Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/149

Rh he took out a well-filled flask of the purest brandy from under his blouse, and his eyes sparkled with the beaded fleck of foam at the mouth of the bottle.

Well, I was intensely angry—the man for whose use I needed that bottle of liquor, given to a boon companion for a carousal, was sinking fast, and we had nothing but poor "Commissary whiskey" to give him, and he soon died. In my heart I believe he would have rallied if I had obtained for him the brandy which I coveted so much, and which went to wet the lips of a drunkard.

I told him of it—I could not resist the inclination to let him know that by the fact of his withholding, one brave man had gone, and that the poor whiskey was unfit for medicine in any shape. He said, "It is such as Government furnishes for Government troops," and I replied that I did not wonder Sanitary could not furnish any for the soldiers, when they employed such great stout men as he, who gulped down a glass full of raw liquid fire at once, and to whom water would be a dangerous mixing.

I never saw these men dress a wound while I was in the hospital. The most they could do for the boys, to make a demonstration, was to run from tent to tent with a little bag fastened at their sides holding a dozen sheets of paper split in two, and three or four shirts and as many pairs of drawers, and it sometimes took more than one to that.

One right-minded woman, having charge of what the wives, and sisters, and mothers had sent down to