ng bad which needs to be thrown away.
In other words, it appeared to me as though any and every kind of
Sanitary good which ought to be done, and yet was not large enough or
distinct enough to constitute a separate branch, was set down as Special
Relief. The whole system of homes and lodges to feed the hungry and
shelter the homeless comes directly under the head of Special Relief.
The immense collection of back pay, bounties, pensions, and prize-money,
which is made gratuitously by the Commission, is Special Relief. Visits
to the hospitals are under the direction of this same department. And
even the Directory and the vast work done at the front perhaps
legitimately belong to it. We can readily conceive, therefore, that the
Commission has no department which is larger or more important, or which
covers so wide and diversified a field of activity. Let us survey that
field a little closer.

Sanitary homes and lodges,--what are they? A soldier is discharged, or
he has a furlough. He is not well and strong,--and he has no money,
certainly none to spare. He ought not to sleep on the ground, and he
ought not to go hungry. But what is everybody's business is apt to be
nobody's business. Fortunately the Commission has seen and met this
want. In Washington, on H Street, there is a block of rough, but
comfortable one-story wooden buildings, erected for various purposes of
Special Relief, and, amongst others, for the very one which I have
mentioned. In the first place, there is a large room containing
ninety-six berths, where any soldier, having proper claims, can obtain
decent lodging free of expense. In the second place, there is a kitchen,
and a neat, cheerful dining-room, with seats for a hundred and fifty.
Here plain and substantial meals are furnished to all comers. This table
of one hundred and fifty has often, and indeed usually, to be spread
three times; so that the Commission feeds daily at this place alone some
four hundred soldiers, and lodges ninety to a hundred more. The home
which I have now described is simply for transient calls.

Near the depot there is a home of a more permanent character. When a
soldier is discharged from the service, the Government has, in the
nature of the case, no further charge of him. Suppose now that he is
taken sick, with, no money in his purse and no friends, near. Can you
imagine a position more forlorn? And forlorn indeed it would, be, were
it not for the Commission. The sick home i