udy it attentively, and you will get an idea of all
cases,--and you will understand, moreover, how much work has to be done,
and how impossible it would be for a sick man to do it.

Charles W. J---- is a member of Company K, One Hundred and Twenty-First
New York Regiment, and he has been transferred to this company and
regiment from Company F of the Sixteenth New York. He has been thus
transferred for the reason that the Sixteenth New York is a two years'
regiment, whose time has expired, while he is a three years' recruit,
who has a year or two more to serve. Now he claims that pay is due him
from November 1, 1863, to August 1, 1864, and that he needs his pay very
much to send home to his wife. He represents that he was at Schuyler
Hospital from the time he left the ranks until December 17, 1863; that
then he was sent to Convalescent Camp, New York Harbor; and on December
29 to Camp of Distribution at Alexandria; whence, February 8, 1864, he
was brought to Staunton Hospital, Washington, where he now is. He has
never joined his new regiment, has only been transferred with others to
its rolls. His new officers have never seen him, and do not know where
he is. The relief agent hears the story and then sets about proving all
its details: first, that the man was a member of the Sixteenth New York
Regiment; second, that he has been transferred to the One Hundred and
Twenty-First Regiment; third, that he has never been paid beyond
November 1, 1863; fourth, that he has really been in the various
hospitals and camps which he mentions. This evidence is procured by
writing to agents and surgeons at convalescent and distributing camps,
and at Hospital Schuyler, and by examining the rolls of the Sixteenth
and One Hundred and Twenty-First Regiments. In a few days or weeks the
man's story is proved to be correct, and he is put into a position to
receive his pay,--a satisfaction not simply in a pecuniary sense, but
also to his soldierly pride, by removing an undeserved charge of
desertion.

Now I beg my readers not to imagine that this is a difficult case. At
the Relief Rooms they treasure up and mysteriously display, much as I
suspect a soldier would flaunt a captured battle-flag, a certain roll of
paper, I dare not say how many yards long, covered with certificates
from one end to the other, obtained from all parts of the country and
from all sorts of persons, and all necessary in order to secure perhaps
a three or six months' pay