I remember gratefully to this day the comfort and moral support I received during this trying ordeal from a South Carolina soldier, who even then knew that his own hours were numbered, and was looking death in the face with a calm resignation and courage which was simply sublime.  He had been shot in the spine, and from the waist down was completely paralyzed.  After he had been wounded, some one unintentionally having laid him down too near a fire, his feet were burned in a shocking manner.  He was one of the handsomest men I ever saw, and, even in his present condition, of commanding presence and of unusual intelligence.  I strive in vain to recall his name, but memory in this as in many other cases of patients to whom I was particularly attracted will present their faces only.  Calling me to his bedside he spoke kindly and cheerfully, praising my efforts, encouraging me to go on, drawing upon his store of general knowledge for expedients to meet the most trying cases.

Everything that Dr. McAllister did was well and completely done.  He was kind-hearted, generous, ready to do or sacrifice anything for the real good of his patients; but his rules once laid down became immutable laws, not to be transgressed by any.  His constant supervision and enforcement of rules affected every department of the hospital.  In my own, I had only to report a dereliction of duty, and the fate of the culprit was sealed.  If a woman, I had orders to discharge her; if a man, the next train bore him to his regiment or to the office of the medical director, upon whose tender mercies no wrong-doer could rely.

Consequently, I had only to go to my well-ordered kitchen to find ready the food which it had been my first care to have prepared in view of the (as I hoped) temporary absence of the cooks.  The departing men had all taken marching rations with them, but there was still plenty of food on hand.  A bakery was attached to the Buckner.  We also owned several cows.  In the bakery was plenty of corn-bread and some loaves of flour-bread, although flour was even then becoming scarce.

The cows, with full udders, stood lowing at the bars of the pen.  Among the doubts and fears that had assailed me, the idea that I might have trouble with these cows never occurred to my mind.  During my childhood my mother had owned several.  I had often seen them milked.  One had only to seize the teats firmly, pull quietly downward, and two streams of rich milk would follow.  Oh, yes!  I could do that easily.  But when I arrived at the pen, a tin bucket in one hand, a milking-stool in the other, and letting down the bars, crept inside, the cows eyed me with evident distrust and even shook their horns in a menacing manner which quite alarmed me.  However, I marched up to the one which appeared the mildest-looking, and sitting down by her side, seized two of the teats, fully expecting to hear the musical sound of two white streamlets as they fell upon the