nothing, as the
place was in such dreadful condition, while I could be useful in many
other places.

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE OLD THEATER.

This building was on Princess Ann street. The basement floor was level
with the sidewalk, but the ground sloped upward at the back; so that the
yard was higher than the floor. Across the front was a vestibule, with
two flights of stairs leading up to the auditorium; behind the vestibule
a large, low room, with two rows of pillars supporting the upper floor;
and behind this three small rooms, and a square hall with a side
entrance. The fence was down between the theater and Catholic church,
next door. I stopped in the church to see Georgie, who was already at
work there, came and left by the back door, and entered the theater by
the side hall.

The mud was running in from the yard. Opposite the door, in a small
room, was a pile of knapsacks and blankets; and on them lay two men
smoking. To get into the large room, I must step out of the hall mud
over one man, and be careful not to step on another. I think it was six
rows of men that lay close on the floor, with just room to pass between
the feet of each row; they so close in the rows that in most places I
must slide one foot before the other to get to their heads.

The floor was very muddy and strewn with _debris_, principally of
crackers. There was one hundred and eighty-two men in the building, all
desperately wounded. They had been there a week. There were two leather
water-buckets, two tin basins, and about every third man had saved his
tin-cup or canteen; but no other vessel of any sort, size or description
on the premises--no sink or cess-pool or drain. The nurses were not to
be found; the men were growing reckless and despairing, but seemed to
catch hope as I began to thread my way among them and talk. No other
memory of life is more sacred than that of the candor with which they
took me into their confidence, as if I had been of their own sex, yet
ever sought to avoid wounding the delicacy they ascribed to mine.

I found some of the nurses--cowards who had run away from battle, and
now ran from duty--galvanized them into activity, invented substitutes
for things that were wanting--making good use of an old knapsack and
pocket-knife--and had tears of gratitude for pay.

One man lay near the front door, in a scant flannel shirt and cotton
drawers, his left thigh cut off in the middle and the stump supported on
the onl