We slept at any house along the road where night overtook us, always expecting and finding a welcome.  In these homes, as everywhere else over the South, sorrow and care had taken up their abode.  Haggard, weary-looking women, from whose hearts and homes joy had departed with the dear ones who had gone forth to battle, plied us with eager questions.  We related to them all we knew of military movements.  But it was very little, and we could give them no tidings of their own.

The third day brought us to Marion, where, at the pleasant home of Mrs. McAllister, we awaited further orders.

I have very pleasant recollections of Marion, and of the elegant homes where I was so delightfully entertained.  But already love for my chosen work had reached (so people told me) the height of infatuation.  Between me and every offered pleasure appeared the pale, reproachful faces of the suffering soldiers.  My place was beside them, and I longed for the summons.

A letter from Dr. McAllister to his wife announced the establishment of a hospital post in Ringgold, Georgia, but counselled our waiting until “things could be straightened out.”  I could not wait, so left the same evening, arriving in time to organize my own department, which, as the assistants had not been changed, and fell easily into their places, was not so difficult as at Gainesville.  Besides, we received a fair supply of hospital stores, and were enabled to make patients very comfortable.

CHAPTER IV.

RINGGOLD.

The hospitals established at Ringgold, Georgia, early in the fall of 1862, received the wounded and the not less serious cases of typhoid fever, typhoid pneumonia, dysentery, and scurvy resulting from almost unparalleled fatigue, exposure, and every kind of hardship incident to Bragg’s retreat from Kentucky.  These sick men were no shirkers, but soldiers brave and true, who, knowing their duty, had performed it faithfully, until little remained to them but the patriot hearts beating almost too feebly to keep soul and body together.  The court-house, one church, warehouses, stores, and hotels were converted into hospitals.  Row after row of beds filled every ward.  Upon them lay wrecks of humanity, pale as the dead, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks and temples, long, claw-like hands.  Oh, those poor, weak, nerveless hands used to seem to me more pitiful than all; and when I remembered all they had achieved and how they had lost their firm, sinewy proportions, their strong grasp, my heart swelled with pity and with passionate devotion.  Often I felt as if I could have held these cold hands to my heart for warmth, and given of my own warm blood to fill those flaccid veins.