Half a Century Part 38

I never saw him so earnest, so sorrowful, so deeply moved.

That effort seemed to be the straw which broke the camel's back, and I was so ill as to demand medical attendance. For this I sent to Campbell.

Dr. Kelly came, but his forte was surgery, and my case was left with Dr.

True, who had had longer practice in medicine. They both decided that I had been inoculated with gangrene while dressing wounds, and for some weeks I continued to sink. I began to think my illness fatal, and asked the doctor, who said:

"I have been thinking I ought to tell you that if you have any unsettled business you should attend to it."

I had a feeling of being generally distributed over the bed, of being a ma.s.s of pulp without any central force, but I had had a letter that day from my daughter, who was with her father and grandmother in Swissvale, and wanted to come to me, and the thought came: "Does G.o.d mean to make my child an orphan, that others may receive their children by my death?" Then I had a strange sensation of a muster, a gathering of scattered life-force, and when it all came together it made a protest; I signed to the doctor, who put his ear to my lips, and I said:

"Doctor True, I shall live to be an hundred and twenty years old!"

He took up the lamp, threw the light on my face, and peered anxiously into it, and I looked straight into his eyes, and said:

"I will!"

He laughed and set down the lamp, saying:

"Then you must get over this!"

"You must get me over it. Bring Dr. Kelly!"

Next morning, I had them carry me into a larger room, where the morning sun shone on me, and ten days after, started for Pennsylvania, where I spent three weeks with my old Swissvale neighbors, Col. Hawkins and Wm.

S. Haven.

When I returned to Washington, I found an official doc.u.ment, a recommendation from the Quarter-Master General, of my dismissal for absence without leave. It was addressed to Secretary Stanton, who had written on the outside:

"Respectfully referred to Mrs. Swisshelm, by Edwin M. Stanton."

I went back to work, and learned that Mrs. Gen. Barlow had died of typhoid fever, in Washington. No man died more directly for the Government. Thousands who fell on the battle-field, exhibited less courage and devotion to that service, and did less to secure its success. I know not where her body lies, but wherever it does, no decoration-day should pa.s.s in which her memory is not crowned with immortelles.

She died at a time when my life was despaired of, and when Mrs. Ingersol wrote to a Maine paper of my illness, adding:

"I hope the Lord will not take her away, until He has made another like her."

She told me afterwards that just then she held the world at a grudge; but it must have been relieved of my presence long ere this, if I had not found in h.o.m.oepathy relief from pain, which for eight months made life a burden, and for which the best old-school physicians proposed no cure.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

AN EFFICIENT NURSE.

To show the capabilities of some of the women who thought they had a mission for saving the country by acting as hospital nurses, I give the history of one.

While I lay ill, a friend came and told of a most excellent woman who had come from afar, and tendered her services to the Government, who had exerted much influence and spent much effort to get into a hospital as nurse, but had failed.

Hearing of my illness, her desire to be useful led her to tender her services, so that if she could not nurse wounded soldiers she could nurse one who had. The generous offer was accepted, and I was left an afternoon in her care.

I wanted a cup of tea. She went to the kitchen to make it, and one hour after came up with a cup of tea, only this and nothing more, save a saucer. To taste the tea. I must have a spoon, and to get one she must go along a hall, down a long flight of stairs, through another hall and the kitchen, to the pantry. When she had made the trip the tea was so much too strong that a spoonful would have made a cup. She went down again for hot water, and after she had got to the kitchen remembered that she had thrown it out, thinking it would not be wanted. The fire had gone out, and she came up to inquire if she should make a new one, and if so, where she should find kindling? She had spent almost two hours running to and fro, was all in perspiration and a fl.u.s.ter, had done me a great deal of harm and n.o.body any good, had wasted all the kindlings for the evening fire, enough tea to have served a large family for a meal, and fairly ill.u.s.trated a large part of the hospital service rendered by women oppressed with the nursing mission.

My sense of relief was inexpressible when Mrs. George B. Lincoln returned from her visit to the White House, sent my tea-maker away and took charge of me once more.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

TWO FREDERICKSBURG PATIENTS.

Some months after leaving Fredericksburg, I was walking on Pennsylvania avenue, when the setting sun shone in my face, and a man in uniform stopped me, saying:

"Excuse me! you do not know me, but I know you!"

I turned, looked at him carefully, and said:

"I do not know you!"

"Oh, no! but the last time you saw me, you cut off my beard with your scissors and fed me with a teaspoon. When you left me you did not think you would ever see me again."

"Oh!" I exclaimed joyfully, "you are Dutton."

He laughed, and replied, "That's me. I have just got a furlough and am going home."

He was very pale and thin, but I was so glad to see him and shake hands, and wish him safely home with his friends.

During the great review after the war, I had a seat near the President's stand. There was a jam, and a man behind me called my attention to a captain, at a short distance, who had something to say to me, and pa.s.sed along the words:

"You took care of me on the boat coming from Fredericksburg."

Looking across, I could see him quite well, but even when his hat was off could not recognize him; and this is all I have ever heard from or of the men with whose lives mine was so knit during that terrible time.

I fear that not many survived, and doubt if a dozen of them ever knew me by any other name than that of "Mother."

CHAPTER Lx.x.x.

AM ENLIGHTENED.

When Early appeared before Washington, we all knew there was nothing to prevent his coming in and taking possession. The forts were stripped.

There were no soldiers either in or around the city. The original inhabitants were ready to welcome him with open arms. The departments were closed, that the clerks might go out in military array, to oppose; but of course few soldiers were sitting at desks at that stage of the war. The news at the Quartermaster's office one morning was that the foreign ministers had been notified, and that the city would be sh.e.l.led that afternoon. We lived on the north side of the city; and when I went home, thousands of people were on the streets, listening to the sound of guns at Fort Reno.

So far as I knew, there was a universal expectation that the city would be occupied by rebel troops that night. As this was in harmony with the general tenor of my antic.i.p.ations for a quarter of a century, I readily shared in the popular opinion, and for once was with the majority.

Among the groups who stood in the streets were many contrabands, and their faces were pitiful to see. One scantily-clad woman, holding a ragged infant, and with two frightened, ragged children clinging to her skirts, stood literally quaking. Her black face had turned gray with terror, and she came to me and asked: