Then trust them amid shot and shell,
To His unfailing care;
And bow, submissive hearts, howe’er
The answer comes to Prayer.
A VISIT TO THE WARDS.
U. S. A. Hospital.
And so you really wish, dear C., to take that long-promised trip through the wards of our hospital? Most happy shall I be to escort you; and I promise, ere we start, to use every endeavor to prevent you from going any deeper than you wish into the “horrors of hospital life.” You shall not see an open wound if I can help it;—do not imagine that I have forgotten the effect upon you of the sight of that man’s arm the last time that you were here; and yet it was your own fault, for it was your expression of interest in him and his wound which led to the display; and we, hardened creatures that we have become, were not aware of your feelings till the harm was done. But put yourself under my guidance to-day, and I will pick out only the choice specimens. Yet no! I cannot do that exactly, for, in answer to a charge brought against me here a few days since, I have promised to select the worst cases—the morally worst cases, I mean,—in the hospital, to show my friends. What was the charge? you ask. Nothing very heinous, to be sure. A friend, to whom I have very often talked of the hospital and its inmates, said to one of our medical cadets, as we walked through the wards:
“Tell me, doctor, is a hospital really the paradise Miss —— represents it? Her soldiers are all perfectionists; they never quarrel, they never swear, they never drink, they never gamble; and more than this, they never get well; they are sure to die in some romantic way, with an interesting wife, mother, or sister, in the distance.”