Among many incidents of his early army life, Allan Foote told me the following:
“I shall never forget his expression when my father gave his written consent to my enlistment in the army in April of ’61, as he handed it to me and said, while tears were running down his cheeks, ‘My son, do your duty, die if it must be, but never prove yourself a coward.’ We can hardly imagine at what cost that was given, and it is now a source of much satisfaction to me to know that God in His mercy so guided me while in the service that no action of mine has ever caused a pain to my father’s heart, and when I returned at the close of the war he seemed as proud of my scars as I was.”
John Sherman was a remarkable case of lost identity. He was eighteen years of age, six feet in height, with broad shoulders and a Washingtonian head, and seemed like some great prone statue as he lay perfectly helpless but for one hand,—a gentle fair-haired boy to whom we became much attached. He was evidently refined, and perfectly clear on religious and political subjects. Though without a wound he had been completely paralyzed by concussion caused by a cannon. He could take only infants’ food and drank milk, which was all the nourishment he could retain. The mystery was that he claimed to come from Cattaraugus County, N. Y., but when I wrote letters to every possible locality, nothing could be learned of such a boy; nor could the officers of his regiment trace him during this time. Some scamp who claimed to come from his town, was admitted through the carelessness of the hospital attendants, and so deceived the poor boy that he gave him ninety dollars army pay just received, to send home to his father. Of course the scamp was never heard of again. My theory is that he enlisted under an assumed name and town, and had, after the concussion, forgotten his real name and identity. He was sent to the Fifty-second Street hospital, where I saw him a year later, walking alone and quite well,—a finely developed physical form. Though he knew me, he held to his old statement. Later he was cruelly persuaded to ask for a discharge which left him homeless, with no refuge but the poor house.
Soldiers’ homes were then unknown; and I fear that, at least for a while, he was cared for as a pauper. About this time I went to the “field work” and lost sight of him, though I have often wondered what his fate has been.
A miserably thin, gaunt boy, whom we knew as “Say,” came under my observation. He was never satisfied, though he ate enormously, and whenever we passed through his ward he invariably shouted: “Say! ye ain’t got no pie nor cake, nor cheese, nor nuthin’, hev ye?” When he reached home, his father, a farmer, sent to the hospital the largest cheese I ever saw. This the men all craved; but it was a luxury denied them by the doctors. Patients often had it smuggled in. One poor fellow was found dead, one morning, with a package of cheese under his pillow.
As the “L. I. C. H.” was a city hospital, emergency and other cases were often brought in. A pathetic case was that of a little boy about six years old, who had been run over by a street car. As he lay, pale and mangled, awaiting the time to have his leg amputated, his mother, in broken English, crooned and mourned over the unconscious child, saying, “Ach, mine liddle poy, he will nefer run mit odder poys in the street and haf not any more good times.” I saw that the child would not live through the operation, and tried to comfort the poor mother while it was going on. When the mutilated, stark little form was returned to her, her grief knew no bounds, though she still believed he would revive.
In another ward poor Isaac was slowly dying of dysentery, gasping for a drink of cool water, which the rules of the profession at that day denied to such patients. Day after day he lay helpless, while a large water cooler dripped constantly day and night before his feverish eyes and parched body.
One day he called to me and said: “Won’t you please sit on my cot so I can rest my knees against your back? They are so tired and I can’t hold them up,”—poor fleshless bones that had no weight. Somewhat relieved while I sat there he went on: “Now, Miss Smith, you think I am dying, don’t you?”
ADELAIDE W. SMITH, 1863