I left him and hurried over to our room, where I found M. busily employed, and hastened to take my share in the work. Just at this moment, as we were flying about in every direction, now here, now there, with a pad for one, a basin and sponge to wet wounds for another, cologne for a third, and milk punch for a fourth, I felt Dick (our hospital dog, my faithful friend and ally, a four-footed Vidocq, in his mode of scenting out grievances,) seize my dress in his teeth, pull it hard, and look eagerly up in my face. “What is it, Dick? I am too busy to attend to you just now.” Another hard pull, and a beseeching look in his eyes. “Presently, my fine fellow! presently. Gettysburg men must come first.”
He wags his tail furiously, and still pulls my dress. Does he mean that he wants me for one of them? Perhaps so. “Come, Dick, I’ll go with you.” He starts off delighted, leads me to the ward where those worst wounded have been placed, travels the whole length of it to the upper corner, where lies a man apparently badly wounded, and crying like a child. I had seen him brought in on a stretcher, but in the confusion had not noticed where he had been taken. Dick halted, as we arrived at the bed, looked at me, as much as to say, “There, isn’t that a case requiring attention?” and then, as though quite satisfied to resign him into my hands, trotted quietly off.
I stood a moment to take an observation—to make a sort of moral diagnosis before beginning my attack—to find out whether the man needed direct or indirect sympathy. Very often, to a severely wounded man—not of a nervous temperament, but suffering intensely,—a kind word, showing that you appreciate and enter into that suffering, falls on the burning wound with a soothing, cooling power, as beneficial, for the instant, as a more visible application; on the wound, I say, for the answer is, after a few minutes’ conversation, not, “Thank you, I feel better able to bear the pain, now;” but, “Thank you, my arm doesn’t burn as much as it did—my limb isn’t so painful—my head feels cooler, now.” But, on the other hand, who that has suffered from unstrung nerves does not know that what is most needed in such a case, is to divert the mind from itself—to present suddenly some other image powerful enough to efface from it the impressions of its own wretched self—to enable it to rouse itself and rise above the weakness it is ashamed of, but has no power to conquer? Any allusion to the suffering itself, in such a case, only adds fuel to the flame.
I had time to draw my own conclusions, and soon decided that Dick’s protegé belonged to this latter class. He did not notice my approach; I therefore stood watching him for a little while. His arm and hand, from which the bandage had partially slipped, were terribly swollen; the wound was in the wrist, (or rather, as I afterwards found, the ball had entered the palm of his hand and had come out at his wrist,) and appeared to be, as it subsequently proved, a very severe one.
My boast that I could make a pretty good conjecture what State a man came from by looking at him, did not avail me here. I was utterly at fault. His fair, Saxon face, so far as I could judge of it as he lay sobbing on his pillow, had something feminine—almost childlike—in the innocence and gentleness of its expression; and my first thought was one which has constantly recurred on closer acquaintance, “How utterly unfit for a soldier!” He wanted the quick, nervous energy of the New Englander, who, even when badly wounded, rarely fails to betray his origin; he had none of the rough off-hand dash of our Western brothers, and could never have had it, even in health; nor yet the stolidity of our Pennsylvania Germans. No! it was clear that I must wait till he chose to enlighten me as to his home. After a few minutes’ study, I was convinced that his tears were not from the pain of his wound; there was no contraction of the brow, no tension of the muscles, no quivering of the frame; he seemed simply very weary, very languid, like a tired child, and I resolved to act accordingly.
“I have been so busy with our defenders, this afternoon,” said I, “that I have had no time to come and thank you.”
He started, raised his tear-stained face, and said, with a wondering air, “To thank me? For what?”
“For what?” said I; “haven’t you been keeping the rebels away from us? Don’t you know that if it hadn’t been for you and many like you, we might at this moment have been flying from our homes, and General Lee and his men occupying our city? You don’t seem to know how grateful we are to you—we feel as though we could never do enough for our brave Gettysburg men to return what they have done for us.”
This seemed quite a novel idea, and the tears were stopped to muse upon it.
“We tried to do our duty, ma’am, I know that.”