Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/187

Rh 1em Still the wounded come in, and little I can do to mitigate their sufferings—so many mere boys, it makes my heart ache for the mothers, whose whole souls yearn over the brave little fellows, who could not remain at home when the old flag was endangered. I look at them and think, what if they were my children, how I would bless any one who gave them even a kind word, and I try to cheer them up, telling them the Confederacy must give way with such help as they have given our army, and that they do not suffer in vain.

Some of my old patients come back almost every day. I watch for the familiar faces, whose owners I nursed at Fredericksburg, or White House Landing, and they recognize me in my scant bedtick dress, but perhaps appreciate what I am able to do for them, as well as if I passed hours in dressing for the Wards. Well, it seems heartless for me to see women caring for curls and colors, when so many need a brave hand which will not shrink from a dirty, bloody wound, waiting to be dressed. I cannot think of such things now—it is no time, or place. I am a common woman, and I come to nurse the common soldier, whose sixteen dollars a month is the exceeding reward of hardships almost unendurable—nursing and burial thrown in if he dies, and if he lives, a wreck, with only the vital trunk intact, eight dollars a month for the term of his natural existence.

I don't say it is not liberal, but I do say, when