Well! why be depressed? There may not after all be any actual difference between weeds and herbs.
After that first day improvements rapidly progressed. Better stoves, and plenty of them, were put up; closets enclosed; china or its substitutes, pottery and tin, supplied. I learned to make requisitions and to use my power. The coffee, tea, milk, and all other luxuries provided for the sick wards, were, through my demand, turned over to me; also a co-laborer with Jim, that young gentleman’s disposition proving to be like my old horse, who pulled well and steadily in single harness, but when tried in double team, left all the hard work to the last comer. However, honor to whom honor is due. He gave me many hints which my higher intelligence had overlooked, comprehended by him more through instinct than reason, and was as clever at gathering trophies for my kitchen as Gen. Butler was—for other purposes.
Dissolved Partnership with Jim.
Still my office did not rise above that of chief cook, for I dared not leave my kitchen unattended for a moment, till Dr. M., one day, passing the window, and seeing me seated on a low bench peeling potatoes, appeared much surprised, and inquired where my cooks were. Explanations followed, a copy of hospital rules were sent for, and authority found to provide the matron’s department with suitable attendants. A gentle, sweet-tempered lady, extremely neat and efficient, was appointed assistant matron, also three or four cooks and bakers. Jim and his companion were degraded into drawers of water and hewers of wood; that is to say, these ought to have been their duties, but their occupation became walking gentlemen. On assuming their out-door labors, their allegiance to me ceased, and the trophies which formerly swelled my list of dainties for the sick were nightly carried “down the hill,” where everything that was missed disappeared.
Explanations.
Then began the routine of hospital life in regular order. Breakfast at seven in the morning in summer and eight in winter. Coffee, tea, milk, bread of various kinds, and butter or molasses, and whatever meats could be saved from the yesterday’s dinner. This was in the first year of the war. Afterwards we were not able to be so luxurious. The quantity supplied would be impartially divided among the wards with the retention of the delicacies for the very ill men.
The ward-masters with their nurses gathered three times a day, for each meal, around my office window adjoining the kitchen, with large wooden trays and piles of plates, waiting to receive the food, each being helped in turn to a fair division. If an invalid craved any particular dish the nurse mentioned the want, and if not contrary to the surgeon’s order, it, or its nearest approximation was allowed him.
Routine.
After breakfast the assistant surgeons visited their respective wards, making out their diet lists, or rather filling them up, for the forms were printed, and only the invalid’s name, number of his bed, and his diet—light, half, or full, were required to be specified, also the quantity of whiskey desired for each. Dinner and supper served in the same way, except for the very sick. They had what they desired, in or out of season, and all seemed to object to the nutriment concocted from those tasteless and starchy compounds of wheat, corn and arrowroot, that are so thick and heavy to swallow, and so little nutritious. They were served hot from the fire, or congealed from the ice (for after the suffering caused from the deprivation of ice the first summer of the war was felt, each hospital built its own ice-house, which was well filled by the next season). At two o’clock the regular dinner of poultry, beef, ham, fish and vegetables, was distributed. (After the first year our bill of fare decreased much in variety.) Supper at six. The chief matron sat at her table, the diet lists arranged before her, each day, and managed so that no especial ward should invariably be the first served, although they were named in alphabetical order. Any necessary instructions of the surgeons were noted and attended to, sometimes accompanied with observations of her own, not always complimentary to those gentlemen, nor prudent as regarded herself.
Mr. Jones’ Views.