of one sick soldier. The correspondence of
the back-pay department is itself a burden. From thirty to forty letters
on an average are received daily at one of its offices. They are written
in all languages,--English, German, French,--and must be read,
translated, and the ideas, conveyed often in the blindest style,
ascertained and answered.

A new branch has been recently added,--the collection of pay for the
families of those who are prisoners in Rebeldom. But as this involves no
new principles or fresh details, I pass it by. Another class of cases
should receive a moment's notice. This includes the collection of
bounties for discharged soldiers, of pensions for wounded soldiers, of
bounty, back pay, and pensions for the families of deceased soldiers,
and of prize-money for sailors. These cases are not, as a general rule,
as intricate as those which I have already considered, inasmuch as the
proper departments have a regular system of investigation, and take up
and examine for themselves each case in its turn. All that the
Commission does is to put the soldier on the right track, and to make
out and present for him the fitting application. It undertook this
because Washington was infested with a horde of sharpers, who, by false
representations, defrauded the soldiers out of large sums.

I cannot more appropriately close this branch of my subject than by
stating the simple fact, that during the months of July and August the
relief agents examined and brought to a successful issue 809 cases of
back pay and bounty-money, averaging $125,--203 cases of invalid
pensions, 378 cases of widows' pensions, and 10 cases of naval pensions,
averaging $8 a month,--and 121 cases of prize-money, averaging $80.

I have only to add that the amount of good which can be done in this
direction seems to be limited only by the capacity of those who
undertake to do it. A relief agent said to me, in conversation, that in
one hospital in Philadelphia there were several hundreds who claimed,
but were unable to collect their just dues,--and that what was true of
this hospital was true to a less extent of all of them.

* * * * *

The Hospital Directory is a most interesting branch of Sanitary work.
Not because it will compare with many other branches in extent of
usefulness, but because it shows what a wide-reaching philanthropy is at
work, seeking to furnish every possible alleviation to the inevitable
hardships