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On the 1st of January, the
Governor received the following letter from
Miss Philena M. Upham, of
Leicester, Massachusetts:—
When I was in Queen-street Hospital, Alexandria, with my young nephew, who was wounded at the battle of Cedar Mountain, and who has since died of his wounds, a suffering soldier in one of the hospitals there remarked, “ If I only had such a scrap-book as my sister used to make, wouldn't I enjoy it?”
The wish was renewed by others.
I stored their desires in a cell of my brain to be brought forth for future use. The last eleven weeks, I have assiduously devoted every moment of time I could spare from housekeeping duties in filling an old ledger of my father's with quotations to win some wounded soldier's smile.
Now, sir, if you think the book will achieve the purpose intended, I would ask you, as one of the soldiers' most faithful friends, to bestow it as a free — will offering upon the hospital where, in your judgment, it may be a drop in the bucket towards stealing the minds of the wounded from their long days of anguish and nights of pain.
This letter the
Governor forwarded the next day to
Senator Sumner, with a request that he would present the book to
Miss Anna Lowell, ‘for the use of the patriots of the
Amory-square Hospital.’
‘I am sure,’ he said, ‘that you will be interested, as a philanthropist, in this labor of love for the soldiers, and, as a man of letters, in the very unique book which is the result of this excellent lady's industrious zeal.’
On the 5th of January, the
Governor wrote to
Samuel Hooper, member of Congress from this State, that he had been informed that the chief of the Ordnance Bureau at
Washington had told him that it would assume the guns purchased or contracted for by
Mr. Forbes and
Lieutenant-Colonel Ritchie on account of
Massachusetts, and would pass them through the
Custom House, as if imported for account of the
United States, but on condition that the guns correspond with the United-States army calibres:—
‘Now,’ said the Governor, ‘the fact must be well known to any ordnance officer of common intelligence, that the English army calibres and ours do not correspond.
The Blakely ordnance and Lowinoor ’
