"Miss Blank is jes' wild fer ye, and says fly round right away.
They's comin' in, I tell yer, heaps on 'em--one was took out dead,
and I see him,--hi! warn't he a goner!"

With which cheerful intelligence the imp scuttled away, singing
like a blackbird, and I followed, feeling that Richard was not
himself again, and wouldn't be for a long time to come.

The first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that
ever assaulted the human nose, and took it by storm. Cologne,
with its seven and seventy evil savors, was a posy-bed to it; and
the worst of this affliction was, every one had assured me that
it was a chronic weakness of all hospitals, and I must bear it. I
did, armed with lavender water, with which I so besprinkled
myself and premises, that, like my friend Sairy, I was soon known
among my patients as "the nurse with the bottle." Having been run
over by three excited surgeons, bumped against by migratory coal-
hods, water-pails, and small boys, nearly scalded by an avalanche
of newly-filled tea-pots, and hopelessly entangled in a knot of
colored sisters coming to wash, I progressed by slow stages up
stairs and down, till the main hall was reached, and I paused to
take breath and a survey. There they were! "our brave boys," as
the papers justly call them, for cowards could hardly have been
so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have
borne suffering for which we have no name, with an uncomplaining
fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother. In
they came, some on stretchers, some in men's arms, some feebly
staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and
still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be
recorded before they carried him away to the dead house. All was