and out I swept, nor ever while in Ringgold entered the officers’ quarters again, except to nurse very sick or dying men.  It seems that Lieutenant Cox had received a box from home containing, among other dainties, a bottle of home-made wine.  One day he said to the other occupants of the ward, “Mrs. Beers never bathes my head.  I believe I’ll get up a spell of fever, and see if I can’t get nursed like you other fellows.”  The others declared that he could not deceive me, and he offered to bet the bottle of wine that he would have me bathe his head at my next visit.  The result has been described.  I had hardly reached my office, when a special patient and friend of mine, Charlie Gazzan, of Mobile, Alabama, arrived with an apology from Lieutenant Cox, a few words of explanation from Captain Ellis, signed by all the officers in the ward, and the bottle of wine, sent for my acceptance.  I would not accept the wine or read the note, and in this course I was upheld by Dr. McAllister, who severely reprimanded Lieutenant Cox, and excused me from future attendance upon that ward.

I have said that Charlie Gazzan was a special patient and friend; perhaps the expression needs explanation.  A few weeks before, he had been brought to me one night from the ambulance-train, a living skeleton, and seemingly at the point of death from dysentery.  His family and that of my husband were residents of Mobile, Alabama, and intimate friends.  He seemed almost in the agony of death, but had asked to be brought to me.  There was not, after the battle of Murfreesboro’, a single vacant bed.  He begged hard not to be put in a crowded ward, so, until I could do better, he was placed upon the lounge in my office.  One small room in the officers’ ward being vacant, I asked and obtained next day the privilege of placing him there.  He recovered very slowly, but surely, and during his convalescence made himself useful in a hundred ways.  My sick boys owed many a comfort to his wonderful powers of invention; even the surgeons availed themselves of his skill.  He often relieved me of a task I had sometimes found very wearisome, because so constantly recurring,—­that of writing letters for the sick.  He made his own pens and his own ink, of a deep green color, and seemingly indelible.  A more gentle, kindly, generous nature never existed, and yet his soldierly instincts were strong, and almost before he could walk about well he “reported for duty,” but was soon relegated to his room and to special diet.

Spring proved hardly less disagreeable in Upper Georgia than winter had been.  The mud was horrible, and I could not avoid it, as the wards were detached, occupying all together a very wide space.  The pony was no longer available, because he splashed mud all over me.  Old Peter brought me one day an immense pair of boots large enough for me to jump into when going from one place to another, and to jump out of and leave at the entrance of the sick wards.