t as the most trying one of
her life. She had foreseen and told all these fears to her father; and
the old man, on his death-bed, advised her to go wherever she felt it a
duty to go. He reminded her that he himself had been a soldier, and said
that all true soldiers would respect her. He was naturally a man of
great benevolence, a member of the Masonic fraternity, of the Degree of
Royal Arch Mason; and in his last days he spoke much of the purposes and
noble charities of the Order. She had herself received the initiation
accorded to daughters of Royal Arch Masons, and wore on her bosom a
Masonic emblem, by which she was easily recognized by the brotherhood,
and which subsequently proved a valuable talisman. At last she reached
the conclusion that it was right for her to go amid the actual tumult of
battle and shock of armies. And the fact that she has moved and labored
with the principal armies in the North and in the South for two years
and a half, and that now no one who knows her would speak of her without
the most profound respect, proves two things--that there may be heroism
of the highest order in American women--and that American armies are not
to be judged of, by the recorded statements concerning European ones.

Her first tentative efforts at going to the field were cautious and
beset with difficulties. Through the long Peninsula campaign as each
transport brought its load of suffering men, with the mud of the
Chickahominy and the gore of battle baked hard upon them like the shells
of turtles, she went down each day to the wharves with an ambulance
laden with dressings and restoratives, and there amid the turmoil and
dirt, and under the torrid sun of Washington, toiled day by day,
alleviating such suffering as she could. And when the steamers turned
their prows down the river, she looked wistfully after them, longing to
go to those dread shores whence all this misery came. But she was alone
and unknown, and how could she get the means and the permission to go?
The military authorities were overworked in those days and plagued with
unreasonable applications, and as a class are not very indulgent to
unusual requests. The first officer of rank who gave her a kind answer
was a man who never gave an unkind reply without great provocation--Dr.
R. H. Coolidge, Medical Inspector. Through him a pass was obtained from
Surgeon-General Hammond, and she was referred to Major Rucker,
Quartermaster, for transportation. The Maj