“Your hair is so heavy,” said I; “we’ll take some of that off and bathe your head, and that will relieve it.” “Oh! no, ma’am; no, thank you; I don’t want it off.” “Why not? It would be much cooler, and do you good.” “Why, I’ll soon be well, and it looks so pretty when it’s fixed!” The time has come, since then, when I have quite agreed with David; those curls do look very “pretty, when they’re fixed;” and I am glad he pleaded for them so innocently. Let no one ever say that vanity is confined to the breast of woman; the result of close observation has convinced me that it lives and thrives with tenfold greater power in man; and this little proof of it, just uttered with so much simplicity, only confirms a preconceived opinion. I do not, however, confide these views to my new friend, but advising him to keep perfectly still, I say goodbye, for the present, and pass on. As I hurry down the ward, I am struck by the expression of utter contentment and quiet, on a strange face--one of the new men, evidently; as I come up to the bed where he is lying, he seems to me to be actually _purring_ with satisfaction. “You look as if you were comfortable, my friend,” said I, “even though you are not very clean.” “Oh! the blessing of this bed. If you could know, ma’am, what it was to have been marching twenty miles, whether you could or not, again and again, you’d soon feel what it was to be put on a bed and let to stay there. Like the South, ma’am, I just want ‘to be let alone;’ I don’t the least care whether I’m clean or dirty--I’m lying quiet, and I am happy.” “Well, after a bath and clean clothes, which they are giving the men as rapidly as possible, you shall lie as still as you please; but I am afraid that must come first.” “Don’t think, ma’am,” said he, laughing, “that I object to either of those things; they’ve not been too plenty where we were, but I just feel now as if I never wanted to move again.” “I can easily understand your feeling; enjoy your quiet as long as they will let you, and I will bring you some supper, later.” I left him and hurried over to our room, where I found M. busily employed, and hastened to take my share in the work. Just at this moment, as we were flying about in every direction, now here, now there, with a pad for one, a basin and sponge to wet wounds for another, cologne for a third, and milk punch for a fourth, I felt Dick (our hospital dog, my faithful friend and ally, a four-footed Vidocq, in his mode of scenting out grievances,) seize my dress in his teeth, pull it hard, and look eagerly up in my face. “What is it, Dick? I am too busy to attend to you just now.” Another hard pull, and a beseeching look in his eyes. “Presently, my fine fellow! presently. Gettysburg men must come first.”