home, and provide for my wife and
children when I am gone."

"Then all is well with you!" He told me his name and residence, in
Pittsburg, and I remembered that his parents lived our near neighbors
when I was a child. So, more than ever, I regretted that I could not
have made his passage through the dark valley one of less pain; but it
was a comfort to his wife to know I had been with him.

When he slept again, I got a slightly wounded man to sit by him and keep
away the flies, while I went to distribute some delicacies brought to
him by visitors, and which he would never need.

At the door of Ward Three, a large man stood, and seemed to be an
officer. I asked him if there were any patients in that ward who would
need wine penado. He looked down at me, pleasantly, and said:

"I think it very likely, madam, for it is a very bad ward."

It was indeed a very bad ward, for a settled gloom lay upon the faces of
the occupants, who suffered because the ward-master and entire set of
nurses had recently been discharged, and new, incompetent men appointed
in their places.

As I passed down, turning from right to left, to give to such men as
needed it the mild stimulant I had brought, I saw how sad and hopeless
they were; only one man seemed inclined to talk, and he sat near the
centre of the ward, while some one dressed his shoulder from which the
arm had been carried away by a cannon ball. A group of men stood around
him, talking of that strange amputation, and he was full of chat and
cheerfulness.

They called him Charlie; but my attention was quickly drawn to a young
man, on a cot, close by, who was suffering torture from the awkwardness
of a nurse who was dressing a large, flesh-wound on the outside of his
right thigh.

I set my bowl on the floor, caught the nurse's wrist, lifted his hand
away, and said:

"Oh, stop! you are hurting that man! Let me do that!"

He replied, pleasantly,

"I'll be very glad to, for I'm a green hand!"

I took his place; saw the wounded flesh creep at the touch of cold
water, and said: "Cold water hurts you!"

"Yes ma'am; a little!"

"Then we must have some warm!" But nurse said there was none.

"No warm water?" I exclaimed, as I drew back and looked at him, in blank
astonishment.

"No, ma'am! there's no warm water!"

"How many wounded men have you in this hospital?"

"Well, about seven hundred, I believe."

"About seven hundred wounded men, and no warm water! So none of th