g extreme surprise at the modes of
treatment, and by lugubrious shakes of the head their idea of the
inevitably fatal result. While the kindly women, who, though already
overburdened, would take from the wards of the hospital enough of
convalescents or sick men to crowd their own homes, often thereby
saving lives,--always doing good,--these prowling women would manage
to convey their sense of the dreadful condition of hitherto
well-satisfied patients without ever suggesting a remedy. In one of
the large churches used for sick-wards in Newnan lay a young man from
Maryland, who had suffered the amputation of an arm. The wound had
been carefully bandaged, the arteries taken up, etc., but as
inflammation supervened the pain became almost unbearable, the poor
fellow moaned unceasingly. One night two old women visited the ward.
Afterward, upon making my last round, I found the young man above
mentioned so quiet that I did not disturb him. It so happened that Dr.
Merriweather, of Alabama, was in Newnan, in close attendance upon his
young son, who had received a most peculiar and apparently fatal
wound. He was shot through the liver. The wound, at all times
excessively painful, exuded bile. Whenever Dr. Merriweather wanted an
hour's rest I took my place at the bedside of the lad. Interest in the
case took me very frequently to the ward. Just before bedtime,
therefore, I returned to the side of young Merriweather to let his
father off for a while. Inquiring of the nurse as to the patient who
had been so restive, I learned that he had neither moved nor spoken.
Feeling uneasy, I walked over to the corner where he lay. At once I
heard a drip, drip, drip, and, calling for a light, soon discovered
that the bed and floor were bloody. Dr. Yates was called at once, but
too late. That dreadful meddler, the old woman visitor, had actually
dared to loosen the bandages, and the poor victim, feeling only
relief, had sunk tranquilly to his death.

The other was a heartless girl, who has, I feel sure, by this time
made a selfish, unloving wife to some poor man. Her lover, after the
battle of Franklin, was brought to the tent hospital, having lost a
leg and being wounded in the face. He confided to me the fact of his
engagement to "one of the prettiest and _peartest_ girls in
'Massissip,'" and begged me to write her of his condition, and, said
the poor fellow, "If she don't care about sticking to a fellow
murdered up like I am, I reckon I'll h