Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/72

42 We had some men very low now. One a mere boy—dying so far away from his home. His brother, also a youth, had been one of our attendants in the hospital for many months, and I had become quite attached to him for his goodness of heart.

How I pitied the boy when they told him his brother must die—so young—only sixteen, yet old enough to breathe out his life to swell the list of sacrifices on the altar of his country. We had small-pox in our hospital at Mason's Island, and the pest-house to which they were taken proved in almost every instance the dead-house also. It was said that the men in charge would tie the patients to their iron bedsteads, while they went to Washington, visiting the theatres and concert rooms, leaving the sick in the delirium of suffering to fight the battle of death all alone, in the dreadful place. Could any punishment be fit for such wretches? Could any hell yawn deep enough to receive their shrivelled spirits? Rather I would have seen our men, one by one, laid under the sod, than see them taken to that place to suffer and die thus.

We had one man, private John Vail, who was down with the varioloid, but I was determined he should not be sent there,—that I would take the care myself, and with help from the boys bring him up out of the danger. He was quite ill, but I told him when the Doctor came along to whistle, and make it seem that his illness was of little account; and he did so, being passed in the hurry without any critical examination, and as good luck would have it the Doctor went to