lainly than any telegram of the Burnside blunder. I pitied them so
much, I dared not speak to them, though, remembering all they had been
through since the rout at Fredericksburg, I yearned to serve the
dreariest of them all. Presently, Miss Blank tore me from my refuge
behind piles of one-sleeved shirts, odd socks, bandages and lint; put
basin, sponge, towels, and a block of brown soap into my hands, with
these appalling directions:

"Come, my dear, begin to wash as fast as you can. Tell them to take off
socks, coats and shirts, scrub them well, put on clean shirts, and the
attendants will finish them off, and lay them in bed."

If she had requested me to shave them all, or dance a hornpipe on the
stove funnel, I should have been less staggered; but to scrub some
dozen lords of creation at a moment's notice, was really--really--.
However, there was no time for nonsense, and, having resolved when I
came to do everything I was bid, I drowned my scruples in my wash-bowl,
clutched my soap manfully, and, assuming a business-like air, made a
dab at the first dirty specimen I saw, bent on performing my task vi et
armis if necessary. I chanced to light on a withered old Irishman,
wounded in the head, which caused that portion of his frame to be
tastefully laid out like a garden, the bandages being the walks, his
hair the shrubbery. He was so overpowered by the honor of having a lady
wash him, as he expressed it, that he did nothing but roll up his eyes,
and bless me, in an irresistible style which was too much for my sense
of the ludicrous; so we laughed together, and when I knelt down to take
off his shoes, he "flopped" also, and wouldn't hear of my touching
"them dirty craters. May your bed above be aisy darlin', for the day's
work ye ar doon!--Whoosh! there ye are, and bedad, it's hard tellin'
which is the dirtiest, the fut or the shoe." It was; and if he hadn't
been to the fore, I should have gone on pulling, under the impression
that the "fut" was a boot, for trousers, socks, shoes and legs were a
mass of mud. This comical tableau produced a general grin, at which
propitious beginning I took heart and scrubbed away like any tidy
parent on a Saturday night. Some of them took the performance like
sleepy children, leaning their tired heads against me as I worked,
others looked grimly scandalized, and several of the roughest colored
like bashful girls. One wore a soiled little bag about his neck, and,
as I moved it, to bathe