“What makes you so unhappy?”
“Oh, it’s just a miserable toothache that I have.”
“Is that all? Well then, Doctor, you are only a bicusped after all.”
“Be garry, it’s right ye are,” he laughed.
Mrs. Mayhew, a lady of much refinement, possessed a sweet soprano voice, and a few of us formed a chapel quartette. The singing was greatly enjoyed by the convalescents, especially as we took care to select good old time choruses in which they joined heartily. Planed planks on logs made tolerable seats, and a rough platform and a desk, lighted at night with lamps or candles, completed the arrangements of the great square room of unplaned boards, where, as Miss Nye remarked, we sometimes literally “sat under the drippings of the sanctuary.”
Many evenings while resting from the fatigue of the day we sat outside the Maine Agency tent and sang army and other patriotic songs. Mrs. Mayhew with her rare sweet voice led the singing, and the chorus followed in our favorite songs of “Picking the Lint,” “Tenting To-night,” “We Shall Meet but We Shall Miss Him,” “Star Spangled Banner,” “Home, Sweet Home.” The latter, however, caused many stealthy tears among the listening patients, so we often closed with something cheerful like “Yankee Doodle” or “John Brown’s Body,” etc. Owing to the quiet of the great hospital after dark the singing could be heard all over camp.
I was urged to take charge of the 2nd corps’ diet kitchen in the absence of Miss Hancock, which meant to direct the soldier cooks, see to supplies, regulate hours and kitchen diet, etc., for four hundred convalescents.
Late one morning the head cook came to me saying, “It’s time to begin dinner, and we have nothing but one little shoulder of lamb. The Commissary has not sent any meat or vegetables. What shall we do?”
This was a dilemma certainly. Four hundred hungry men must somehow be fed. All through the army at every camp, I believe, a temporary oven was set up during the halts, and excellent fresh bread was served daily. The government also supplied the very best of coffee, but this was not dinner. One must be equal to any emergency in the army. Telling the cook to get out his large cauldron and put into it the little allowance of meat to boil, I took an orderly with a wheelbarrow, and started on a forage among the agencies.
At Maine I begged some fresh vegetables. Ohio gave some canned meat, Indiana onions, New Jersey more canned goods. I sent the orderly with these to the cook, directing that everything be put into the cauldrons. We got another barrow load from the Pennsylvania, the Christian and the Sanitary Commissions. This miscellaneous collection, when cooked and well seasoned, made “the best stew we ever ate,” said the satisfied four hundred.