University of Virginia Library

PREFACE TO HOSPITAL SKETCHES.

These sketches, taken from letters hastily written
in the few leisure moments of a very busy life, make
no pretension to literary merit, but are simply a brief
record of one person's hospital experience. As such,
they are republished, with their many faults but partially
amended, lest in retouching they should lose
whatever force or freshness the inspiration of the time
may have given them.

To those who have objected to a “tone of levity” in
some portions of the sketches, I desire to say that the
wish to make the best of every thing, and send home
cheerful reports even from that saddest of scenes, an
army hospital, probably produced the impression of
levity upon those who have never known the sharp
contrasts of the tragic and comic in such a life.

That Nurse Periwinkle gave no account of her
religious services, thereby showing a “sad want of
Christian experience,” can only be explained by the
fact, that it would have as soon occurred to her to
print the letters written for the men, their penitent
confidences, or their dying messages, as to mention

the prayers she prayed, the hymns she sung, the
sacred words she read; while the “Christian experience”
she was receiving then and there was far too
deep and earnest to be recorded in a newspaper.

The unexpected favor with which the little book
was greeted, and the desire for a new edition, increase
the author's regret that it is not more worthy such a
kind reception.