“Knickerbocker,” May 31.
Dear Mother, — The long letter now enclosed I was too utterly tired out to carry even the length of the ward to post last night. As I finished it, two steamers came alongside, each with a hundred sick on board, bringing word that the “Louisiana” (a side-wheel vessel, not a Commission-boat) was aground at a little distance, with two hundred more, having no one in charge of them and nothing to eat. Of course they had to be attended to. So, amid the wildest and most beautiful storm of thunder and lightning, Georgy, Dr. Ware, Mrs. Reading, and I pulled off to her in a little boat with tea, bread, brandy, and beef-essence. (No one can tell how it tries my nerves to go toppling round at night in little boats, and clambering up ships’ sides on little ladders!) We fed them, — the usual process, — poor fellows, they were so crazy. Dr. Ware says I have particular luck with delirium, and he made me try my hand on a man with whom he could do nothing, and I succeeded.
Soon after, the “Wissahickon” came alongside to transfer the men to the “Elm City.” Only part could go in the first load. Dr. Ware made me go in her to avoid returning in the little boat. Just as we pushed off, the steam gave out, and we drifted stem-on to the shore. Then a boat had to put off from the “Elm City” with a line to tow us up. All this time the thunder was incessant, the rain falling in torrents, while every second the beautiful crimson lightning flashed the whole scene open to us. Add to this that there were three men alarmingly ill, and (thinking to be but a minute in reaching the other ship) I had not even a drop of brandy for them. Do you wonder, therefore, that I forgot to mail your letter?
To-day (Saturday) has been a hard-working day. It is something to feed two hundred and fifty men, and prepare all the food for the very sick. I wish you could hear the men after they are put into bed. Those who can speak, speak with a will; others grunt or murmur their satisfaction: “Well! this bed is ‘most too soft. I don’ know as I shall sleep for thinking of it!” “What have you got there?” “This is bread; wait till I butter it!” “Butter — on soft bread!” he slowly ejaculates, as if not sure that he isn’t Aladdin with a genie at work upon him.
The Women’s Central Relief Association are constantly begging us for anecdotes relating to the gratitude, and so forth, of the men. These have great effect, they say, upon the public mind, and bring the money down. So one day Georgy set out upon a pilgrimage, resolved that she would have something touching to report. She found a little drummer-boy who seemed a promising subject, so she began: “That’s a nice shirt you have on; I know the ladies who made it: have n’t you some message to send them?” “Wal!” said he, with that peculiar nasal twang which belongs only to a sick soldier on the Pamunky, “you tell ’em it’s ‘most big enough for two.”
Mrs. Griffin is well, and very efficient. It requires great thought and care and sweetness of temper to get along with this work, and she has all of them. I met with the serious misfortune of breaking the crystal of my watch yesterday. My watch is a part of myself: what shall I do without it?— and there’s so little to mark time, or even to distinguish day from night, in these vast ships. They are strange places, and I often feel like a cockroach, running familiarly as I do into all their dark corners.
