returning to her native
country she devoted herself to the investigation of the condition of
paupers, lunatics and prisoners. In this work she was warmly aided and
encouraged by her friend and pastor the Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose
children she had been governess, as well as by many other persons whose
hearts beat a chord responsive to that long since awakened in her own.

Since 1841 until the breaking out of the late war, Miss Dix devoted
herself to the great work which she accepted as the special mission of
her life. In pursuance of it, she, during that time, is said to have
visited every State of the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, examining
prisons, poor-houses, lunatic asylums, and endeavoring to persuade
legislatures and influential individuals to take measures for the relief
of the poor and wretched.

Her exertions contributed greatly to the foundation of State lunatic
asylums in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois,
Louisiana and North Carolina. She presented a memorial to Congress
during the Session of 1848-9, asking an appropriation of five hundred
thousand acres of the public lands to endow hospitals for the indigent
insane.

This measure failed, but, not discouraged, she renewed the appeal in
1850 asking for ten millions of acres. The Committee of the House to
whom the memorial was referred, made a favorable report, and a bill such
as she asked for passed the House, but failed in the Senate for want of
time. In April, 1854, however, her unwearied exertions were rewarded by
the passage of a bill by both houses, appropriating ten millions of
acres to the several States for the relief of the indigent insane. But
this bill was vetoed by President Pierce, chiefly on the ground that the
General Government had no constitutional power to make such
appropriations.

Miss Dix was thus unexpectedly checked and deeply disappointed in the
immediate accomplishment of this branch of the great work of benevolence
to which she had more particularly devoted herself.

From that time she seems to have given herself, with added zeal, to her
labors for the insane. This class so helpless, and so innocently
suffering, seem to have always been, and more particularly during the
later years of her work, peculiarly the object of her sympathies and
labors. In the prosecution of these labors she made another voyage to
Europe in 1858 or '59, and continued to pursue them with indefatigable
zeal and devotion.