7G Ten Years of my Life. 



mostly convalescent comrades, who fulfilled their duties in an 

 excellent manner. The Americans are a very intellioent 

 nation, and I frequently wondered at the ease with which they 

 adapted themselves to all kinds of occupations. This may 

 he noticed throughout the whole country, and in all branches. 

 Young men, who have attended, perhaps for years, a shop, 

 are made Government clerks in the Treasury, or the Interior 

 Department, or War Office, and after a few weeks they under- 

 stand their duties quite as well as men in Germany who have 

 visited for six years a college, studied as long at some univer- 

 sity, and served for as many years without pay in some public 

 office before being thought fit to occupy the place of an aus- 

 cultator or assessor. The proof of this is that affairs in the 

 Ministries at Vv'ashington are carried on quite as well and 

 regularly as in any office in Gerraan}^ An tntploye in Germany 

 who loses his place considers himself, in most cases, ruined 

 tor life, whilst an American Government employe in such a 

 case — which, in fact, occurs very frequently — thinks very little 

 of it, and looks out at once for some other occupation. No- 

 body is tied tor ever to a. certain trade or branch ; in this 

 respect Americans are very versatile. 



Rough as the men sometimes appeared, I found them to 

 become soon very good and careful nurses, and I preferred 

 them greatly to the coarse and selfish women I saw sometimes 

 employed in Gernian hospitals. 



I know very well that good discipline is most es?jential for 

 an army, but in reference to hospitals it often acquired in 

 Germany the character of pedantry. Though military sur- 

 geqns stood in America under the command of their colonels 

 or generals, they were far more independent in their province, 

 and were not annoyed or harassed by martinets, v/ho wanted 

 to enforce the strictness of the drill-ground even in the sick 

 loom. Nor were there high-born snobs interfering with the 

 cioctors, always hindering them by their pretentious ignorance. 

 ]5attle-loafers were a species- of bipeds not known in America. 

 There did not exist any object for them. If men did not find 

 a reward for their voluntary activity in themselves, they did 

 not find it anywhere else. It was of no consequence whether 

 it was favourably noticed by some generals, or senators, or the 

 President himself; they could not give them sinecures for life, 

 or a place at court, nor even a decoration, for all these things 

 do not exist in that country. 



