LIFE AND DEATH.
When released from the hospital, I had neither money nor clothes, and
this is all the account I can render to the generous people who sent me
hospital stores. I could not answer their letters. Some of them I never
read. I could only give up my life to distributing their bounty, and
knew that neither their money nor my own had remained in my hands when
it was necessary for me to borrow two dollars to get a dress. My cloth
traveling suit was no longer fit for use, and my platform suit too good.
These were all I had brought to Washington; but the best men never
refused me audience because I wore a shaker bonnet, a black lawn skirt
and gray linen sack. Some thought I dressed in that way to be odd, but
it was all I could afford.
The Quarter-Master-General had canceled my appointment, because I had
not reported for duty, but Secretary Stanton reinstated me, and I went
to work on the largest salary I had ever received--fifty dollars a
month. After some time it was raised to sixty, and I was more than
independent; but my health was so broken that half a dozen doctors
commanded me to lie on my back for a month, and I spent every moment I
could in that position.
I had grown hysterical, and twice while at work in the office, broke out
into passionate weeping, while thinking of something in my hospital
experience, something I had borne, when it occurred, without a tear, or
even without feeling a desire to weep.
In September I had twenty days' leave of absence to go to St. Cloud,
settle my business and bring my household gods. There were still no
railroads in Minnesota, and I was six days going, must have six to
return, and one to visit friends at Pittsburg, yet in the time left,
sold _The Democrat_, closed my home, and met Gen. Lowrie for the first
and last time.
He called and we spent an hour talking, principally of the war, which he
thought would result in two separate governments. His reason seemed to
be entirely restored; but his prestige, power, wealth and health were
gone. I tried to avoid all personal matters, as well as reference to our
quarrel, but he broke into the conversation to say:
"I am the only person who ever understood you. People now think you go
into hospitals from a sense of duty; from benevolence, like those good
people who expect to get to heaven by doing disagreeable things on
earth; but I know you go because you must; go for your own pleasure; you
do not care for heaven or anything else, but yourself." He stopped,
looked down, traced the pattern of the carpet with the point of his
cane, then raised his head and continued: "You take care of the sick and
wounded, go into all those dreadful places just as I used to drink
brandy--for sake of the exhilaration it brings you."
We shook hands on parting, and from our inmost hearts, I am sure, wished
each other well. I was more than ever impressed by the genuine greatness
of the man, who had been degraded by the use of irresponsible power.
We reached Washington in good time, and I soon realized the great
advantage of rest. Six hours of office work came so near nothing to do,
that had I been in usual health I should probably have raised some
disturbance from sheer idleness; but I learned by and by that the close
attention demanded to avoid mistakes, could not well have been continued
longer.
Several ladies continued distributing hospital stores for me all that
fall and winter, and next spring I still had some to send out. When able
I went myself, and in Carver found a man who had been wounded in a
cavalry charge, said to have been as desperate as that of "the Light
Brigade;" and who refused to take anything from me, because he had "seen
enough of these people who go around hospitals pretending to take care
of wounded soldiers."
I convinced him it was his duty to take the jelly in order to prevent my
stealing it. Also, that it was for my interest to save his life, that I
might not have to pay my share of the cost of burying him and getting a
man in his place. Nay, that it was my duty to get him back into the
saddle as fast as possible, that my government need not pay him for
lying abed. He liked this view of the case, and not only took what I
offered him, but next time I went asked for Jefferson-tie shoes to
support his foot, and when I brought them said he would be ready for
duty in a week.
In Judiciary Square, a surgeon asked me to give a jar of currant jelly
to a man in Ward Six, who was fatally wounded.
I found the man, those in the neighboring cots and the nurse, all very
sad, talked to him a few moments, and said:
"You think you are going to die!"
"That is what they all say I must do!"
"Well, I say you are not going to do anything of the kind!"
"Oh! I guess I am!"
"Not unless you have made up your mind to it, and are quite determined.
Those hip wounds kill a great many men, because folks do not know how to
manage them, and because the men are easy to kill; but it takes a good
deal to kill a young man with a good conscience, who has never drank
liquor or used tobacco; who has muscle like yours, a red beard and blue
gray eyes."
I summoned both his day and night nurse, told all three together of the
surgical trap-door that old Mother Nature wanted made and kept open,
clear up to the center of that wound. The surgeon would always make one
if the patient wanted it. I told them about the warmth and nourishment
and care needed, and left him and them full of hope and resolution.
Next time I was in Judiciary, a young man on crutches accosted me,
saying:
"Were not you in Ward Six, about six weeks ago?"
"Yes!"
"Do you remember a man there, that every one said was going to die, and
you said he wouldn't?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm the fellow."
I looked at him inquiringly, and said:
"Well, did you die?"
He burst into uproarious laughter, and replied:
"No, but I'm blamed if I wouldn't, if you hadn't come along."
I passed on, left him leaning against the wall finishing his laugh, and
saw or heard of him no more.
It was but a few days after he passed out of my knowledge that news came
of the death of Gen. Lowrie. It was the old story, "the great man down,"
for he died in poverty and neglect, but with his better self in the
ascendent. His body lies in an unmarked grave, in that land where once
his word was law.
Pondering on his death, I thought of that country boy going to his
father's house, with the life restored by one he knew not, even by name,
and the going home of that mature man, who thought he knew my inmost
soul, and with whose political death I was charged. Only the wisdom of
eternity can determine which, if either, I served or injured. To the
one, life may lack blessing, to the other, death be all gain.