Here, for instance, in this one ward, were as many as fifty patients, in every stage of wounds, fever and suffering; so nervous, so restless, so excitable, as not to be able to bear a ray of light, or a sound of noise; yet exposed to the bright flaring of the gas-burners; to the irrepressible groans, tossings and complainings of their companions; and to the necessary movements of the doctors, nurses and assistants. Think of that you who, when you have a nervous headache, cannot bear the light of a taper, or the fall of a footstep in your room at night. Where silence, stillness and darkness seemed the very necessary conditions of life, these sufferers had only noise, hurry and glare. And this was quite inevitable in the crowded wards. And from these causes alone delirium and death must have often ensued but for the benign influence of opium. The nurses administered it pure, or in combination with such other medicines as each case might require. And then the restless, irritable sufferers ceased to disturb themselves and others with their tossings and groanings; and with their wounds dressed, their heads cooled, and their nerves quieted, lay under their smoothly straightened white counterpanes in perfect repose. And now that the patients were quiet, the nurses also were still, and the gas was turned low. And peace descended like a blessing on the place. As Elfie sat beside her patient, and looked down along the lines of white beds, with their calm occupants, she thought that there was something of Heaven in the aspect of the scene. While she so looked, she observed in the farthest corner of the room, near the last bed on the opposite side, a group gathered. She saw that this group consisted of a surgeon, a chaplain and a nurse. Presently the chaplain knelt by the bed, and began to pray in a low tone, audible only to the patient on the bed, and the people who stood around it. In a few minutes the chaplain arose, stood silently by the patient for awhile, and then, with the surgeon, left the ward. And the nurse drew the sheet up over the face of the dead. And though all passed so quietly, Elfie knew that a soldier’s soul had departed. Some twenty minutes passed away, and then four men came in at the lower door, with a bier, upon which they placed the mattress with the dead man, and carried him out. And all this was accomplished silently, without disturbing the other patients in the ward. The nurse, when her duties to the dead were done, came softly stepping up to Elfie’s side. “Some poor fellow has gone to his rest. Who was it?” inquired Elfie. “Poor young Carnes, the boy in whom Miss Rosenthal was so much interested. We have been expecting his death for many days. And now he is gone. He passed away perfectly conscious and perfectly resigned. And he left his love, and his little pocket testament to Miss Rosenthal,” said the nurse. And then she went her way to her other duties. Tears stood in Elfie’s eyes.