This fact, which must have been patent to them from the active persecution it entailed, seemed to be a crying grievance. My life at my hospital quarters when relieved from care for the patients was exclusive, from habit, inclination and prudence. Living a great part of my time away from all intercourse with my own sex, in a solitude that was unbroken after dark, it was better that no intimacies should be formed and no preferences shown; and in an exposed position where Argus eyes were always watching, a woman could not be too careful.
But still the wars of the whiskey barrel continued. One day the men of one of the distant wards sent for me in the absence of their ward-master, and complained that the liquor issued for them never reached them. All concurred in this report, and said the champagne bottles in which it was kept were hid behind a certain vacant bed, from whence they would be abstracted that night. A search on my part brought them to light, still full, although the hour of administering had long past. The ward-master was summoned, the full bottles exhibited, and expressing my surprise at the inhumanity and dishonesty of one I had heretofore thought so honest, I warned him of the consequences that would result to him. His protestations were so earnest that he never tasted liquor, that I could not disbelieve him. What then had “become of the quantity issued, had he sold it?”
The charge was met by indignant surprise, and then the truth began to dawn upon me. That he had been false to his charge and his patients was true, if even he had not been guilty of taking it, and I warned him that on my representing the matter to the proper authorities he would be sent to the field. An hour after this conversation the surgeon of his ward entered my office with belligerent aspect.
“Did you assert, Madam, that you intended sending my ward-master to the field?”
“I said I intended laying the facts concerning the disappearance of the liquor before the proper authorities.”
“I consider myself responsible, Madam, for the liquor used in my wards.”
“If you do, you fail to be sure that it reaches its destination, so I intend in future to see that it does.”
“If you mean that my ward-master drinks it, you are mistaken; he does not take any stimulant.”