." — " Dear me, 
 this is just what we all want to rest us." "Did you 
 really get those turkeys, boys, on the march to the sea ?" 
 "Oh no'm," they laughed. — "We had our marching 
 rations and were satisfied with them." 
 
 Up to the store-room one morning, among others crept 
 
174 
 
 W ., a Swiss from Wisconsin, meagre, shrivelled, and 
 
 ragged, and looking twenty years older than his age. He 
 came to see if he could get some blackberry syrup and 
 a handkerchief, pulling out a rag of what had been a 
 handkerchief once. " We were two brothers ;" this was 
 his little story; "I had no wife; he had a wife and 
 children. I said I could go better than he ; one must 
 go ; so I went. I have been marching I think almost 
 without rest for nearly a year, marching and fighting ; 
 hard and heavy marches they were. But it is over now ; 
 the country is safe, and perhaps I shall get well in Wis- 
 consin. — (Alas ! he would never get well.) At any rate 
 there is a God who takes care over (iiber) us all. At 
 Chattanooga I saw God. I had but heard of Him before ; 
 I shall see Him always, now." 
 
 The men did not like the Great Review. " They say 
 Grant means to march us through Pennsylvania avenue 
 with our trains, about fifty miles of 'em. There may be 
 people who like to see army trains ; I don't." It was 
 very warm ; two or three men came in with sunstroke 
 about that time ; one and all scolded about the Great 
 Review. But when the day came all wanted to go as 
 spectators at least, and the Hospital was half emptied of 
 men and officers. No one abused the furlough. There 
 was but little drunkenness or confusion among our own 
 men, and wonderfully little among the regiments lying 
 
175 
 
 about us. One provisional division made up of odd regi- 
 ments and bits of regiments was a noisy, uneasy, turbu- 
 lent throng. There was universal anxiety to break up 
 and get home, but the men showed more patience and 
 composure than many of their officers. 
 
 We mustered out and discharged constantly, and con- 
 stantly received new patients. We took in fourteen 
 hundred and ninety in the last fortnight of May, and 
 were obliged to care for them with make-shift ward- 
 masters and * emergency' cooks. Every one wanted to 
 go. Every one who had any claim to go was released at 
 once by the Surgeon in Charge, who was carefully just 
 and patient with those who went and those who stayed 
 behind. Order 116 from the Adjutant General's office, 
 mustering out all Veteran Reserves whose original regi- 
 ments had gone home, made great confusion and trouble. 
 It took every printer, every clerk from the office, every 
 cook but one, — head nurses, ward-masters, and commis- 
 sary sergeants. The only gleam of satisfaction was that 
 it took the latest store-room orderly, the third in ten days, 
 a dreadful boy who being sent into the next room to 
 weigh stores comes back with cheeks smeared with sweet- 
 meats and mouth crammed with cheese, and asks mum- 
 bling, " Whodgerwantdonethemeggs ?" and brings in notes 
 opening and reading them on the way and saying — " Oh ! 
 here's into you about the punch !" Office business had 
 
176 
 
 come nearly to a standstill, for the Surgeon in Charge, 
 though he wrote all day and all night, could no more 
 make out all the papers than the Superintendent could do 
 all the cooking, when " as much of 116 A. G. 0. as 
 relates to men of the Second Battalion," was rescinded. 
 Meantime more than half these men had gone or were 
 in process of going, and those who were obliged to 
 remain could hardly be appeased, believing themselves 
 victims of some injustice. 
 
 We had at this season plenty of fresh vegetables, the 
 sweetest and greenest of green peas, string beans, etc., 
 from the Hospital garden. Those who doubt the pos- 
 sibility of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers should see 
 the effect of this and other vegetables in the convalescent 
 wards. We had later, small fruits and peaches enough 
 for the more delicate men. The new store-room orderly, 
 the fourth in two weeks, having a bushel to pare and cut 
 up for dinner begins at nine o'clock and at eleven applies 
 for another man to help him. 
 
 In an interval of work we went over to some of the 
 field hospitals, and found the same old story ; measles, 
 chronic diarrhoea, typhoid fever and pork and beans ; 
 nothing else ; not even soft bread, — except in one place 
 where there was some yellow slush being shaken about 
 in a battered can in the smoke of the trench-fire ; this I 
 was told was "fariny." Three or four men in this hos- 
 
177 
 
 pital were very low. "Couldn't they send them to us or 
 to town?" "No; wanted them on the rolls." They 
 were off the rolls next morning. 
 
 In the last days of June came the circular from the 
 Sanitary Commission saying that its Field and Hospital 
 Relief service was finished, — written across in pencil — 
 
 For now the whole Round Table is dissolved, 
 
 The old order changes, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 
 
 Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
 
 Than this world dreams of. * * * 
 
 * * * Something ere the end, 
 
 Some work of noble note may yet be done 
 
 Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. 
 
 Transfers and discharges thinned out the Hospital 
 ranks. Two hundred and ninety men went in one day. 
 Ward-masters and cooks, 'emergency men,' disappeared 
 among them and it was very difficult to get through 
 the day's work for the sixty to a hundred Special 
 Diet patients on the returns in July. Volunteer labor 
 was never more needed. The men who remained in the 
 wards required more care and, owing to the general dis- 
 organization, got less from the regular sources than ever 
 before. Day by day we dissolved ; night by night the 
 camps about us vanished. The slopes of the near hills, 
 all twinkling and musical one evening, were on the next 
 
 almost savagely silent and lonely. 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 We saw now and then an ugly feature of the general 
 disbanding. Private S. after the most careful and tender 
 nursing was discharged one day and came back the next 
 night robbed of his pay, quite tipsy and with a new and 
 dishonorable wound in his arm. It was found that 
 another discharged man had carried with him besides his 
 Sanitary Commission comforts a beautiful saddle, a 
 Christmas present from the medical officers to the Sur- 
 geon in Charge. 
 
 Men with the noses 
 
 ' Peculiar to persons named Levy and Moses ' 
 
 hung about the camp waiting for their " friends." Regi- 
 mental officers wrote ignorant and injudicious notes to 
 their men, telling them they were ' musterd out 
 already and kneed n't stay a day longer in Hospital if 
 able to travil.' We were occasionally imposed on no 
 doubt in issuing articles from the store-room, in spite of 
 
 precautions on all sides, for old Mrs. B . came more 
 
 than once to report, with characteristic twitch of the nose, 
 that ' more of them destitute men were a wantin' packin' 
 boxes to send their things home.' All but a faithful few 
 shirked work and grumbled. These, though they will 
 not see these pages, I thank from my heart once more. 
 These few, surgeons, nurses and ward-masters worked, 
 weary but unfaltering, day and night and parted sadly at 
 
179 
 
 last, interchanging little trifles of remembrance and ' sor- 
 rowing most of all that they should see each other's faces 
 no more.' 
 
 The last of July the final order came ; " You are 
 directed to say how soon your Hospital can be emptied, 
 property packed and place turned over, etc." The 
 Surgeon in Charge, being a prodigious worker, answered : 
 " In ten days." Those ten days were very laborious. 
 The fatigues of all were aggravated by the intense heat. 
 Five weeks of torrid fervors day and night had ended in 
 a terrific wind-and-rain-storm, during which chimneys 
 crashed through the roofs and trees were violently twisted 
 out of the ground. Two or three priceless cool days 
 followed and then the terrible August heats set in again. 
 Early in that month the Sixteenth New York Heavy 
 Artillery encamped in our grove, very glad, poor fellows, 
 to come down from the bare and blazing ridge they had 
 been spread over, very glad to have the last letter-paper, 
 handkerchiefs and towels from the store-room and 
 expressing their acknowledgments in the usual manner, 
 through the band. 
 
 All the Hospital goods were packed and boxed, and 
 daily wagon-trains went down the hill carrying the 
 " property " to the City ; the last of the sick were taken 
 over — one man in his bed — to a City hospital, and in the 
 middle of August the quartermaster made his last inspect- 
 
180 
 
 ing tour, with a paper in his hand in which the fugi- 
 tive owners of the place asked that the Secretary of War 
 would " Restore the buildings, cause thorough repairs to 
 be made and pay a proper rent for the time they had 
 been occupied by the Government." 
 
 In the still, fresh summer dawn we drove for the last 
 time through the grove, down the long winding road to 
 the highway leading to the City. The camp was silent 
 and desolate, the store-room was empty and bare, the 
 wards were quartermaster's lumber. Behind us the 
 tower stood black against gray trailing clouds. Low 
 flights of birds went circling round and round it. Before 
 us the great dome showed spectral in the vapors of a 
 sunrise that struggled and did not shine. 
 
sag 
 
 r«<Oi-t 
 
 : a a (u 
 ••a — .9 
 
 
 
 
 t-<tO 
 
 g P.o y 
 
 7 S - * ' 
 
 — P 3 a 
 
 .-4 0* to 
 
 
 HtOnlS 
 
 
 «5 gi- 
 lls! 
 
 Iom a, 
 
 si 
 
 
 *IS* 3ass 
 
 55 CO "S 0*^3 SSs 
 
 
 SS 5 = 
 
 
(B) 
 
 .186- 
 
 Diet Return of Waed^ 
 
 Whole number of enlisted men ; sick, wounded, and attendants 
 
 Number eating in Mess Hall 
 
 Number taking their meals in bed, or in the ward 
 
 y/zS" Recapitulation by name and number of bed of all who have their food car- 
 ried to them ; I e. , do not eat in Mess Hall. 
 
 i:r.in-i..\« ihki's. 
 
 Those blank spaces will be Ailed dp from 
 time to time at these head-quarters with 
 the names of such articles as can be 
 afforded. When they are not filled up, 
 ward Medical Office's will confine themselves 
 entirely to the regular diets. 
 
 Acting Assist. Suegeon, U. S. A., 
 In charge of Ward. 
 
(C) 
 
 U. 8. Aemy Gen'l Hospital, 
 
 186 
 
 The Commissary Steward will issue for Special Diet 
 
 Beef, Onions, 
 
 Bread, Oysters, 
 
 Butter, Potatoes, 
 
 Chickens, Pickles, 
 
 Coffee, Rice, 
 
 Dried Fruit, Salt, 
 
 Milk, Soap, 
 
 Mutton, Sugar. 
 
(D) 
 
 COMMISSARY STEWARD'S EVENING REPORT. 
 
 186- 
 
 With this will bo returned the 
 order, or orders, upon which tho 
 purchases for tho day have been 
 made, with the exact amount 
 obtained, and price charged for 
 each article, noted thereon by 
 the seller. 
 
 Surgkon U. S. Voia., 
 In Chargo of Hospital. 
 
 Remaining at last report 
 
 Received 
 
 Total to bo accounted for ... , 
 
 To Diet Kitchen 
 
 '< Mess Hall Kitchen ... 
 
 ' ' Steward '8 Mess 
 
 " Women-nurses Mess . 
 
 " Clerk's Mess 
 
 " Laundry Moss 
 
 " Dispensary 
 
 Total issued . 
 Remaining. .. 
 
 Hospital Steward, U. S. A. 
 
(E-) 
 
 U. S. AKMY GENERAL HOSPITAL, 
 
 
 
 
 
 Va., 
 
 
 
 
 
 186—. 
 
 Messes. 
 
 
 Deliver to Hospital Steward 
 
 .„: u. s. a. 
 
 Butter, 
 
 
 
 Fish, Salt, 
 
 Mackerel, 
 
 Beets, 
 
 
 
 Herbs, 
 
 Oysters, 
 
 Carrots, 
 
 
 
 Kerosene Oil, 
 
 Onions, 
 
 Celery, 
 
 
 
 Lard, 
 
 Poultry, Dressed, 
 
 Cranberries, 
 
 
 
 Lamb, 
 
 Potatoes, 
 
 Cabbage, 
 
 
 
 Live Chickens, 
 
 Squash and Pumpkins. 
 
 Cheese, 
 
 
 
 Live Turkeys, 
 
 Turnips, 
 
 Eggs, 
 
 
 
 Mutton, 
 
 Veal. 
 
 Fish, Fresh, 
 
 
 
 
 
 And charge the 
 
 same 
 
 to 
 
 Hospital Fund, U. 
 Va. 
 
 S. Army General Hospita 
 
 Sukgeon U. S. Vols., 
 
 In charge of Hospital. 
 

 (F) 
 
 SPECIAL WET RETURN. 
 
 JESS" This form of Return will be used in special cases where the diet may re- 
 quire to be frequently varied, and to provide for immediate necessities. As soon 
 as possible the patient will be placed upon some one of the regular diets. This 
 form will also be used for all applications for milk punch, egg-nog, wine-whey, etc., 
 stating the dose, and frequency of administration. These returns must in all cases 
 be filled out as well as signed by the Medical Officer. 
 
 186- 
 
 Wabd. 
 
 BREAKFAST. 
 
 Acting Assist. Surgeon, U. S. A.