d suffering. The perfume of natures does not usually come
forth without bruising. She determined to go to Washington and offer
herself as a nurse at the hospital for soldiers. After much official
red tape, she found herself in the midst of scores of maimed and
dying, just brought from the defeat at Fredericksburg. She says:
"Round the great stove was gathered the dreariest group I ever
saw,--ragged, gaunt, and pale, mud to the knees, with bloody bandages
untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in blankets, coats
being lost or useless, and all wearing that disheartened look which
proclaimed defeat more plainly than any telegram, of the Burnside
blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them. I yearned
to serve the dreariest of them all.

"Presently there came an order, 'Tell them to take off socks, coats,
and shirts; scrub them well, put on clean shirts, and the attendants
will finish them off, and lay them in bed.'

"I chanced to light on a withered old Irishman," she says, "wounded in
the head, which caused that portion of his frame to be tastefully
laid out like a garden, the bandages being the walks, and his hair the
shrubbery. He was so overpowered by the honor of having a lady wash
him, as he expressed it, that he did nothing but roll up his eyes and
bless me, in an irresistible style which was too much for my sense of
the ludicrous, so we laughed together; and when I knelt down to take
off his shoes, he wouldn't hear of my touching 'them dirty craters.'
Some of them took the performance like sleepy children, leaning their
tired heads against me as I worked; others looked grimly scandalized,
and several of the roughest colored like bashful girls."

When food was brought, she fed one of the badly wounded men, and
offered the same help to his neighbor. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, "I
don't think I'll ever eat again, for I'm shot in the stomach. But I'd
like a drink of water, if you ain't too busy."

"I rushed away," she says; "but the water pails were gone to be
refilled, and it was some time before they reappeared. I did not
forget my patient, meanwhile, and, with the first mugful, hurried back
to him. He seemed asleep; but something in the tired white face
caused me to listen at his lips for a breath. None came. I touched his
forehead; it was cold; and then I knew that, while he waited, a better
nurse than I had given him a cooler draught, and healed him with a
touch. I laid the sheet ove