mstances
of her early life tended to mature and prepare her for her destined
work. Had her lot been cast in the dark days of religious intolerance
and persecution, her steadfast enthusiasm and holy zeal would have
earned for her a martyr's cross and crown; but, born in this glorious
nineteenth century, and reared in an atmosphere of liberal thought and
active humanity, the first spark of patriotism that flashed across the
startled North at the outbreak of the rebellion, set all her soul aglow,
and made it henceforth an altar of living sacrifice, a burning and a
shining light, to the end of her days. Dearer to her gentle spirit than
any martyr's crown, must have been the consciousness that this God-given
light had proved a guiding beacon to many a faltering soul feeling its
way into the dim beyond, out of the drear loneliness of camp or
hospital. With her slight form, her bright face, and her musical voice,
she seemed a ministering angel to the sick and suffering soldiers, while
her sweet womanly purity and her tender devotion to their wants made her
almost an object of worship among them. "Ain't she an angel?" said a
gray-headed soldier as he watched her one morning as she was busy
getting breakfast for the boys on the steamer "City of Alton." "She
never seems to tire, she is always smiling, and don't seem to walk--she
flies, all but--God bless her!" Another, a soldier boy of seventeen
said to her, as she was smoothing his hair and saying cheering words
about mother and home to him, "Ma'am, where do you come from? How could
such a lady as you are come down here, to take care of us poor, sick,
dirty boys?" She answered--"I consider it an honor to wait on you, and
wash off the mud you've waded through for me."

Another asked this favor of her, "Lady, please write down your name, and
let me look at it, and take it home, to show my wife who wrote my
letters, and combed my hair and fed me. I don't believe you're like
other people." In one of her letters she says, "I am often touched with
their anxiety not to give trouble, not to _bother_, as they say. That
same evening I found a poor, exhausted fellow, lying on a stretcher, on
which he had just been brought in. There was no bed for him just then,
and he was to remain there for the present, and looked uncomfortable
enough, with his knapsack for a pillow. 'I know some hot tea will do you
good,' I said. 'Yes, ma'am,' he answered, 'but I am too weak to sit up
with nothing to lea