The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-08-28


was beside him with her exercising wand
HER FIRST EXPERIENCE.
The fourth and youngest woman collapsed
after a minute of ii. The peculiar odor.
that hot smell OF escaped vitality, so diff
ferent from the septic faint of disease,
smote her sensibiities in spite of her deter
mination the many-stranded sound of de-
spair, desperation, and dissolution, woven
into one indescribabe Groom. was too much
for her. She staggered: some one caught
her. One of her companions made a matter
of-fact sign TO a man to carry her out into
the air, merely saying: This is her nrst,
and she disappeared. But 1t was only Tor
d while. She came back, white and wet, but
indomitable, with her teeth set. and went
through it LIKE came near saying ike
man--for which, as man, ask pardon Oh
her humbly as | pass along.
Long afterwards / understood how the
presence of women in the field hospital put
some kind of restraint even upon the sur
geons, and made the assistants feel that
they could no longer relieve their emotions
with graceless bravado. They naturally felt
that these women were altogether too ex-
acting in their attention to unimportant de-
tails, and it was out of this feeling that there
grew something like an official opposition
to the presence of women at the front. But
l never heard this feeling expressed by the
wounded men. On the contrary, the arrival
of woman even to the dying man, was al
ways in some sense q restoration OF condl-
tionS that the necessary violence OF war
had abolished. Woman, certainly in her
noblest endeavors and the most chivalric
admiration in man. But in the hospital she
disengages herself from all her previous re-
lationS and with one sweep or superlaLlVe
strength throws away all the conventional
adjustments of the sexes and presents her-
self simply and unchangeably as an anger
OF mercy. No one but the wounded man
knows how much softer her touch is, now
much more quickly and how unerringiy
she detects the pain and reads the aeSlre or
the distorted face. and how gratefully the
wrecked Enasculinity leans up against the
sympathy and unutterable pity of these
creatures who have no regimental colorS
and no emblazoned role of glory.
1t was not long before that novel with It's
load of misery began to soften us more more
thrown over the dsjecta membra, ana Dian-
kets somehow crept under and over the
men. The importunate tone of the sufferers
fell, as if bandages got upon their words as
well as upon their wounds. l shall never
forget the sensation as tin cup OF ICED
water was held to my lips. Its GOODNESS and
quenchnesS (pardon that homely term Tor
it) were somehow related in my mind TO the
woman herself, and never afterwards en-
out that association of her with a cool and
healing draught.
HOW THEY ENDURED 1T.
A great many of these nurses were Chris
tian women, whose great propulsion
through blood and fire was the unuttered
desire to do their masters work. Under
Sherman's command many Of them were
hooded Sisters, he having early in the con-
f1ict, before the Sanitary Commission or
ganized it's superb work, encountered an
other kind of woman, who wrote letters Of
complaint to the newspapers ana was an
noyingly garrulous and otf1ciouS. But these
Sisters never complained; never in any ex-
tremity of deprivation, or violence, or mis-
management oVerstepped the tactturn dis
erection and steadfast routine Of mercy they
had set for themselves. But of whatever
Sect those Of them who profeSSed a religion
of love had their relapseS at times, when
the feminine fiber gave way in secret and
they poured their hearts out in unavailing
tears at the pity of it all. Only the finest
organization is entitled to enter the lists
of these living martyrs, and it is only the
finest organization that must bear through
ii all the crown of thorns in her heart.
1 said to one of these women afterwards
stand it?' and she answered, ''Oh, We go
away and pray and weep where nobody can
see US but God" Thus they were invisibly
panoplied.
And here read over what I have writ
ten and see how colorless it is Something
always prevents one from pulling open the
physical alright, that leave monstrous
impression for which we have no words:
1t is as if, in the magnificent sophistry Of
war, we were forbidden by our very ma
lures to disclose the outrages and were I'M
able in the din to make the moral heroism
at all objective. We must carry a Salve in
our rhetoric as we carried it in our medical
stores
meant 10 nave tOlu NOW, III my SeCOHu
hospital experience, when the angel of mer-
cy was reaching down into a torn and
scarcely recognizable mass of humanity for
the spark of consciousness that remained,
shell burst through the roof and obliter-
ated both the nurse and the patient, and
how for moment, those of us who es-
capped and crawled out of the added wreck
had one common thought, which was
that those inhuman energies that man sets
in motion, smite at times with indiscrlmi-
nate irony all the puny efforts that man
brings up afterwards to remedy and cor
rect.
But what is the use? When man resorts
to brute force to demonstrate his higher
virtues or to convince his felIoW-man, no
summons agencies whose vast virulence he
can boast of, but whose effects upon the in
cividual he dare not write about.
Once the hospital was set on fire. Ev-
erything favored it's burning before we
could drag the mutilated but living, bodies
out. 1t was old and dry, and feStooned with
punches of inf1ammable hay high up among
It's rafters. The surgeons instruments were
scattered. Mercy itself seemed to receive a
sudden tnterdict and resolve itself into a
frenzy Of desperate fear. And always at the
best of times the provisions of mercy were
not as effective as the prompt and thunder
ing provisions of what was meant to be JUS
tice. / recall that there was always some
thing missing in the sudden emergency UNI
rescue. And by and by they grew to be a
part of the system. They were woman s
contribution to the war, and woman gener-
ally came with them. How much heroism
and patience and fortitude she lent to the
struggle, coming like a benson to offset
hardly been told in the official records. Why
should it be? War, for the most part, deals
with what has been called with true
medieval brutality. iron and blood"