the fourth day, and to drive their nurses distracted with efforts to
amuse them, before the first week was over.
The most successful attempt originated in Ward No. I, as Mrs.
Minot called Jack’s apartment, and we will give our sympathizing
readers some idea of this place, which became the stage whereon
were enacted many varied and remarkable scenes.
Each of the Minot boys had his own room, and there collected his
own treasures and trophies, arranged to suit his convenience and
taste. Frank’s was full of books, maps, machinery, chemical
messes, and geometrical drawings, which adorned the walls like
intricate cobwebs. A big chair, where he read and studied with his
heels higher than his head, a basket of apples for refreshment at all
hours of the day or night, and an immense inkstand, in which
several pens were always apparently bathing their feet, were the
principal ornaments of his scholastic retreat.
Jack’s hobby was athletic sports, for he was bent on having a
strong and active body for his happy little soul to live and enjoy
itself in. So a severe simplicity reigned in his apartment; in
summer, especially, for then his floor was bare, his windows were
uncurtained, and the chairs uncushioned, the bed being as narrow
and hard as Napoleon’s. The only ornaments were dumbbells,
whips, bats, rods, skates, boxing-gloves, a big bath-pan and a small
library, consisting chiefly of books on games, horses, health,
hunting, and travels. In winter his mother made things more
comfortable by introducing rugs, curtains, and a fire. Jack, also,
relented slightly in the severity of his training, occasionally
indulging in the national buckwheat cake, instead of the prescribed
oatmeal porridge, for breakfast, omitting his cold bath when the
thermometer was below zero, and dancing at night, instead of
running a given distance by day.
Now, however, he was a helpless captive, given over to all sorts of
coddling, laziness, and luxury, and there was a droll mixture of
mirth and melancholy in his face, as he lay trussed up in bed,
watching the comforts which had suddenly robbed his room of its
Spartan simplicity. A delicious couch was there, with Frank
reposing in its depths, half hidden under several folios which he
was consulting for a history of the steam-engine, the subject of his
next composition.
A white-covered table stood near, with all manner of dainties set
forth in a way to tempt the sternest principles. Vases of flowers
bloomed on the chimney-piece gifts from anxious young ladies,
left with their love. Frivolous story-books and picture-papers
strewed the bed, now shrouded in effeminate chintz curtains,
beneath which Jack lay like a wounded warrior in his tent. But the
saddest sight for our crippled athlete was a glimpse, through a
half-opened door, at the beloved dumb-bells, bats, balls,
boxing-gloves, and snow-shoes, all piled ignominiously away in
the bath-pan, mournfully recalling the fact that their day was over,
now, at least for some time.
He was about to groan dismally, when his eye fell on a sight which
made him swallow the groan, and cough instead, as if it choked
him a little. The sight was his mother’s face, as she sat in a low
chair rolling bandages, with a basket beside her in which were
piles of old linen, lint, plaster, and other matters, needed for the
dressing of wounds. As he looked, Jack remembered how steadily
and tenderly she had stood by him all through the har4 times just
past, and how carefully she had bathed and dressed his wound each
day in spite of the effort it cost her to give him pain or even see
him suffer.
“That’s a better sort of strength than swinging twenty-pound
dumb-bells or running races; I guess I’ll try for that kind, too, and
not howl or let her see me squirm when the doctor hurts,” thought
the boy, as he saw that gentle face so pale and tired with much
watching and anxiety, yet so patient, serene, and cheerful, that it
was like sunshine.
“Lie down and take a good nap, mother dear, I feel first-rate, and
Frank can see to me if I want anything. Do, now,” he added, with a
persuasive nod toward the couch, and a boyish relish in stirring up