Antislavery movements -- United States; Swisshelm, Jane Grey Cannon, 1815-1884; Women's rights -- United States
She wrung her hands, bowed over her knees, in a paroxysm of tears, then
raised herself, threw back her head, and exclaimed. "But oh! boys dear,
wouldn't I rather you were where you are this night, than that you had
thrown down your guns and run!"
CHAPTER LXIV.
TWO KINDS OF APPRECIATION.
Looking down the long vista of memory, to the many faces turned to me
from beds of pain, I find few to which I can attach a name, and one I
seem never to have looked upon but once. It is a long, sallow face,
surmounted by bushy, yellow hair; it has a clear, oval outline, and
straight nose, brown eyes and a down of young manhood on the wasted,
trembling lips; I knew it then, as the face of a fever patient, but not
one to whom I had rendered any special service, and felt surprised when
the trembling lips said, in a pitiful, pleading way.
"We boys has been a talkin' about you!"
"Have you, my dear--and what have you boys been saying about me?"
"We've jist been a sayin' that good many ladies has been kind to us, but
none uv 'em ever loved us but you!"
"Well, my dear, I do not know how it is with the other ladies, but I am
sure I do love you very, very dearly! You do not know half how much I
love you."
"Oh, yes, we do! yes, we do! we know 'at you don't take care uv us
'cause it's your juty! you jist do it 'cause you love to!"
"That is it exactly--just because I love to, and because I want you to
get well and go to your mothers."
"Yes! but the boys says you don't care about 'em when they get well."
"They do not need to have me care for them when they are well."
"Oh, yes, they do! yes, they do! an' if that's the way you're a goin' to
serve me, I'll stay sick a long time."
When hospital stores came to me so fast that there was great trouble in
getting them wisely distributed, Campbell lent me an ambulance to go
around, see where they were needed, and supply as many as I could. I had
a letter from an old Pittsburg neighbor, asking me to see his brother in
Douglas Hospital, and went in an ambulance well supplied with jellies
and fruit.
Douglas Hospital was an institution of which the city was proud. It had
much finer buildings than any other in the city, occupied the finest
residence block in the city, and had a wide reputation for grandeur and
beauty and superb management. I found the halls and rooms quite as
elegant as I had any reason to expect, but was surprised to find that
elegance undisturbed by the presence of sick or wounded men. In one back
room a wounded officer looked lonely, and they said there were other
rooms used for sick soldiers, but all I saw were parlors, reception
rooms, offices and sleeping apartments for surgeons, and the Lady
Abbess, with her attendant Sisters of Mercy or Charity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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