A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware.

  • John F. W. Ware
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with exaggerated power, and show now the tyrants they really are. We do not get much charity. Our best fi-iends find it hard to get along with us, and our convalescence drags its slow, unhappy length along, the body weak and weary, the mind not yet adjusted to its balance, the heart sick with its hopes deferred, the whole man a discomfort to himself, and a puzzle or a plague to those about him. He must be a very rare character who can pass through the tedium of convalescence with honor and self- respect. If all this be true of ordinary convalescence, — convalescence at home, surrounded by all its cares and loves and protections, — how much more true must it be in the army hospital, where each man is only one of a crowd, where each is separated from the sympathy and consideration of home, where whims and weaknesses and ill-temper can have little attention and less forbearance, where all the discomfort of his position is aggravated by absence, and that sickly yearning for home, itself worse than disease. Now do not think that this state of yours is not recognized by friends at home. It is not one they can reach or do anything directly for, but if tliere be anything in sympathy, anything in appreciation of service, anything in pity for suffering, anything in good-will and prayer, you have them all. They are not things tangible to the sense, it is true, as the
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