mfortable
quarters, and was actually driven from the establishment.

Other patients were brought in from time to time, and their wounds
dressed. Some were dismissed in a few days; others detained for months.
One intelligent young man, an English mechanic, was afflicted with a
white swelling on his knee and suffered intolerable pain. His sobs
and groans through the night, which he could not suppress, excited
my sympathy, but grated harshly on the nerves of my tall friend the
corporal of dragoons, who expostulated with him seriously on the
unreasonableness of his conduct, arguing, like the honest tar on board
the brig Clarissa, that these loud indications of suffering, while they
afforded no positive relief to the sufferer, disturbed the slumbers of
those who were free from pain or bore it with becoming fortitude.

In the evening, after we had partaken of the regular meal, those of
us who were able to move about, and to whom I have more particularly
alluded, would gather around the hearth, a coal fire burning in the
grate, and pass a couple of hours in conversation, in which agreeable
occupations, having read much and already seen something of the world,
I was able to bear a part. There are few persons who are unable to
converse, and converse well too, when their feelings are enlisted and
they labor under no restraint; and very few persons so dull and stupid
as to fail to receive or impart instruction from conversation with
others.

Notwithstanding the rules of the infirmary to the contrary, the inmates
of "number one" were not altogether deprived of the advantages and
charms of female society. To say nothing of the old nurse, who was a
host in gossip herself, her two daughters, both young and pretty girls,
were sometimes smuggled into the Infirmary by the connivance of the grim
and trustworthy porter, and remained there days at a time, carefully
hid away in the pantry whenever "the master" or the surgeons went their
regular rounds, which was always at stated hours. When the wind raged
without, and the rain, hail, or snow sought entrance through the
casement, while sitting near a comfortable fire, listening to female
prattle and gossip, narratives of incidents of real life, discussions on
disputed points in politics, philosophy, or religion between my friend
with the crutches and the tall corporal of dragoons, who were both as
fond of controversy as Mr. Shandy himself; or drinking in with my ears
the Irish tar's glowin