Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/34



anxious to find my work, and in the afternoon of our arrival, Captain Knettles went with me to Beltville, where the hospital had been established the day previous.

The building was an old three-story wooden house, which had been unoccupied for some months, and was in a ruinous condition. No fence separated it from the street—no shrubs or flowers marked it as the former abode of civilized men and women. The kitchen floor was level with the ground, and laid in brick; an arched fireplace yawning its black cavernous mouth at one end, and a similar one in the room opposite, which we used for a dining-hall.

I could romance as I wrought on the dirty floors, and put my hands to the work of cleansing. I could speculate on the joys and sorrows which had been born and nursed, and had died beside that hearthstone; but the half hundred men who, sick mostly with fevers and measles, lay on the damp, dirty floors—no pillows for the restless head, no beds for the aching body, nothing but the two blankets which each had drawn for covering, and pillow, and bed—all this forbade long speculation; my heart ached for their