The father fell in a swoon; the young mother, pale and shaking as with an ague, yet held her mutilated babe through all the examination and the surgical operations which followed. For two weeks it seemed as if the child must die, but she did not, and soon, unconscious of her disfigurement, began to play and smile. All pitied the unfortunate father when, after some time allowed him through sympathy with his misfortune, it became necessary for him to return to the front. He had borne an excellent record, but now broke down utterly, declaring he could not leave his child. The young wife, putting down with a strong hand her own sorrow, actually set herself to rouse her husband to a sense of duty, and succeeded; I was present at the depot when the brave, girlish wife waved to the soldier a smiling farewell, and afterwards witnessed her vain efforts to suppress the short, sharp screams of agony which had been kept under as long as her husband needed to be upheld, but which after his departure convulsed her at intervals for hours.
There are two women against whom, during and since the war, I held and still hold a grudge. One was of that class of women who undervalue and strive to undo all the good done by others; who hold opinions and views which they absolutely insist upon carrying out regardless of consequences.
During the whole four years of the war I was annoyed by these would-be directresses of hospitals. They would intrude themselves into my wards, where they hesitated not to air their superior knowledge of all sickness, to inspire discomfort and distrust in the patients by expressive gestures, revealing extreme surprise at the modes of treatment, and by lugubrious shakes of the head their idea of the inevitably fatal result. While the kindly women, who, though already overburdened, would take from the wards of the hospital enough of convalescents or sick men to crowd their own homes, often thereby saving lives,—always doing good,—these prowling women would manage to convey their sense of the dreadful condition of hitherto well-satisfied patients without ever suggesting a remedy. In one of the large churches used for sick-wards in Newnan lay a young man from Maryland, who had suffered the amputation of an arm. The wound had been carefully bandaged, the arteries taken up, etc., but as inflammation supervened the pain became almost unbearable, the poor fellow moaned unceasingly. One night two old women visited the ward. Afterward, upon making my last round, I found the young man above mentioned so quiet that I did not disturb him. It so happened that Dr. Merriweather, of Alabama, was in Newnan, in close attendance upon his young son, who had received a most peculiar and apparently fatal wound. He was shot through the liver. The wound, at all times excessively painful, exuded bile. Whenever Dr. Merriweather wanted an hour's rest I took my place at the bedside of the lad. Interest in the case took me very frequently to the ward. Just before bedtime, therefore, I returned to the side of young Merriweather to let his father off for a while. Inquiring of the nurse as to the patient who had been so restive, I learned that he had neither moved nor spoken. Feeling uneasy, I walked over to the corner where he lay. At once I heard a drip, drip, drip, and, calling for a light, soon discovered that the bed and floor were bloody. Dr. Yates was called at once, but too late. That dreadful meddler, the old woman visitor, had actually dared to loosen the bandages, and the poor victim, feeling only relief, had sunk tranquilly to his death.
The other was a heartless girl, who has, I feel sure, by this time made a selfish, unloving wife to some poor man. Her lover, after the battle of Franklin, was brought to the tent hospital, having lost a leg and being wounded in the face. He confided to me the fact of his engagement to "one of the prettiest and peartest girls in 'Massissip,'" and begged me to write her of his condition, and, said the poor fellow, "If she don't care about sticking to a fellow murdered up like I am, I reckon I'll have to let her off" (this with a sigh). Then, with a brighter look, "Maybe she'll stick, anyhow." How he watched for the answer to that letter! His restlessness was pitiful to see. I tried to help him by reading to him and by relating to him instances of women who only loved more because the object of their affection had been unfortunate. Among other things, I told him of the noble English girl who wrote to her mangled lover that she still loved and would marry him "if there was enough of his body left to contain his soul." Afterward I felt sorry that I had encouraged him to hope, for it was my misfortune to read to him a very cold letter from his lady-love, who declined to marry "a cripple." She wanted a husband who could support her, and as some man who lived near was "mighty fond of her company and could give her a good home," she reckoned she would take his offer under consideration.
For a few days my poor young friend was inconsolable; but one morning I found him singing. "I've been thinking over that matter," said he, "and I reckon I've had a lucky escape. That trifling girl would never have made me a good, faithful wife." From that day he seemed to have recovered his cheerfulness. I have never forgiven that faithless girl.
All over the South, wherever "pain and anguish wrung the brow" of their defenders, women became "ministering angels."
Even those who had been bereft of their own suppressed their tears, stifled the cry of bleeding hearts, and, by unwearied attention to living sufferers, strove to honor their dead. Self-abnegation was, during the war, a word of meaning intense and real. Its spirit had its dwelling-place in the souls of faithful women, looked out from the bright eyes of young girls, whose tender feet were newly set in a thorny pathway, as well as from the pale, stricken faces of those whose hearts the thorn had pierced.
Among the tender and true women with whom I have corresponded since the war is the mother of Colonel Robadeaux Wheat, the noble Louisianian who fell at Gaines's Mill. I have several of her letters by me, written in the tremulous hand of one who had passed her seventy-ninth birthday, but glowing with love for the cause, and fondest pride in the sons who died in its defence. It is touching to see how she clings to and cherishes the record, given by his companions in arms, of "Robadeux's" last hours on earth, when, in the early morning, before going forth to battle, his heart seemed to return to the simple faith of his boyhood, and, gathering his subordinate officers around him in his tent; he read reverently the service of prayer which committed himself and them to the protection of the God of battles. Mrs. Wheat's letters are, I think, among the most beautiful and touching I ever read, yet sprightly and interesting. Believing that all my readers will feel an interest in the mother of glorious "Bob Wheat," I will here transcribe a small portion. In one letter she says,—
"I am, thank God, in excellent health for one aged seventy-eight. My husband was born in this city (Washington, D.C.) in the year one, he says.
"We shall soon celebrate the fifty-ninth anniversary of our marriage, and he is deeply engaged upon some 'post-nuptial lines' for me."