December 8.—A very gloomy, wet, cold day. I have not been able to go to see any of the patients on account of the weather.
We get along very nicely now. Mrs. W. has taken charge of the linen department, and keeps two girls busy sewing all the time. We have numbers of pads to make for the wounded. The fact is, there is always plenty to do in the way of sewing.
We have all the whisky now in charge. Miss W. makes eggnog and toddies, and gives out the whisky as the surgeons prescribe it. Besides that, we have all of the delicacies, such as coffee, tea, sugar, butter, eggs, etc. Miss W. has not much idle time.
A very nice woman has charge of the distributing-room, and attends to preparing little extras for the sick. She has a kitchen in which is a stove, and all I have to do is to send her word what I want prepared for the patients.
We have a large kitchen in which are three stoves, where the diet is prepared for those who are on the diet-list. Many a time there are two hundred patients fed from it.
The kitchen itself does very well in good weather, but when it rains the cooks, stoves, and every thing else in it get a shower-bath.
It has no chimneys, and the stove pipes are put through the roof, without an elbow or any covering. Many a time the cooks are up all night, trying to keep the water out of the stoves. But no matter what happens, the breakfast is always ready at the right time.
There is a kitchen for the convalescents, which has a brick furnace with boilers and an oven in it. We have also a very fine bakery. All has been put up since we have been here, at government expense.
Our hospital, with the exception of the tents, which are by themselves, occupies a square of store buildings, and the courthouse. Many of the buildings are in a dilapidated condition, but they are all nicely whitewashed, and kept in perfect order.
Miss W. received a letter from a cousin, a surgeon in the army, entreating her to leave the hospital, saying that it is no place for a refined, modest young lady. I have perhaps made a mistake as regards the meaning of the word modesty. As far as my judgment goes, a lady who feels that her modesty would be compromised by going into a hospital, and ministering to the wants of her suffering countrymen, who have braved all in her defense, could not rightly lay claim to a very large share of that excellent virtue—modesty—which the wise tell us is ever the companion of sense.
“Good sense, which is the gift of heaven,
And, though no science, fairly worth the seven.”
I am thoroughly disgusted with this kind of talk. When will our people cease to look on the surface of things? At this rate, never! If the scenes we are daily witnessing will not serve to cure this miserable weakness, nothing will.
There is scarcely a day passes that I do not hear some derogatory remarks about the ladies who are in the hospitals, until I think, if there is any credit due them at all, it is for the moral courage they have in braving public opinion.
A very nice lady, a member of the Methodist Church, told me that she would go into the hospital if she had in it a brother, a surgeon. I wonder if the Sisters of Charity have brothers, surgeons, in the hospitals where they go? It seems strange that they can do with honor what is wrong for other Christian women to do.
Well, I can not but pity those people who have such false notions of propriety.
After getting tired of hearing what is said, I told a lady friend that she would oblige me by telling the good people of Newnan, that when I first went into the hospitals I was not aware of there being such a place in the world as Newnan, and they must excuse me for not asking their advice on the subject; and since without it I had taken the step I had, I could not say I had any thing to regret in the matter; far from that, I can truly say, that there is no position in the world that a woman can occupy, no matter how high or exalted it may be, for which I would exchange the one I have. And no happiness which any thing earthly could give, could compare with the pleasure I have experienced in receiving the blessings of the suffering and dying.
As for no “refined or modest” lady staying in them, from my own experience, and that of every surgeon whom I have heard speak on the subject, I have come to the conclusion that, in truth, none but the “refined and modest” have any business in hospitals. Our post surgeon called on me the other day, and told me he had determined to permit none but such to enter any of his hospitals; and he earnestly warned me to be careful whom I took to stay with me.
But I feel confident we shall always have the approval of the truly good. I have not asked Miss W. to remain; her own sense of right has determined her to do so.
Mrs. B. and I took a walk to the graveyard last Sunday. We saw two of our men buried; one was named S. Brazelton, a member of the Fiftieth Alabama Regiment; the name of the other I did not learn; he came from some of the other hospitals. All the men of our hospital are now buried by the chaplain, Mr. Moore.
The graves have head-boards, on which is the occupant’s name and regiment.
We had a man by the name of Vaughn die very suddenly on the 3d.
