“Well, Isaac,” I replied hesitatingly, “we fear you are.”
Then with all the strength of his poor skeleton body, he exclaimed, “O then, give me a drink of water that I may die easier. You know I am dying, so it can do no harm.”
Could I refuse a dying man a drink of water, even in the face of orders? He wanted “just a pint.” Watching my chance I went quickly to the cooler and brought a glass of cool water. With unnatural strength he raised himself and, reaching out for the glass, grasped it and swallowed the water with one great gulp. Then returning the empty glass he cried: “There, that was just half! O, give me the other half.” This I did, rather fearfully. After greedily drinking the water he dropped back with a sigh of relief, saying—“Now I can die easy.” I arranged quietly with my patients in the ward so that he could have water as long as he lived; but not many days after I found his empty cot.
The hospital, at that time, was little known, being quite obscured under the limitations of two conservative, retrogressive old doctors, who showed no favor or sympathy for the sick men, and seemed to see them only as probable “subjects.”
Many just protests from the kindly women workers were utterly disregarded by these doctors. Dr. Colton, a handsome young man then an interne, though not of age or yet graduated, found himself often between the “upper and nether millstones” of the urgency of volunteer workers, and the immovable, implacable heads of the hospital. Dr. Colton, now a successful retired physician, occupies a prominent position in this hospital which, in late years, is ranked among the very best of Brooklyn’s institutions.
Meanwhile the people grew tired of the continual demand for supplies, toward which the hospital contributed very little, though it drew regularly from the government “rations” in the form of thirty-seven cents per day for each man. Consequently public contributions became very meagre.
Then in the autumn came ninety-one sick and wounded soldiers, who stood—or dropped—on the grass plots surrounding the hospital while waiting to be enrolled. A procession of grey skeletons, they were ghastly, dirty, famished, with scarcely the semblance of men. One of them stared at me rather sharply and, seeing that I observed it, said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I haven’t seen a white woman before in many months, an’ it seems good to look at you.”
It became difficult to get proper food in the hospital for the men. Some of the volunteers, like myself, could still give their whole time and thought gratuitously, and we continued bringing supplies from our homes for special cases. My mother sent gallons of shell clam juice,—the most healing of all natural tonics when boiled in the shell,—which became popular in the hospital. My mother also invited companies of four or five convalescents at a time to “a good square meal,” when they always chose for their suppers, coffee, buckwheat cakes and sausages. Two gallons of batter would become hot cakes; and it took the combined help of the whole family and the cook to keep them supplied; but the hungry boys were at last satisfied and happy. I had no difficulty in obtaining passes for them, as they felt in honor bound to return promptly to the hospital.
One poor fellow, dying of typhoid, was so irritable and profane to the ignorant, heartless men-nurses of the hospital, that they would not care for him during the night. Realizing that the end was near, and feeling certain that he would otherwise die alone, I decided one night to remain with him until his last breath. Just before he died, even while the pallor of death overspread his face, he struck at the nurse whom I had compelled to stay near to help him. At last the poor dying man gasped: “Lift me up higher! higher! higher!!” We raised the poor skeleton as high as we could reach,—and it was all over. His family refused his body, saying, “He was no good to us in life, why should we bury him?” It is not difficult to imagine that his home influences had been unfavorable to the development of moral character.
Clancy, then a fine looking, kindly policeman, had waited to take me home near morning, as he did on other occasions of this kind.