her handkerchief to them,and no child shouted its approbation. The closed houses frowned down darkly upon them, as if they were untenanted, and even the few men who passed them on the sidewalks, drew their hats over their eyes, and slouched sullenly by. St. Louis had no heart in the gigantic preparations of the government to conquer the rebellion.

In almost every ward of the hospitals we found dying men-in every dead-house there were coffined corses, and the ambulance standing near, waiting to take the cold sleepers to their last resting-places. The men were terribly broken down with home-sickness, many deaths being attributed to that cause alone. In one hospital we found a man, feeble and ghostly, with the aid of a comrade, packing his valise for a visit to his home on furlough, and full of hope and courage despite his physical condition. Three days after we had occasion to pass through that same ward, and found the same man, just breathing his last. "What had happened?" we enquired; "had it not been possible for him to make the journey after all?" "An order was received, revoking his furlough, and he immediately lay back on the bed in a faint, and has not rallied yet," was the answer. He never rallied, but died from the removal of the stimulus of his promised visit home. Relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, were in the wards beside the beds of those whom they loved, and who had passed through the hell of battle alive, although maimed and mangled.

A young captain in the officers' ward had suffered two amputations of the arm, which still refused to heal, so that a third was required. He had become so reduced that the surgeon had fears for the result, and so informed him. Then the young officer telegraphed the girl who was to be his wife, and who had only delayed her coming to him, at his earnest entreaty that she would not encounter the horrors of a hospital, unless he sent for her. She came as fast as the lightning express could bring her, and at her own desire, before he submitted to another operation, they were married, in the ward, by the hospital chaplain. The arm was removed to the shoulder, for a day or two there was hope of him, and then the poor fellow sank. We

entered the ward about two hours before his death, and found his three days' bride ministering to him with inexpressible tenderness. There were no tears on her cheek, no lamentations on her lip, but a sort of inspiration gleamed on her face that seemed to lift her for the time above her suffering. We had intended to pass by without intruding on the sacredness of her work or her sorrow. But there was an invitation in the look she gave us, and we moved softly towards the couch of death. The dying man was conscious, but could not speak, except in brief, occasional whispers.

"You are ready to go?" asked Mrs. our hostess, who had seen much of him, and whom he welcomed with a faint smile.

For answer, he looked at the young wife, who was gazing in his face. She understood him and replied, "Yes, and God has prepared me for this, Mahlon, so that I too am ready." And then turning to us, she added, "I gave him up to God and the country, when he entered the service. I expected this, and have been prepared for it." The next morning, as we went to the train to leave St. Louis, we met her, embarking for home with the dead body of her beloved. The exaltation of her soul had not left her. She was alone in the world — her only brother being in the Army of the Potomac - and we saw that she would not allow nature to assert itself until her duties to the dead were over. was taking the coffined remains to the widowed mother of the deceased, living near Centralia, who had two other sons in the army, and a son-in-law.

She

From St. Louis we went to Cairo, where were other hospitals full to overflowing with sick and wounded. Here I first met "Mother Bickerdyke," of whom I will say nothing now, as I shall make our Western heroine the subject of my next article. Here also I first met Mary Safford, who was known in Cairo, on hospital boats, and up and down the river as far as it was at that time open, as the "Cairo angel." Frail, fairy-like, and exceedingly delicate, she threw herself into the hospital work with such energy and forgetfulness of self, that she broke down utterly before the end of the second year of the war. Had not her friends sent her out of the country, till the war was over, she would have

Every

With a memorandum book in one hand, and a large basket of delicacies in the other, while a porter followed with a still larger basket, packed with nice articles of sick diet, all prepared by herself, and labelled with the name of the hospital, number of the ward and bed, for which each article was designed, we entered the wards. The effect of her presence was magical. It was like a breath of spring through the bare, whitewashed rooms like a burst of sunlight. face brightened, every man half raised himself from his bed or chair, as in homage or expectation. It would be difficult to imagine a cheerier vision than her smiling, rosy, fairy-like presence, or a sweeter sound than her kindly, musical, educated voice, as she moved from bed to bed, now speaking in German, to a pale, blue-eyed Holland boy-and anon chattering off in French to another, who was made superlatively happy by hearing his native tongue. The baskets were unpacked. One received the plain rice pudding which the surgeon had allowed there was currant jelly for an acid drink, for the fevered thirst of another a bit of nicely broiled salt cod-fish for a third — plain molasses gingerbread for a fourth- a cup of boiled custard for a fifth, and so on, as each one's appetite or caprice had suggested. One man wished to make horse-nets, while his amputated limb was healing, and she had brought him the materials. Another had informed her that he could wile away the leaden-footed hours by wood-carving, but he had no tools to work with, and she had brought them for him, in the basket. From the same capacious store, she drew forth paper, envelopes, postage-stamps, pencils, pens, ink, Atlantic Monthlies, Chicago Tribunes, checkers and a checker-board, needles, thread, scissors,

--

"Oh, Miss Safford, you are the good fairy of this hospital!" said one bright, young fellow. "Can't you bring me the invisible seven-leagued boots when you come again, so that I can just step into Milwaukee, and see what a certain little woman and her baby are doing, in whom I am interested.”

This hospital thoroughly visited, Mary flew home, and rejoined us in Hospital number two, with a fresh instalment of baskets and goodies and so on to the end of the whole number. The visiting for that day done, she hastened home with her filled memorandumbook, in which had been noted the wants and wishes for the next day, and began anew the marketing, cooking, packing, etc. Was it wonderful that the frail little creature broke down, almost hopelessly, at the end of two years? In one ward, two men were crying bitterly, and when she inquired the cause, it appeared that the surgeon had given them permission to drink a tumbler of milk, night and morning, but the hospital funds for its purchase were lacking, and "French Maria," the milk-woman, who had just passed through the ward, had refused to let them have it on credit. This was too much for the feeble, babyish sufferers. Mary hurried out and found her, and in their hearing directed her to leave them the coveted milk night and morning, and come to her for payment, to which the milk-maiden gladly assented. In another hospital, the men were all in the dumps. Every one looked sad. "The surgeon sent Mother away this morning," explained one, " and we shall all die now." It was the good "Mother Bickerdyke" whom they were mourning, and who had gone farther south, to the front, that morning, where her heroism and devotion were even more needed than here.

As we were making the tour of the hospitals, a large, stalwart man was brought in on a stretcher, who had been shot the night before, on board one of the gun-boats. It was not a dangerous looking wound — only a little hole in the region of the heart, that I could cover with the tip of my smallest finger- but the great, grand looking man was

dying.

"Is there anything we can do for you ? one of us inquired, after the surgeon had examined him, and he had been placed in bed.

"Too late! too late!" was his only reply, slightly shaking his head.

"Have you no friends to whom you wish us to write?"

He drew from an inside, vest pocket-for his clothing was not removed a letter, enclosing a photograph of a most lovely woman. "You wish us to write to the person who has sent you this letter?"

ment.

He nodded slightly, feebly whispering, "My wife." Clasping her hands, and bowing her head, the dear girl offered a most touching prayer in behalf of the dying man, her voice faltering as she remembered in her petition the absent wife, so near bereave"Amen!" responded the dying man as she closed, in a clear, distinct voice, and then she left him to minister to others. Lifting the photograph to his lips, he kissed it, and gazed at it fondly for a moment, and then clasped it in both his hands. When I returned to his bed, after some twenty minutes' absence, he lay, looking upward, still holding the picture, his face baptized in the most heavenly smile I have ever seen on a human countenance. I spoke to him, but he seemed not to hear me, and there was a faraway look in his eyes, as though his vision reached beyond our ken. The parted lips, the rapt gaze, the ecstatic expression filled me with awe, and I remained transfixed, feeling that if my eyes were unsealed, I might behold the "ministering spirits" that wait on the dying. Still standing there, the wardmaster approached, and laid his fingers on the quiet wrist. He turned to me, and halfwhispered, "He is dead!"

The letter and photograph were placed in my hand, and the duty of informing the widowed wife of her husband's death was assigned to me. Ah, what a letter was that which the dying man had given me! He had evidently not replied to it, for it was not two weeks old, and had not the worn look of having been carried long in his pocket. It was from his wife, informing her husband of the death in the same day, of their two children-baby boys, three years and fifteen months old. It was the letter of a superior woman, who wrote

nobly and tenderly, hiding her own grief, in her desire to comfort her husband.

"I do not feel that we have lost our chil

dren," she wrote, "they are ours still, and we shall go to them, by-and-by. Perhaps, my darling, you may meet them before I do. Their death has removed from me all dread of dying. I can never fear to follow where they have led. And it is a great joy to me to think that they will be the first to welcome me when I enter the immortal world."

I enclosed to the widow her letter, and the photograph taken from the dead hands — for we feared it might not be left with the sleeper, even if we did not remove it - and gave her a detailed account of her husband's death. A correspondence ensued, which stretched itself along the next three years. In the depth of her triple bereavement the poor woman found comfort in the belief that her children and husband were united — that even death did not long divide them.

"she saved my

As I write, the door-bell rings, and a young man who is passing through the city, and who has stopped for a brief call, is ushered into the study. I tell him what I am writing, and that just now, my pen is rambling on concerning Mary Safford, for I know that he has hospital memories of her. I wish, the readers of the REPOSITORY could see how his face kindles, and his "God moistens. eye bless that woman!" he says: life. When I was wounded at Pittsburg Landing, I was carried on board the hospital boat, where she was in attendance. My wound got to bleeding, and though I was faint from loss of blood, I did not know what was the matter. She found it out, though, and had it attended to, just in time to save me. My gracious! how that little creature worked! She was everywhere, doing everything, straightening out affairs, soothing and comforting, singing and praying, cooking and nursing, and keeping the laggards to their work. For herself, she seemed to live on air. And she had grit, too, I tell you. They brought Sam. Houston's son aboard, wounded, a rebel captain, and ordered one of the common soldiers removed from a comfortable berth he had, to make room for the young traitor. Gracious! you should have seen her. She straightened up as if she were ten feet tall, instead of being the little doll of a wo

Many another Union soldier in the West, owes his life to Mary Safford, and is proud to acknowledge it. After the battle of Belmont, she went early on the field, waving her handkerchief tied to a stick above her head, as a flag of truce, and ministered to the wounded, which our army had been obliged to leave behind. No other woman was there. When war broke out in Italy, she was in Florence, and at Madame Mario's invitation, immediately went to work to assist the Italian ladies prepare for the sick and wounded of their soldiers. And so ir.grained is her inclination to help the needy, that in Norway, I heard of her devising ways and means to assist poor girls to emigrate to America, where they had relatives.

From Cairo, we went to Mound City, Paducah, Bird's Point, and other places where were hospitals. Everything was in a chaotic condition, compared with the completer arrangements afterwards made.

There was the greatest prejudice felt and expressed against Protestant nurses in the hospitals, surgeons, medical directors and every other authority, openly clamoring for Sisters of Mercy instead. "Your Protestant nurses are always finding some mare's nest or other, in the shape of abuses," said one surgeon to me," and then they write home about it, and rush into the papers with it, and the result is that we are in hot water all the time. But the Sisters never see anything they ought not to, nor hear anything that they report, and we can get along as comfortably again with them." And everywhere we were instructed to discourage the sending of any but the Catholic sisters into the hospitals, or on

On our way home, we made the acquaintance of General Strong, at Cairo, who was in command of that post. His memory will always be dear to us, for though not a man of great military genius, he manifested throughout so much active sympathy with the soldiers, whether in camp or hospital, and with all who were interested in their behalf, that it was always a pleasure to meet him. I was indebted to him for many favors, refused by other officials, which he granted, not for my sake, simply, but for the sake of humanity — for the sympathy he felt for our suffering men everywhere. I cannot close this sketch without a brief narration of the very last act of kindness he performed, through me, for two of our Chicago "boys," but for which one of them would not now be among the living.

Among the young men who entered the service from the Second Universalist Society of Chicago, was one, who was a universal favorite, who should have been rejected for his physical disability, but whose patriotism and ambition would not allow him to remain behind, when his companions enlisted. He entered the Chicago Mercantile Battery. After many ups and downs, and much hard service, he broke down utterly, and was sent, with one of his comrades, to a St. Louis hospital. He could never again be well enough to enter the service, and if not discharged and sent home, he would soon die in the hospital. This was the message which came to us in the Second Church, where all loved him. Immediate steps were taken to pro