The Rising of the Tide: The Story of SabinsportTarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
General
The Rising of the Tide: The Story of Sabinsport
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
The feat over which Nancy crowed most, to which she was always coming
back, was the Water Works. She always capitalized the words: "You can
imagine, Father dear, how we've been handicapped for water. After our
first week we never gave our patients a drink that had not been boiled
at the house. We hired a stout peasant woman--there were no men to be
had--to carry it--two buckets full on an ox-yoke! She followed us from
place to place. We did our best to make the sick understand how
dangerous it was to drink the dreadful water used in Valievo. We didn't
succeed very well, though some of them would do almost anything to
please us. When we took over the old church we were put to it for water
at first. It had to be carried for nearly a mile. Then, oh, Happy Day,
Dr. Helen and I made up our minds there must be water above us
somewhere and we'd find it and pipe it down. We found a perfectly good,
bubbling spring, grown about with willows. We paid the owner of the
land his price for the water and I, Father, _I_, your spoiled, useless
daughter, stood over three crippled Serbians while they cleaned and
walled that spring and I, _I_ taught them how to make a trough of
boards to bring it to the house. At least I began by making myself a
joint of the wooden trough we used to see at home and when they
understood they made something far better. Now it flows, cold and sweet
and clear into the sanitarium. I'm just crazy over it."
Nothing stirred Dick or alarmed Reuben Cowder more than the long fight
with typhus, which began late in the year in Serbia--and lasted through
the winter. It was not at first realized that the peculiar form of the
disease which ravaged the country was carried by body lice, but where
it was known, the war on the pests which the unit had always waged took
on a fury and an ingenuity worthy of the enemy. It was war, war, war.
The girls shaved, sulphurized and burned from morning until night. They
isolated the incoming, they so frightened their patients by their
horror at a single beastie that it came to be a shame and a crime to be
caught with one. And they conquered. And with the conquest typhus
slowly retired from every spot in which they ruled. Nancy was jubilant.
"We've met the enemy and they are ours. We have a new National Anthem
and we sing it daily. Don't tell it to the Sabinsport Woman's Club. It
would swoon with shock--but, oh Father, if you'd seen what we have
seen--if you had known the cause and if you had labored and sweat day
and night for weeks to remove that cause, you would understand why we
sing what we do. The words came to us from the Berry unit over the
mountain where they, too, have fought and won--indeed from them we
learned the danger and the way to meet it. Now take our National Anthem
straight, Father:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account