I am free to confess that I had a realizing sense of the fact
that my hospital bed was not a bed of roses just then, or the
prospect before me one of unmingled rapture. My three days'
experiences had begun with a death, and, owing to the defalcation
of another nurse, a somewhat abrupt plunge into the
superintendence of a ward containing forty beds, where I spent my
shining hours washing faces, serving rations, giving medicine,
and sitting in a very hard chair, with pneumonia on one side,
diphtheria on the other, five typhoids on the opposite, and a
dozen dilapidated patriots, hopping, lying, and lounging about,
all staring more or less at the new "nuss," who suffered untold
agonies, but concealed them under as matronly an aspect as a
spinster could assume, and blundered through her trying labors
with a Spartan firmness, which I hope they appreciated, but am
afraid they didn't. Having a taste for "ghastliness," I had
rather longed for the wounded to arrive, for rheumatism wasn't
heroic, neither was liver complaint, or measles; even fever had
lost its charms since "bathing burning brows" had been used up in
romances, real and ideal; but when I peeped into the dusky street
lined with what I at first had innocently called market carts,
now unloading their sad freight at our door, I recalled sundry
reminiscences I had heard from nurses of longer standing, my
ardor experienced a sudden chill, and I indulged in a most
unpatriotic wish that I was safe at home again, with a quiet day
before me, and no necessity for being hustled up, as if I were a
hen and had only to hop off my roost, give my plumage a peck, and
be ready for action. A second bang at the door sent this recreant
desire to the right about, as a little woolly head popped in, and
Joey, (a six years' old contraband,) announced--