Fannie A. Beers, Memories: a record of personal exeperience and adventure during four years of war.

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[84] agony, I could not stay the fleeting breath, nor might I intermit the unceasing care imperatively demanded by those whom timely ministrations might save, to give due honor to the dead.

Only an hour or two of rest (broken like the sleep of those of a household who retire from the side of beloved sufferers, leaving them to the care of others while they snatch a few moments of the repose which is needed to prepare them for fresh exertions) and I was once more on my way to the wards. At the gate of the boardinghouse stood one of the nurses. Again, as often before, I was summoned to a bed of death. A soldier who had come in only two days before almost in the last stages of pneumonia was now dying. I had left him at eight o'clock the night before very ill, but sleeping under the influence of an opiate. His agony was now too terrible for any alleviation; but he had sent for me; so I stood beside him, answering by every possible expressions of sympathy his imploring glances and the frantic clasp of his burning hand. Finding that my presence was a comfort, I sent for Dr. McAllister, and, requesting him to assign my duties to some one else for a while, remained at my post, yielding to the restraining grasp which to the very last arrested every movement away from the side of the sufferer. A companion of the sick man lay near. From him I learned the excellent record of this young soldier, who, during the frightful ‘retreat,’ had contracted the cold which culminated in pneumonia, but would not consent to leave his regiment until too late.

I had feared an awful struggle at the last, but the death angel was pitiful, bringing surcease of suffering; and so, peacefully sped the soul of John Grant, of the ——Mississippi Regiment, happily unconscious of the end, and murmuring with his last breath, of home and mother.