The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-01-23

OUTSIDE, burning up nall dozen slices
by way of preliminaries, and looking,
when she brought the crispy cinders to
me, with her Characteristic It's done
done missis y as if she had strewn ashes
on her head for her ill-luck. dropped
an egg into boiling water, cooking it
slightly, and laid it on the toast, but
tering the whole economically for the
sake of the sick mans stomach, and
then took it to his cot
A hundred pairs of eyes had been
watching these preparations, and as |
set the tin cup of tea and tin plate of
toast on the camp-stool, | received a
score OF orders from neighborng beds
! for some tea and toast, Just like that
ERE Crowding his knapsack and pill
low behind him, propped up the
| forty-fve-year-old boy to whose I'M
certain appetite | was catering, and in
vited him to taste his special Diet
AS he tasted, sickly smile distorted
his thin, CHASTITY face, which was sue
ceeded by fit of weeping, his tears
! literally mingling with his drink. Is
it good?' | asked. Oh-proper-
goodl-iest-like -what-my wife -
makesl' with the drawl of long sickness
and great weakness.
I" | had got into business. TEA
tea tea! with white sugar and milk
in i'll! was the cry that came up from
every bed. / undertook to make the
tea by the wholesale in the inevitable
camp-kettle in which soldiers make
tea, coffee, soup, and cook everything.
But no. they would have it from my
homespun teapot as one of them
called it. n't-let-that-'er old
teapot-o'yourn-git played - out -
before ou-git-to-me-p said a
Missourian at the farther end of the
hospital. l explained to him that there
was no play out to the teapot; that l
had alcohol and tea enough to keep it
in active operation for weeks-and be
then waited patiently for his turn.
For nearly three days | made tea
for all who wanted tin that three
pint teapot over an alcohol lamp. 1t
came out from this service as good as
new. And when party of nine of US
went from Chicago across the Plains,
four years after, all the tea necessary
to our inspiriting was brewed in that
same army teapot. 1t still lives, and
does duty at midnight, when now and
then hard nights work can not be
avoided.
g had with me the condensed ex-
tract of beef and desiccated vegetables,
so that the soup-making was an easy
matter. Before dark, limited as were
the arrangements of my cuisine, every
man was made more comfortable, hap
pier and more hopeful than had seemed
possible in these forlorn quarters-eX-
cept, alas some seven who lay dying,
their wide-open eyes seeing only the
invisible-s!owly drifting, drifting out
on the great ocean of eternity. Three
of them died before morning, and were
buried in the side of the levee before |
got round to the hospital the following
day.
"The next day and the day after
were spent in about the same way, va
ried with letter-writing for the men.
AS badly off as they were themselves,
covered with the mud and filth of
months of sickness, neglected, I'M
nursed, unwashed, uncared-for as they
needed to be, they had little to say of
themselves. All their thoughts we're
of their little ones at home-some of
whom, not thinking of the harm they
were doing, poured out their magnified
little sorrows into the letters they wrote
their soldier relatives. They were
read and reread, and brooded over,
and then placed under the pillow to be
read again, until the sick mans fevered
Imagination peopled his waking, as
his sleeping hours, with phantoms of
horror.
I" If our men were brave on the field,
they were still Drawer in the hospital.
| can conceive that it may be easy to
! 70 1nath ha hattla Ha1I MI tba
pulses are maddened by the superhu-
man desire for victoY-when the roar
of artillery, the cheers of the officers,
the call of the bugles, the shout and
charge and rush impel to action and
deaden reflection. But to lie suffering
in hospital bed for months, cared for
as matter of routine and form, ones
name dropped, and one only known as
Number Ten Number Twenty or
Number Fifty with no companion
ship. no affection, none of the tender
assiduities of home nursing, heard
from irregularly and at rare intervals,
utterly alone in the midst of hundreds,
sick, in pain, sore-hearted and de-
pressed-I declare this requires more
courage to endure than to face the
most tragic death.
ON, the Cnrlst-llKe patience nave
seen in the hospital! Oh, the uncom-
planning endurance of soldiers who
have been reared as tenderly as girls
and who were just from under their
mothers wing! In every hospital
there were these silent heroes, whose
gentle patience and accomplishing for
titude glorifed the rough wards. Every
woman nurse, every matron, every
Sister of Mercy who did duty beside
the beds of our sick and wounded dur
ing the war, carries in her heart tender
memories of them which sanctify the
otherwise horrible associations of army
life"
IsCONSUMPTION INCURABLE?-Rea