I secured a can of cooked turkey, the only one I ever saw, and a pitcher of hot water, and with these made a substitute for chicken broth; gave them all drinks of water, bathed their faces, found one of their absent nurses, made him promise to stay, and went back to the main building to have some one see that he kept his word. Here was a large floor almost covered with wounded, and among them a woman stumbled about weeping, wailing, boo-hooing and wringing her hands; I caught her wrist, and said: "What _is_ the matter?" "Oh! oh! oh! Boo-hoo! boo-hoo! the poor fellow is goin' to die an' wants me to write to his mother." "Well, write to her and keep quiet! you need not kill all the rest of them because he is going to die." "Oh! boo-hoo! some people has no feelin's; but I have got feelin's!" I led her to the surgeon in charge, who sent her and her "feelin's" to her quarters, and told her not to come back. She was the only one of the Dix' nurses I saw in Fredericksburg, and her large, flat, flabby face was almost hideous with its lack of eye-brows and lashes; but this hideousness must have been her recommendation, as she could not have been more than twenty years old. From the engine house I went to the Methodist church. Miss Hancock had been detailed to the General Hospital, just being established, and I found a house full of men in a sad condition. Nine o'clock, on a hot morning, and no wounds dressed; bandages dry and hard, men thirsty and feverish, nurses out watching that stream pouring through the city, and patients helpless and despondent. I got a basin of water and a clean rag, never cared for sponges, and went from one to another, dripping water in behind those bandages to ease the torment of lint splints, brought drinks and talked to call their attention from the indefinite dread which filled the air, and got up considerable interest in--I do not remember what--but something which set them to talking. Some wounds I dressed, and while engaged on one, a man called from the other side of the house to know what the fun was all about, when the man whose wound I was attending placed a hand on each of his sides, screamed with laughter, and replied: "Oh, Jim! do get her to dress your wound, for I swear, she'd make a dead man laugh!" I found some of the nurses; a surgeon came in who would, I thought, attend to them, and I went back to my post to find every man on duty. It was near sundown when we heard that this backward movement was a "change of base;" but to me it seemed more like looking for a base, as there had been none to change. The stream thickened toward nightfall, and continued until two o'clock next morning; so that our army was twenty-four hours passing through Fredericksburg; and in that time I do not think a man strayed off on to any other street! All poured down that side street, turned that corner, and went on down Princess Ann. CHAPTER LXXIII. PRAYERS ENOUGH AND TO SPARE.