True to their home training,our New England boys did their best to make it what it should be.With many,there was much reading of Testaments,humming over of favorite hymns,and looking at such books as I could cull from a miscellaneous library.Some lay idle,slept,or gossiped;yet,when I came to them for a quiet evening chat,they often talked freely and well of themselves;would blunder out some timid hope that their troubles might "do 'em good,and keep 'em stiddy;"would choke a little,as they said good night,and turned their faces to the wall to think of mother,wife,or home,these human ties seeming to be the most vital religion which they yet knew.I observed that some of them did not wear their caps on this day,though at other times they clung to them like Quakers;wearing them in bed,putting them on to read the paper,eat an apple,or write a letter,as if,like a new sort of Samson,their strength lay,not in their hair,but in their hats.Many read no novels,swore less,were more silent,orderly,and cheerful,as if the Lord were an invisible Wardmaster,who went his rounds but once a week,and must find all things at their best.I liked all this in the poor,rough boys,and could have found it in my heart to put down sponge and tea-pot,and preach a little sermon then and there,while homesickness and pain had made these natures soft,that some good seed might be cast therein,to blossom and bear fruit here or hereafter.
Regarding the admission of friends to nurse their sick,I can only say,it was not allowed at Hurlburly House;though one indomitable parent took my ward by storm,and held her position,in spite of doctors,matron,and Nurse Periwinkle.Though it was against the rules,though the culprit was an acid,frost-bitten female,though the young man would have done quite as well without her anxious fussiness,and the whole room-full been much more comfortable,there was something so irresistible in this persistent devotion,that no one had the heart to oust her from her post.She slept on the floor,without uttering a complaint;bore jokes somewhat of the rudest;fared scantily,though her basket was daily filled with luxuries for her boy;and tended that petulant personage with a never-failing patience beautiful to see.
I feel a glow of moral rectitude in saying this of her;for,though a perfect pelican to her young,she pecked and cackled (I don't know that pelicans usually express their emotions in that manner,)most obstreperously,when others invaded her premises;and led me a weary life,with "George's tea-rusks,""George's foot bath,""George's measles,"and "George's mother;"till after a sharp passage of arms and tongues with the matron,she wrathfully packed up her rusks,her son,and herself,and departed,in an ambulance,scolding to the very last.
This is the comic side of the matter.The serious one is harder to describe;for the presence,however brief,of relations and friends by the bedside of the dead or dying,is always a trial to the bystanders.They are not near enough to know how best to comfort,yet too near to turn their backs upon the sorrow that finds its only solace in listening to recitals of last words,breathed into nurse's ears,or receiving the tender legacies of love and longing bequeathed through them.
To me,the saddest sight I saw in that sad place,was the spectacle of a grey-haired father,sitting hour after hour by his son,dying from the poison of his wound.The old father,hale and hearty;the young son,past all help,though one could scarcely believe it;for the subtle fever,burning his strength away,flushed his cheeks with color,filled his eyes with lustre,and lent a mournful mockery of health to face and figure,making the poor lad comelier in death than in life.His bed was not in my ward;but I was often in and out,and for a day or two,the pair were much together,saying little,but looking much.The old man tried to busy himself with book or pen,that his presence might not be a burden;and once when he sat writing,to the anxious mother at home,doubtless,I saw the son's eyes fix upon his face,with a look of mingled resignation and regret,as if endeavoring to teach himself to say cheerfully the long good bye.And again,when the son slept,the father watched him as he had himself been watched;and though no feature of his grave countenance changed,the rough hand,smoothing the lock of hair upon the pillow,the bowed attitude of the grey head,were more pathetic than the loudest lamentations.The son died;and the father took home the pale relic of the life he gave,offering a little money to the nurse,as the only visible return it was in his power to make her;for though very grateful,he was poor.Of course,she did not take it,but found a richer compensation in the old man's earnest declaration:
"My boy couldn't have been better cared for if he'd been at home;and God will reward you for it,though I can't."My own experiences of this sort began when my first man died.He had scarcely been removed,when his wife came in.Her eye went straight to the well-known bed;it was empty;and feeling,yet not believing the hard truth,she cried out,with a look I never shall forget:
"Why,where's Emanuel?"
I had never seen her before,did not know her relationship to the man whom I had only nursed for a day,and was about to tell her he was gone,when McGee,the tender-hearted Irishman before mentioned,brushed by me with a cheerful-"It's shifted to a better bed he is,Mrs.Connel.Come out,dear,till I show ye;"and,taking her gently by the arm,he led her to the matron,who broke the heavy tidings to the wife,and comforted the widow.
Another day,running up to my room for a breath of fresh air and a five minutes rest after a disagreeable task,I found a stout young woman sitting on my bed,wearing the miserable look which I had learned to know by that time.Seeing her,reminded me that I had heard of some one's dying in the night,and his sister's arriving in the morning.This must be she,I thought.
