During the whole four years of the war I was annoyed by these would-be directresses of hospitals.  They would intrude themselves into my wards, where they hesitated not to air their superior knowledge of all sickness, to inspire discomfort and distrust in the patients by expressive gestures, revealing extreme surprise at the modes of treatment, and by lugubrious shakes of the head their idea of the inevitably fatal result.  While the kindly women, who, though already overburdened, would take from the wards of the hospital enough of convalescents or sick men to crowd their own homes, often thereby saving lives,—­always doing good,—­these prowling women would manage to convey their sense of the dreadful condition of hitherto well-satisfied patients without ever suggesting a remedy.  In one of the large churches used for sick-wards in Newnan lay a young man from Maryland, who had suffered the amputation of an arm.  The wound had been carefully bandaged, the arteries taken up, etc., but as inflammation supervened the pain became almost unbearable, the poor fellow moaned unceasingly.  One night two old women visited the ward.  Afterward, upon making my last round, I found the young man above mentioned so quiet that I did not disturb him.  It so happened that Dr. Merriweather, of Alabama, was in Newnan, in close attendance upon his young son, who had received a most peculiar and apparently fatal wound.  He was shot through the liver.  The wound, at all times excessively painful, exuded bile.  Whenever Dr. Merriweather wanted an hour’s rest I took my place at the bedside of the lad.  Interest in the case took me very frequently to the ward.  Just before bedtime, therefore, I returned to the side of young Merriweather to let his father off for a while.  Inquiring of the nurse as to the patient who had been so restive, I learned that he had neither moved nor spoken.  Feeling uneasy, I walked over to the corner where he lay.  At once I heard a drip, drip, drip, and, calling for a light, soon discovered that the bed and floor were bloody.  Dr. Yates was called at once, but too late.  That dreadful meddler, the old woman visitor, had actually dared to loosen the bandages, and the poor victim, feeling only relief, had sunk tranquilly to his death.

The other was a heartless girl, who has, I feel sure, by this time made a selfish, unloving wife to some poor man.  Her lover, after the battle of Franklin, was brought to the tent hospital, having lost a leg and being wounded in the face.  He confided to me the fact of his engagement to “one of the prettiest and peartest girls in ‘Massissip,’” and begged me to write her of his condition, and, said the poor fellow, “If she don’t care about sticking to a fellow murdered up like I am, I reckon I’ll have to let her off” (this with a sigh).  Then, with a brighter look, “Maybe she’ll stick, anyhow.”  How he watched for the answer to that letter!  His restlessness was pitiful to see.  I tried to help him by reading