y bread, composed of saw-dust and saleratus; butter, salt as
if churned by Lot's wife; stewed blackberries, so much like preserved
cockroaches, that only those devoid of imagination could partake
thereof with relish; coffee, mild and muddy; tea, three dried
huckleberry leaves to a quart of water--flavored with lime--also
animated and unconscious of any approach to clearness. Variety being
the spice of life, a small pinch of the article would have been
appreciated by the hungry, hard-working sisterhood, one of whom, though
accustomed to plain fare, soon found herself reduced to bread and
water; having an inborn repugnance to the fat of the land, and the salt
of the earth.

Another peculiarity of these hospital meals was the rapidity with which
the edibles vanished, and the impossibility of getting a drop or crumb
after the usual time. At the first ring of the bell, a general stampede
took place; some twenty hungry souls rushed to the dining-room, swept
over the table like a swarm of locusts, and left no fragment for any
tardy creature who arrived fifteen minutes late. Thinking it of more
importance that the patients should be well and comfortably fed, I took
my time about my own meals for the first day or two after I came, but
was speedily enlightened by Isaac, the black waiter, who bore with me a
few times, and then informed me, looking as stern as fate:

"I say, mam, ef you comes so late you can't have no vittles,--'cause
I'm 'bleeged fer ter git things ready fer de doctors 'mazin' spry arter
you nusses and folks is done. De gen'lemen don't kere fer ter wait, no
more does I; so you jes' please ter come at de time, and dere won't be
no frettin' nowheres."

It was a new sensation to stand looking at a full table, painfully
conscious of one of the vacuums which Nature abhors, and receive orders
to right about face, without partaking of the nourishment which your
inner woman clamorously demanded. The doctors always fared better than
we; and for a moment a desperate impulse prompted me to give them a
hint, by walking off with the mutton, or confiscating the pie. But
Ike's eye was on me, and, to my shame be it spoken, I walked meekly
away; went dinnerless that day, and that evening went to market, laying
in a small stock of crackers, cheese and apples, that my boys might not
be neglected, nor myself obliged to bolt solid and liquid dyspepsias,
or starve. This plan would have succeeded admirably had not the evil
star under