ipped to Miss Barton in great quantities, nor
was there need of her nursing. However, she went to the docks to meet
the wounded and dying soldiers, who were brought up the Potomac on
transports." Often they were in such a condition from neglect that
they were baked as hard as the backs of turtles with blood and clay,
and it took all a woman's swift and tender care, together with the use
of warm water, restoratives, dressings, and delicacies to make them at
all comfortable. Then their volunteer nurse would go with them to the
hospitals, and back again in the ambulance she would drive, to repeat
her works of mercy.

But she was not satisfied with this work. If wounds could be attended
to as soon as the men fell in battle, hundreds of deaths could be
prevented, and she made up her mind that in some way she was going to
override public sentiment, which in those early days of the war did
not allow women nurses to go to the front, for she was determined to
go to the very firing-line itself as a nurse. And, as she had got her
way at other times in her life, so now she achieved her end, but after
months of rebuffs and of tedious waiting, during which the bloody
battle of Fair Oaks had been fought with terrible losses on each side.
The seven days' retreat of the Union forces under McClellan followed,
with eight thousand wounded and over seventeen hundred killed. On top
of this came the battle of Cedar Mountain, with many Northerners
killed, wounded and missing.

One day, when Assistant Quartermaster-General Rucker, who was one of
the great-hearts of the army, was at his desk, he was confronted by a
bright-eyed little woman, to whose appeal he gave sympathetic
attention.

"I have no fear of the battle-field," she told him. "I have large
stores, but no way to reach the troops."

Then she described the condition of the soldiers when they reached
Washington, often too late for any care to save them or heal their
wounds. She _must_ go to the battle-front where she could care for
them quickly. So overjoyed was she to be given the needed passports as
well as kindly interest and good wishes that she burst into tears as
she gripped the old soldier's hand, then she hurried out to make
immediate plans for having her supplies loaded on a railroad car. As
she tersely put it, "When our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke
the shackles and went to the field." When she began her work on the
day after the battle she found an immense amo