Every morning the Richmond ladies brought for our patients such luxuries as could be procured in that scarce time. The city was in peril, and distant farmers feared to bring in their fruits and vegetables. One day a patient-looking, middle-aged man said to me, "What would I not give for a bowl of chicken broth like my mother used to give me when I was a sick boy?" I perceived one of the angelic matrons of Richmond at a distance, stooping over the cots, and found my way to her and said, "Dear Mrs. Maben, have you a chicken? And could you send some broth to No. 39?" She promised, and I returned with her promise to the poor, wounded fellow. He shook his head. "To-morrow will be too late," he said. I had forgotten the circumstance next day, but at noon I happened to look toward cot No. 39, and there was Mrs. Maben herself. She had brought the chicken broth in a pretty china bowl, with napkin and silver spoon, and was feeding my doubting Thomas, to his great satisfaction. It was at this hospital, I have reason to believe, that the little story originated, which was deemed good enough to be claimed by other hospitals, of the young girl who approached a sick man with a pan of water in her hand and a towel over her arm. "Mayn't I wash your face?" said the girl, timidly. "Well, lady, you may if you want to," said the man, wearily. "It has been washed fourteen times this morning. It can stand another time, I reckon." I discovered that I had not succeeded, despite many efforts, in winning Miss Deborah. I learned that she was affronted because I had not shared my offerings of jelly and fruit with her, for her special patients. Whenever I ventured to ask a loan from her, of a pan or a glass of water, or the little things of which we never had enough, she would reply, "I must keep them for the nurses who understand reciprocity. Reciprocity is the rule some persons never seem to comprehend." When this was hammered into my slow perception, I rose to the occasion. I turned over the entire contents of a basket the landlord of the Spotswood had given me to Miss Deborah, and she made my path straight before me ever afterward. At the end of a week the matron had promoted me. Instead of carving the fat bacon, to be served with corn bread, for the hospital dinner, or standing between two rough men to keep away the flies, or fetching water, or spreading sheets on cots, I was assigned to regular duty with one patient. The first of these proved to be a young Colonel Coppens, of my husband's brigade. I could comfort him very little, for he was wounded past recovery. I spoke little French, and could only try to keep him, as far as possible, from annoyance. To my great relief, place was found for him in a private family. There he soon died--the gallant fellow I had admired on his horse a few months before.