I stood yesterday on the corner of Broad and Chestnut streets,
watching the march of the Grand Army of the Republic. As the torn
and tattered battle flags came by, all the terrors of that war
tragedy suddenly rushed over me, and I sat down and wept. Looking
again, I saw the car of wounded, soldiers; as in thought I was
suddenly transported to the banks of the Mississippi I felt the
air full of the horrors of the battle of Shiloh, and saw two
young girls waiting the landing of a steamer that had been
dispatched to succor the wounded on that terrible field. They
were watching for "mother"--who for the first time had left her
home charge, and hushing her own heart's pleadings, heard only
her country's call, and gone down to that field of carnage to
tenderly care for the soldier. As they boarded the steamer; what
a sight met their eyes! Maimed, bleeding, dying soldiers by the
hundreds, were on cots on deck, on boxes filled with amputated
limbs, and the dead were awaiting the last sad rites. Like
ministering angels walked two women, their mother and the now
sainted Margaret Breckenridge of Kentucky, amid these rows of
sufferers, with strong nerve and steady arm, comforting the
soldier boy, so far from friends and home; binding up the ghastly
wound, bathing the feverish brow, smoothing the dying pillow, and
with tender mother's prayer and tear, closing the eyes of the
dead. The first revelation of war; how it burned our youthful
brain! How it moved us to divine compassion, how it stirred us to
even give up our mother to the work for years, as we heard the
piteous pleading, "Don't leave us, mother"--"Oh, mother, we can
never forget." But alas they _did_ forget! This scene repeated
again, and again, during that long conflict, with hundreds of
women offering a like service in camp and floating hospital,
leaving sweet homes, without money, price or thought of
emolument, going to these battle-fields and tenderly nursing the
army of the republic to life again; while back of them were tens
of thousands other women of the great sanitary army, who, in
self-sacrifice at home, were sending lint, bandages, clothing,
delicacies of food and raiment of all kinds, by car-load and
ship-load, to comfort and ameliorate the sufferings of the grand
army of the republ