from my refuge behind piles of one-sleeved shirts, odd socks,
bandages and lint; put basin, sponge, towels, and a block of
brown soap into my hands, with these appalling directions:

"Come, my dear, begin to wash as fast as you can. Tell them to
take off socks, coats and shirts, scrub them well, put on clean
shirts, and the attendants will finish them off, and lay them in
bed."

If she had requested me to shave them all, or dance a hornpipe on
the stove funnel, I should have been less staggered; but to scrub
some dozen lords of creation at a moment's notice, was
really--really--. However, there was no time for nonsense, and,
having resolved when I came to do everything I was bid, I drowned
my scruples in my wash-bowl, clutched my soap manfully, and,
assuming a business-like air, made a dab at the first dirty
specimen I saw, bent on performing my task vi et armis if
necessary. I chanced to light on a withered old Irishman, wounded
in the head, which caused that portion of his frame to be
tastefully laid out like a garden, the bandages being the walks,
his hair the shrubbery. He was so overpowered by the honor of
having a lady wash him, as he expressed it, that he did nothing
but roll up his eyes, and bless me, in an irresistible style
which was too much for my sense of the ludicrous; so we laughed
together, and when I knelt down to take off his shoes, he
"flopped" also, and wouldn't hear of my touching "them dirty
craters. May your bed above be aisy darlin', for the day's work
ye ar doon!--Whoosh! there ye are, and bedad, it's hard tellin'
which is the dirtiest, the fut or the shoe." It was; and if he
hadn't been to the fore, I should have gone on pulling, under the