ound to
rectify it by admitting a corps of lady nurses. He was bombarded by Miss
Dix's official power, pestered by the persistant appeals of volunteers;
sneered and scoffed at and worried, until he fell back on his old
position, and promptly dismissed me so soon as my patients were out of
danger. He was always courteous to me as a visiter, and has my lasting
gratitude and respect for breaking his rules and bearing the persecution
he did, that I might do the work I did, and could not have done without
his effective and generous co-operation.

The proportion of thigh stumps saved, was the test of a hospital's
success; and the summer I was in Campbell, we saved nineteen out of
twenty; next summer Chaplain Gaylord told me they lost nineteen in
twenty, and added: "Piemia has literally swept our wards."

CHAPTER LXV.

LIFE AND DEATH.

When released from the hospital, I had neither money nor clothes, and
this is all the account I can render to the generous people who sent me
hospital stores. I could not answer their letters. Some of them I never
read. I could only give up my life to distributing their bounty, and
knew that neither their money nor my own had remained in my hands when
it was necessary for me to borrow two dollars to get a dress. My cloth
traveling suit was no longer fit for use, and my platform suit too good.
These were all I had brought to Washington; but the best men never
refused me audience because I wore a shaker bonnet, a black lawn skirt
and gray linen sack. Some thought I dressed in that way to be odd, but
it was all I could afford.

The Quarter-Master-General had canceled my appointment, because I had
not reported for duty, but Secretary Stanton reinstated me, and I went
to work on the largest salary I had ever received--fifty dollars a
month. After some time it was raised to sixty, and I was more than
independent; but my health was so broken that half a dozen doctors
commanded me to lie on my back for a month, and I spent every moment I
could in that position.

I had grown hysterical, and twice while at work in the office, broke out
into passionate weeping, while thinking of something in my hospital
experience, something I had borne, when it occurred, without a tear, or
even without feeling a desire to weep.

In September I had twenty days' leave of absence to go to St. Cloud,
settle my business and bring my household gods. There were still no
railroads in Minnesota, and I was six days g