More Louisa

It's a revelation to rediscover what a great writer Louisa May Alcott really was.  Her nimble language in "Hospital Sketches" is excellent and propulsive - and VERY funny indeed.  Take a look at the menu of a hospital in the American Civil War:

(I)s not the following bill of fare susceptible of improvement, without plunging the nation madly into debt? The three meals were "pretty much of a muchness," and consisted of beef, evidently put down for the men of '76; pork, just in from the street; army bread, composed of saw-dust and saleratus; butter, salt as if churned by Lot's wife; stewed blackberries, so much like preserved cockroaches, that only those devoid of imagination could partake thereof with relish; coffee, mild and muddy; tea, three dried huckleberry leaves to a quart of water—flavored with lime—also animated and unconscious of any approach to clearness.

Most remarkable is her skill in conveying the reality of that war, at least from the vantage point of one of its medical facilities.  Without the pathos which eventually ruined M*A*S*H for instance, she manages to lay down a foundation of humor and to counterpoint it with painful reality.  Her command of the language and of emotion is magnificent, and the piece is relatively short.  Recommended most highly.