And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday she was by his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.
Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:—"Oh! God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs, they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.
No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,—and yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son, mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,—or your lover, girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,—or your husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your tears.
"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,—you can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but the officers must care for the living,—"let the dead bury their dead"; and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying, suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the inquiries:—"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown, Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.
"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in number, have been regularly received.
"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign, before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."
In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry records.
"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrhœa. She was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get something that tasted like home,—some good tea, for instance, which she could make herself, and which would be better than that of the hospital,—she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and, like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a confiding, innocent way,—more, evidently, because it was uppermost in her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,—that her means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,—for he can't eat this strong food,—but the prices are so high that I can't buy them, and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks, 'he won't—be so well.'
"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'—'really she hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.
"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.