Out on the water! Is’t harbor at last;
Are “the waves of this troublesome world” safely passed?
We pray, through That Spar, that the soul hath made Port—
That, out on the water, The Cross was Support.
THE RETURN TO THE REGIMENT.
A bright, sunshiny week. Moral sunshine, I mean; for like St. Peter’s, at Rome, our hospital may be said to have “an atmosphere of its own”—our brightness or dulness being in a great measure dependent upon the state of our patients. Deaths, or very severe cases of illness, naturally have their effect in casting a shadow on everything around; but at present, most fortunately, we have nothing of the kind; and our principal grief (though in a very mild form) has been from the daily partings caused by the return of our men to their regiments; which, from some unknown cause, seems to have been the sole business of the last few days. The “Hegira” has been going on steadily through the whole week, and we have been busily occupied in helping to stow treasures into impossible spaces in knapsacks, slipping in some little contribution of our own, to call up, perhaps, a smile of surprise when opened far from here; in putting up lunches for the travellers—for it has happened that some of our brave boys have fainted on the way from exhaustion produced by delay in getting their meals; therefore, by the surgeon’s orders, they are always provided when they start—and finally, in bidding them “Goodbye, and God speed!”
This returning to regiments has amounted to an epidemic this week; the contagion is spreading rapidly, and it is very plain that Dame Example has, in this case, been exerting herself for good. She has taken some of our chronic cases by the hand, lifted them out of bed, and made them feel that effort and firm resolve will do more for them than yielding to the languor of a slow convalescence. One may ask, “Is it, then, at the option of the men, when they shall return to their regiments?”
“Most certainly not.”