es,--a fashion of deriving aid and comfort
from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.

On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One
hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted
by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the
soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients;
and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are
carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another
has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a
weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound
and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write,
smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day,
and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray
coat,"--or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner
towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then,
Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into
them,"--or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that
unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as
"six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."

But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different
pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find
in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough
texture.

One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his
ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some
other bed:--"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if
money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he
has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and
tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in
the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and
he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became
inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly
breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses
took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed,
scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering
breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of
vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Des