He wags his tail furiously, and still pulls my dress. Does he mean that he wants me for one of them? Perhaps so. “Come, Dick, I’ll go with you.” He starts off delighted, leads me to the ward where those worst wounded have been placed, travels the whole length of it to the upper corner, where lies a man apparently badly wounded, and crying like a child. I had seen him brought in on a stretcher, but in the confusion had not noticed where he had been taken. Dick halted, as we arrived at the bed, looked at me, as much as to say, “There, isn’t that a case requiring attention?” and then, as though quite satisfied to resign him into my hands, trotted quietly off. I stood a moment to take an observation--to make a sort of moral diagnosis before beginning my attack--to find out whether the man needed direct or indirect sympathy. Very often, to a severely wounded man--not of a nervous temperament, but suffering intensely,--a kind word, showing that you appreciate and enter into that suffering, falls on the burning wound with a soothing, cooling power, as beneficial, for the instant, as a more visible application; on the wound, I say, for the answer is, after a few minutes’ conversation, not, “Thank you, I feel better able to bear the pain, now;” but, “Thank you, my arm doesn’t burn as much as it did--my limb isn’t so painful--my head feels cooler, now.” But, on the other hand, who that has suffered from unstrung nerves does not know that what is most needed in such a case, is to divert the mind from itself--to present suddenly some other image powerful enough to efface from it the impressions of its own wretched self--to enable it to rouse itself and rise above the weakness it is ashamed of, but has no power to conquer? Any allusion to the suffering itself, in such a case, only adds fuel to the flame. I had time to draw my own conclusions, and soon decided that Dick’s protegé belonged to this latter class. He did not notice my approach; I therefore stood watching him for a little while. His arm and hand, from which the bandage had partially slipped, were terribly swollen; the wound was in the wrist, (or rather, as I afterwards found, the ball had entered the palm of his hand and had come out at his wrist,) and appeared to be, as it subsequently proved, a very severe one.