y man need
have feared to own to the doing up of the bed linen and counterpanes,
and science had not discovered any mode of making a bed look more like a
packing box, than those in that model hospital.

What an impertinence a sick or wounded man was, in one of those nice,
square beds. He was almost certain to muss and toss it, and this must
have been a crowning calamity.

After the showman had shown all he cared to have me see. I sat talking
with the man I had come to visit, and he said, in a whisper:

"Are there lice in all the hospitals?"

"Lice? Why, certainly not." "Well, there are plenty of them here, and
they tell us they cannot be helped--that they have them in all the
hospitals. Look here!"

He turned down the nice counterpane, and there, in the blanket, the
disgusting creatures swarmed. I was shocked, and half rose, in the
impulse to make an outcry, but he warned me not to let any one know he
had told me, or it would be bad for him. I asked why he did not tell the
surgeon.

"He knows all about them, and says they cannot be helped."

"You have Sisters of Charity here; tell them."

"Oh, they never do anything in the ward but walk around and talk nice,
and pray with men who are going to die. They must know about them."

I walked around alone, and the show-man did not seem to like it, but I
talked with the men in the cots, put my hand under the cover, found feet
encrusted with the exudations of fever, until they were hard and dry as
a bit of kindling wood; hair full of dust from the battle-field, and not
one man who had been washed since being carried away from it; while
there were vermin in every bed.

The ward-master objected to my leaving a jar of jelly with my friend. It
would spoil the good order of the ward, and all delicacies were to be
given into the care of the Sisters. I found one of them who was quite
willing to take charge of anything I wished to leave, but was powerless
in the matter of vermin. It was the ward master's business to attend to
that. It was the business of the Sisters to look after the clothing when
it came from the laundry, put it in order, and give it out when wanted.

My failure to get a bed for the man in the fort by applying to those in
authority, made me feel that it would be useless to try that plan about
the vermin; and, in my perplexity, I turned to my old friend and
confidant, the public. To reach it, I wrote to the _New York Tribune_,
giving a very mild statement of