ce
for me; for although I got nearly seven hundred dollars by entering the
service as a substitute for an editor,--whose pen, I presume, was
mightier than his sword,--I was disagreeably surprised by being hastily
forwarded to the front under a foxy young lieutenant, who brutally shot
down a poor devil in the streets of Baltimore for attempting to desert.
At this point I began to make use of my medical skill, for I did not in
the least degree fancy being shot, either because of deserting or of not
deserting. It happened, therefore, that a day or two later, while in
Washington, I was seized in the street with a fit, which perfectly
imposed upon the officer in charge, and caused him to leave me at the
Douglas Hospital. Here I found it necessary to perform fits about twice
a week; and as there were several real epileptics in the wards I had a
capital chance of studying their symptoms, which finally I learned to
imitate with the utmost cleverness.

I soon got to know three or four men, who, like myself, were personally
averse to bullets, and who were simulating other forms of disease with
more or less success. One of them suffered with rheumatism of the back,
and walked about bent like an old man; another, who had been to the
front, was palsied in the left arm; and a third kept open an ulcer on
the leg, by rubbing in a little antimonial ointment, which I sold him at
five dollars a box, and bought at fifty cents.

A change in the hospital staff brought all of us to grief. The new
surgeon was a quiet, gentlemanly person, with pleasant blue eyes and
clearly cut features, and a way of looking you through without saying
much. I felt so safe myself that I watched his procedures with just that
kind of enjoyment which one clever man takes in seeing another at work.

The first inspection settled two of us, "Another back case," said the
ward surgeon to his senior.

"Back hurt you?" says the latter, mildly.

"Yes, sir; run over by a howitzer; ain't never been straight since."

"A howitzer!" says the surgeon. "Lean forward, my man, so as to touch
the floor,--so. That will do." Then, turning to his aid, he said,
"Prepare this man's discharge papers."

"His discharge, sir?"

"Yes, I said that. Who's next?"

"Thank you, sir," groaned the man with the back. "How soon, sir, do you
think it will be?"

"Ah, not less than a month," replied the surgeon, and passed on.

Now as it was unpleasant to be bent like a letter V, and as the