ave very pleasant recollections of Marion, and of the elegant homes
where I was so delightfully entertained. But already love for my
chosen work had reached (so people told me) the height of infatuation.
Between me and every offered pleasure appeared the pale, reproachful
faces of the suffering soldiers. My place was beside them, and I
longed for the summons.

A letter from Dr. McAllister to his wife announced the establishment
of a hospital post in Ringgold, Georgia, but counselled our waiting
until "things could be straightened out." I _could not_ wait, so left
the same evening, arriving in time to organize my own department,
which, as the assistants had not been changed, and fell easily into
their places, was not so difficult as at Gainesville. Besides, we
received a fair supply of hospital stores, and were enabled to make
patients very comfortable.

CHAPTER IV.

RINGGOLD.

The hospitals established at Ringgold, Georgia, early in the fall of
1862, received the wounded and the not less serious cases of typhoid
fever, typhoid pneumonia, dysentery, and scurvy resulting from almost
unparalleled fatigue, exposure, and every kind of hardship incident to
Bragg's retreat from Kentucky. These sick men were no shirkers, but
soldiers brave and true, who, knowing their duty, had performed it
faithfully, until little remained to them but the patriot hearts
beating almost too feebly to keep soul and body together. The
court-house, one church, warehouses, stores, and hotels were converted
into hospitals. Row after row of beds filled every ward. Upon them lay
wrecks of humanity, pale as the dead, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks
and temples, long, claw-like hands. Oh, those poor, weak, nerveless
hands used to seem to me more pitiful than all; and when I remembered
all they had achieved and how they had lost their firm, sinewy
proportions, their strong grasp, my heart swelled with pity and with
passionate devotion. Often I felt as if I could have held these cold
hands to my heart for warmth, and given of my own warm blood to fill
those flaccid veins.

Every train brought in squads of just such poor fellows as I have
tried to describe. How well I remember them toiling painfully from the
depot to report at the surgeon's office, then, after being relieved of
their accoutrements, tottering with trembling limbs to the beds from
which, perhaps, they would never more arise. This hospital-post, as
nearly as I remember, comprise