have seen no mention in Southern papers of the
importation of cannon or any thing else, except in purposely blind
phrase as to time and place.

I returned to the hospital, feeling that my destinies were wrapped
up with it for a while yet. Here I witnessed an illustration of the
power of popular enthusiasm worthy of mention. A miserly old
gentleman, who had never been known, it was said, to do a generous
act, and who had thrown off all appeals for aid to ordinary
benevolent causes with an imperative negative, was so overcome by
the popular breeze in favor of the soldiers, that he came into the
hospital with a roll of bank-bills in his hand, and passing from cot
to cot gave each wounded man a five-dollar bill, repeating, with a
spasmodic jerk of his head and a forced smile, "Make yourself
comfortable; make yourself comfortable, my good fellow." I am afraid
he, poor fellow, did not feel very comfortable, as his money was
screwed out of him by the power of public opinion.

The Surgeon-general, a man as noble in private life as distinguished
in his profession, asked me to take charge of a hospital at Selma,
one hundred and eighty miles up the Alabama river, under the
direction of Dr. W.P. Reese, post-surgeon; and on the 21st of April
I left for that place, with twenty-three wounded men under my care.
We reached the town the next day, my men improved by the river
transit. Here we were again met by carriages, in readiness to convey
the wounded to a hospital, fitted up in a large Female Seminary
building, admirably adapted for the purpose, with spacious rooms,
high ceilings, and well ventilated. One wing of this building,
containing a large music-room, was appropriated to my charge. The
sick men of a regiment organizing there, occupied another part of
the building. The school, like so many others in the South, was
scattered by the war.

Here again we were burdened with kindness from the ladies. Wines,
jellies, strawberries, cakes, flowers, were always abundant, served
by beautiful women, with the most bewitching smiles. I had been so
long cut off from refined female society, that I appreciated most
profoundly their kind attentions. So intent were they upon
contributing to the comfort of the men who had been wounded in
protecting their homes, as they regarded it, that they brought a
piano into my ward, and the young ladies vied with each other in
delectating us with the Marseillaise, Dixie, and like patriotic
songs, intersp