Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1883 — It Isn’t My Turn. [ARTICLE]

It Isn’t My Turn.

In one of the general* hospitals at Nashville, when the place was first occupied by Union troops, there was a queer character employed as nurse. He was a large man, troubled with diabetes. This unfitted him for active service, but did not give him the appearance of an invalid. The boys believed that this man knew when a man was going tn die. Certain it was that when the rapid decline in any man commenced the sympathetic old fellow took his place at the bedside of the unfortunate and was most untiring in his attention and kindnesses. In one row of cots he had closed the eyes of four men in death in as many days. The next man in order, going from right to left, grew nervous and was removed out of the row. The second man shut his lips and determined to get well. One night as this man lay thinking over the mystery of the “fatal row,” and trying to reason about the old nurse’s strange instinct, he heard a whisper from the cot on the left, “I say, stranger, if old Fatty eomes and sits down beside you, hit him one for me, will you? He hangs around for a fellow to die like a dog waiting for a bone.” Days went by and the man with the compressed lips was looked upon as the next victim, and every time the nurse passed the boys expected him to sit down. One night the nurse came through the ward, and discovering that the second man was feverish, picked up a fan and sat down at the head of his cot. Quick as thought the feverish patient sprang up in bed and said wildly, “Take him first,” pointing to the first cot. “You old fool, can’t you count? You can’t jump in this game, old fellow. Clear out, now, None of your sittin’ down by me, when it isn’t my turn. First reliefs gone, second reliefs gone, third reliefs gone, fourth reliefs gone. Why'don’t you make the fifth relief fall in ?” This was the whiserer of the night before, now almost a maniac on the subject of the nurse. The surgeon was called and the man was quieted. But even when he was almost well he dreaded the approach of the sympathetic, kind old nurse. Such superstitions were very common in the hospitals of the army.— Chicago Inter Ocean.