Hospital supplies were scarce; beds and bedding could not be often changed.  Here were rooms crowded with uncomfortable-looking beds, on which lay men whose gangrened wounds gave forth foul odors, which, mingled with the terrible effluvia from the mouths of patients ill of scurvy, sent a shuddering sickness through my frame.  In one room were three or four patients with faces discolored and swollen out of all semblance of humanity by erysipelas,—­raging with fever, shouting in delirious agony.

The hospital had formerly been a large hotel, and was divided into many rooms, all crowded with sick.  The wounded men who were not gangrened were carefully kept apart from those who were.  Some of these were frightfully disfigured in the face or head, and presented a ghastly appearance.  In rooms filled with fever-patients old men and mere boys lay helpless, struggling with various forms and stages of disease, hoarsely raving, babbling sweetly of home, vainly calling remembered names, or lying in the fatal stupor which precedes death.

Although many convalescents paced gloomily up and down the halls, or lounged upon the spacious galleries, I noticed few male nurses.  Perhaps half a dozen women met us at the doors of different wards, jauntily dressed, airily “showing off” their patients, and discoursing of their condition and probable chances of life, in a manner utterly revolting to me.  I caught many a glance of disgust bent upon them by the poor fellows who were thus treated as if they were stocks or stones.  These women were, while under the eye of the surgeon, obsequious and eager to please, but I thought I saw the “lurking devil in their eyes,” and felt sure they meant mischief.

Dr. McAllister arrived that night.  The next morning I was regularly installed.  But I could not help feeling that there was a reservation of power and authority, a doubt of my capacity, due to my youthful appearance.  Very helpless and friendless I felt, as, escorted by the “surgeon in charge,” I once more made the rounds.  He left me at the door of one of the fever-wards.  This I entered, and stood for a moment looking upon the scene of suffering humanity, wondering how and where to begin the work of alleviation.  Suddenly a faint voice called “Milly! Oh, Milly!” I turned to meet a pair of blue eyes regarding me with a look of pleased recognition, although it was at once evident that I had been mistaken for some “loved one at home” through the delirium of fever.  Humoring the fancy, I stepped to his bedside and gave my hand to the hot clasp of the poor fellow, a man of middle age, whose eyes, fever-bright, still devoured my face with a happy look.  “Howdy, Milly!  I’ve been looking for you every day.  I’m mighty glad you’ve come.  The roar of the guns has hurt my head powerful.  Get some water from the far spring and bathe my head, Milly.”

It so happened that one of his own company, of some Georgia regiment, a convalescent, had by his own request been detailed to nurse the sick man.  He soon brought me water, and I bathed the hot head, face, and hands, until the patient fell asleep.