United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
“We presumed that you were taking that view of the matter, from
your course,” answered the Aide calmly. “I am not here to argue
the matter with you, but simply to direct you to consider yourself
under arrest. Charges are being prepared against you, to which I
will add specifications based on this interview. Good afternoon,
sir.” The Aide saluted stiffly and moved away, leaving the Surgeon
in a state of collapse at the prospect of what he had brought upon
himself by his injudicious contumacy. Mis Rachel was in that state
of wonderment that comes to pupils at seeing their teachers rebel
agains their own precepts. The Surgeon was too much engrossed in
his own affairs to pay farther heed to her. He tapped a bell.
“Orderly,” he said, to the soldier who responded, “conduct this
young woman to Dr. Denslow. Inform him that she is to be with us
as a nurse, and ask him to be kind enough to assign her suitable
quarters. Good afternoon, ma'am.”
In another office, much smaller and far less luxuriously furnished,
she found Dr. Denslow, a hazel-eyed, brown-bearded man of thirty,
whose shoulder-straps bore the modest bars of Captain. The reader
has already made his acquaintance. He received her with the pleasant,
manly sympathy for her sex, which had already made him one of the
most popular of family physicians in the city where he was practicing
at the outbreak of the war.
Rachel's depressed spirits rose again at his cordial reception.
“I am so busy,” he said, after a brief exchange of commonplaces,
“that I'll not have the time to give you much information this
afternoon as to your duties, and I know that you are so fatigued with
your journey and the heat that you will not care to do anything but
rest and refresh yourself. I will therefore show you immediately
to your quarters.”
“This will be your field of labor,” he said, as he led her down
the long aisle between rows of cots toward her room. “It's not a
cheerful one to contemplate at first. Human suffering is always
a depressing spectacle, and you will see here more of it and more
varied agony than you can find anywhere outside of an army hospital's
walls. But as the deed is so is the duty, and the glory of doing
it. To one who wants to serve God and his fellow-creatures--which
I take it is the highest form of religion--here is an opportunity
that he may bless God for giving him. Here he can earn a brighter
crown than is given them who die at the stake for opinion's sake.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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