un with
a death, and, owing to the defalcation of another nurse, a somewhat
abrupt plunge into the superintendence of a ward containing forty beds,
where I spent my shining hours washing faces, serving rations, giving
medicine, and sitting in a very hard chair, with pneumonia on one side,
diphtheria on the other, five typhoids on the opposite, and a dozen
dilapidated patriots, hopping, lying, and lounging about, all staring
more or less at the new "nuss," who suffered untold agonies, but
concealed them under as matronly an aspect as a spinster could assume,
and blundered through her trying labors with a Spartan firmness, which
I hope they appreciated, but am afraid they didn't. Having a taste for
"ghastliness," I had rather longed for the wounded to arrive, for
rheumatism wasn't heroic, neither was liver complaint, or measles; even
fever had lost its charms since "bathing burning brows" had been used
up in romances, real and ideal; but when I peeped into the dusky street
lined with what I at first had innocently called market carts, now
unloading their sad freight at our door, I recalled sundry
reminiscences I had heard from nurses of longer standing, my ardor
experienced a sudden chill, and I indulged in a most unpatriotic wish
that I was safe at home again, with a quiet day before me, and no
necessity for being hustled up, as if I were a hen and had only to hop
off my roost, give my plumage a peck, and be ready for action. A second
bang at the door sent this recreant desire to the right about, as a
little woolly head popped in, and Joey, (a six years' old contraband,)
announced--

"Miss Blank is jes' wild fer ye, and says fly round right away. They's
comin' in, I tell yer, heaps on 'em--one was took out dead, and I see
him,--hi! warn't he a goner!"

With which cheerful intelligence the imp scuttled away, singing like a
blackbird, and I followed, feeling that Richard was not himself again,
and wouldn't be for a long time to come.

The first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that ever
assaulted the human nose, and took it by storm. Cologne, with its seven
and seventy evil savors, was a posy-bed to it; and the worst of this
affliction was, every one had assured me that it was a chronic weakness
of all hospitals, and I must bear it. I did, armed with lavender water,
with which I so besprinkled myself and premises, that, like my friend
Sairy, I was soon known among my patients as "the nurse with the
bottl