Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI: A POSTSCRIPT.

My Dear S.: -- As inquiries like your own have come to me from
various friendly readers of the Sketches, I will answer them en
masse and in printed form, as a sort of postscript to what has
gone before. One of these questions was, "Are there no services
by hospital death-beds, or on Sundays?"

In most Hospitals I hope there are; in ours, the men died, and
were carried away, with as little ceremony as on a battle-field.
The first event of this kind which I witnessed was so very brief,
and bare of anything like reverence, sorrow, or pious
consolation, that I heartily agreed with the bluntly expressed
opinion of a Maine man lying next his comrade, who died with no
visible help near him, but a compassionate woman and a tender-
hearted Irishman, who dropped upon his knees, and told his beads,
with Catholic fervor, for the good of his Protestant brother's
parting soul:

"If, after gettin' all the hard knocks, we are left to die this
way, with nothing but a Paddy's prayers to help us, I guess
Christians are rather scarce round Washington."

I thought so too; but though Miss Blank, one of my mates, anxious
that souls should be ministered to, as well as bodies, spoke more
than once to the Chaplain, nothing ever came of it. Unlike
another Shepherd, whose earnest piety weekly purified the Senate
Chamber, this man did not feed as well as fold his flock, nor
make himself a human symbol of the Divine Samaritan, who never
passes by on the other side.

I have since learned that our non-committal Chaplain had been a
Professor in some Southern College; and, though he maintained
that he had no secesh proclivities, I can testify that he seceded
from his ministerial duties, I may say, skedaddled; for, being
one of his own words, it is as appropriate as inelegant. He read
Emerson, quoted Carlyle, and tried to be a Chaplain; but judging
from his success, I am afraid he still hankered after the hominy
pots of Rebeldom.

Occasionally, on a Sunday afternoon, such of the nurses,
officers, attendants, and patients as could avail themselves of
it, were gathered in the Ball Room, for an hour's service, of
which the singing was the better part. To me it seemed that if
ever strong, wise, and loving words were needed, it was then; if
ever mortal man had living texts before his eyes to illustrate
and illuminate his thought, it was there; and if ever hearts were
prompted to devoutest self-abnegation, it was in the work which
brought us to anything but a Chapel of Ease. But some spiritual
paralysis seemed to have befallen our pastor; for, though many
faces turned toward him, full of the dumb hunger that often comes
to men when suffering or danger