and the new regulations and the
appointment of new and efficient officers, greatly improved the
condition of the Rendezvous.

In December, 1862, while the men were yet in Camp Misery, Miss Bradley
was sent there as the Special Relief Agent of the Sanitary Commission,
and took up her quarters there. As we have said the condition of the men
was deplorable. She arrived on the 17th of December, and after setting
up her tents, and arranging her little hospital, cook-room, store-room,
wash-room, bath-room, and office, so as to be able to serve the men most
effectually, she passed round with the officers, as the men were drawn
up in line for inspection, and supplied seventy-five men with woollen
shirts, giving only to the _very_ needy. In her hospital tents she soon
had forty patients, all of them men who had been discharged from the
hospitals as well; these were washed, supplied with clean clothing,
warmed, fed and nursed. Others had discharge papers awaiting them, but
were too feeble to stand in the cold and wet till their turn came. She
obtained them for them, and sent the poor invalids to the Soldiers' Home
in Washington, _en route_ for their own homes. From May 1st to December
31st, 1863, she conveyed more than two thousand discharged soldiers from
the Rendezvous of Distribution to the Commission's Lodges at Washington;
most of them men suffering from incurable disease, and who but for her
kind ministrations must most of them have perished in the attempt to
reach their homes. In four months after she commenced her work she had
had in her little hospital one hundred and thirty patients, of whom
fifteen died. For these patients as well as for other invalids who were
unable to write she wrote letters to their friends, and to the friends
of the dead she sent full accounts of the last hours of their lost ones.
The discharged men, and many of those who were on record unjustly as
deserters, through some informality in their papers, often found great
difficulty in obtaining their pay, and sometimes could not ascertain
satisfactorily how much was due them, in consequence of errors on the
part of the regimental or company officers. Miss Bradley was
indefatigable in her efforts to secure the correction of these papers,
and the prompt payment of the amounts due to these poor men, many of
whom, but for her exertion, would have suffered on their arrival at
their distant homes. Between May 1st and December 31st, 1863, she
procured the