"Well, sister, I have been in hospitals with sisters a great deal, and they never help to dress wounds. I thought you would not get leave to come. Would not like to." "I am not a sister, I am a mother; and that man had suffered enough. Oh, how dared you? how dared you to do such a thing?" I wrung my hands, and he trembled like a leaf, and said. "It was wrong, but I did not know. I never saw a sister before--" "I tell you I am no sister, and I cannot think whatever your sisters are good for." He promised to let me help him whenever it would save pain, and I returned to the dying man. The sun shone and birds sang. He stirred, opened his eyes, smiled to see me, and said. "It is a lovely morning, and I will soon be gone." I said, "Yes; the winter of your life is past; for you the reign of sorrow is over and gone; the spring time appears on the earth, and the time for the singing of birds has come; your immortal summer is close at hand; Christ, who loveth us, and has suffered for us, has prepared mansions of rest, for those who love him, and you are going soon." "Oh, yes; I know he will take me home, and provide for my wife and children when I am gone." "Then all is well with you!" He told me his name and residence, in Pittsburg, and I remembered that his parents lived our near neighbors when I was a child. So, more than ever, I regretted that I could not have made his passage through the dark valley one of less pain; but it was a comfort to his wife to know I had been with him. When he slept again, I got a slightly wounded man to sit by him and keep away the flies, while I went to distribute some delicacies brought to him by visitors, and which he would never need. At the door of Ward Three, a large man stood, and seemed to be an officer. I asked him if there were any patients in that ward who would need wine penado. He looked down at me, pleasantly, and said: "I think it very likely, madam, for it is a very bad ward." It was indeed a very bad ward, for a settled gloom lay upon the faces of the occupants, who suffered because the ward-master and entire set of nurses had recently been discharged, and new, incompetent men appointed in their places. As I passed down, turning from right to left, to give to such men as needed it the mild stimulant I had brought, I saw how sad and hopeless they were; only one man seemed inclined to talk, and he sat near the centre of the ward, while some one dressed his shoulder from which the arm had been carried away by a cannon ball. A group of men stood around him, talking of that strange amputation, and he was full of chat and cheerfulness. They called him Charlie; but my attention was quickly drawn to a young man, on a cot, close by, who was suffering torture from the awkwardness of a nurse who was dressing a large, flesh-wound on the outside of his right thigh. I set my bowl on the floor, caught the nurse's wrist, lifted his hand away, and said: