“ONE OF THEM LEES”
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
There was little conversation carried on, no necessity for introductions, and no names ever asked or given. This indifference to personality was a peculiarity strongly exhibited in hospitals; for after nursing a sick or wounded patient for months, he has often left without any curiosity as regarded my name, my whereabouts, or indeed anything connected with me. A case in point was related by a friend. When the daughter of our general had devoted much time and care to a sick man in one of the hospitals, he seemed to feel so little gratitude for the attention paid him that her companion to rouse him told him that Miss Lee was his nurse. “Lee, Lee?” he said. “There are some Lees down in Mississippi who keeps a tavern there. Is she one of them Lees?”
Almost of the same style, although a little worse, was the remark of one sick, poor fellow who had been wounded in the head and who, though sensible enough ordinarily, would feel the effect of the sun on his brain when exposed to its influence. After advising him to wear a wet paper doubled into the crown of his hat, more from a desire to show some interest in him than from any belief in its efficacy, I paused at the door long enough to hear him ask the ward-master, “who that was?”
“Why, that is the matron of the hospital; she gives you all the food you eat, and attends to things.”
“Well,” said he, “I always did think this government was a confounded sell, and now I am sure of it, when they put such a little fool to manage such a big hospital as this.”