Marsha’s Reviews > Louisa May Alcott: An Intimate Anthology > Status Update

"Be it so, but remember I have warned you." An exultant expression broke through the gloom of her husband's face as he answered with the grim satisfaction of one who gave restraint to the mind, and stood ready to follow whatever impulse should sway him next. His wife trembled inwardly at what she had done, but was too proud to recall her words and felt a certain bitter pleasure in the excitement of her new position.

You ask if nurses are obliged to witness amputations and such, as part of their duty? I think not, unless they wish; for the patient is under the effects of ether, and needs no care but such as the surgeons can give. Our work begins afterward, when the poor soul comes to himself, sick, faint, and wandering; full of strange pains and disagreeable sensations and sights. Then we must sooth and sustain, tend and watch.

The three meals consisted of beef, evidently put down for the men of '76; pork, just i from the street; army bread, composed of saw-dust and saleratus; butter, salt as if churned by Lot's wife; stewed blackberries, so much like preserved cockroaches, that only those devoid of imagination could partake thereof; coffee, mild and muddy; tea, three dried huckleberry leaves to a quart of water--flavored with lime.