Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/128



our men dropped away. Oh! so sad were those recurring death-beds; again and again I stood beside them, and heard delirious words and lost whispers, till I thought my heart would break with every new weight of woe it carried.

For those whose names were lost on the dear lips which the clay of a strange land would soon cover over, I could weep tears of bitter, bitter sorrow. Not for the dead, who was a hero forevermore, but for those who waited and watched, and saw the sun sink in its glory, and when it rose again, knew that they were desolate.

Our hospital corps of women nurses numbered ten, and our work was hard amongst so many sick and wounded, to which we were receiving daily accessions. Not an hour of daylight passed when the booming of cannon was not heard, and many a one got his death-wound, when no official report of battle was sent forth to the anxious nation. They died when no array of deathly conflict stirred the pulses into martial fever.

July 3d, learning that one of our One Hundred and Ninth men lay at Division Hospital badly