And if not that, there was the sight of the three men in this dim, subterranean hospital so much more terribly wounded than I. I could only think of myself as having been fortunate. A doctor had looked at my wounded arm, murmured something to the orderly, shaken his head discouragingly. But I remembered that I had not only escaped thus far with my life but had the further good fortune of having a clean, healthy body to fight for me--for my life and possibly--I didn’t go farther than to think it out that way--possibly I might not have to lose my arm. To add to my optimism I soon began to know the first experiences of a transposition from hell to heaven. From the hell of the dirt and grime, disease, vermin and death of the trenches to the heaven of the sweet peace and tenderness that sick men feel under the gentle ministrations of noble women. They were wonderfully expert in cutting away and stripping my mud-soaked and rotted uniform and other clothing from my body. I hardly felt a pang when they lifted and snipped away the cloth from the sleeve of my burned left arm and cleansed the wound of my long-tortured and smashed right hand and forearm. I could almost smile when, having washed my torn mouth, they further cleansed it with antiseptics that stung cruelly. With these same rapid, clever hands they rubbed my body from head to feet with anti-frost grease and I grinned as after that they rolled me up in cotton wool, just as if I were some big, foolish sort of a doll to be boxed and sold at Christmas. I continued to grin, for after that they made a Teddy Bear of me, pulling over the cotton-wool thick, full length woolen tights and a big, stuffy woolen Jersey. One of the nurses was a young woman with blue eyes--just the sort of blue eyes I had thought of when I was lying in fever out in the mud-hole; the other a middle-aged woman of serene deportment. The young nurse, catching me grinning, smiled back at me, but the older nurse looked puzzled. “What in the world,” she said in her cool, even voice, “can that young rascal find to laugh at in such a time as this?” “Isn’t it splendid,” said the young nurse, “that he can laugh?” And she nodded toward me with a knowing smile and--bless my soul! what, crazy irresponsibilities our emotions are! I suddenly found my eyes filled with tears. She came back to me a few seconds later with a glass of hot milk which I had perforce to drink through a tube and, thank the Lord, she made no notice of my wet eyes.