ned and comforted
them, and had spoonfuls of nourishment ready whenever they could be
swallowed. By the morning round of the surgeons, these men were ready to
be operated upon; and they were all saved.

It would have been easier work at a later period. Before many months
were over, the place was ready for any number to be received in peace
and quietness. Instead of being carried from one place to another,
because too many had been sent to one hospital and too few to another,
the poor fellows were borne in the shortest and easiest way from the
boat to their beds. They were found eager for cleanliness; and presently
they were clean accordingly, and lying on a good bed, between clean,
soft sheets. They did not come in scorbutic, like their predecessors;
and they had no reason to dread hospital gangrene or fever. Every floor
and every pane in the windows was clean; and the air came in pure from
the wide, empty corridors. There was a change of linen whenever it was
desired; and the shirts came back from the wash perfectly sweet and
fresh. The cleaning of the wards was done in the mornings, punctually,
quickly, quietly, and thoroughly. The doctors came round, attended by
a nurse who received the orders, and was afterwards steady in the
fulfilment of them. The tables of the medicines of the day were hung up
in the ward; and the nurse went round to administer them with her own
hand. Where she was, there was order and quietness all day, and the
orderlies were worth twice as much as before the women came. Their
manners were better; and they gave their minds more to their business.
The nurse found time to suit each patient who wished it with a book or a
newspaper, when gifts of that sort arrived from England. Kind visitors
sat by the beds to write letters for the patients, undertaking to see
the epistles forwarded to England. When the invalids became able to rise
for dinner, it was a turning-point in their case; and they were soon
getting into the apartment where there were games and books and meetings
of old comrades. As I have said before, those who died at these
hospitals were finally scarcely more than those who died in--not the
hospitals--but the barracks of the Guards at home.

What were the changes in organization needed to produce such a
regeneration as this?

They were such as must appear to Americans very simple and easy. The
wonder will be rather that they were necessary at last than that they
should have been effect