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engaged since April, 1861, with uninterrupted health and unparalleled success, making soldiers and mothers and wives glad, and heaven rejoice over repenting sinners.
Here is another sketch of a soldiers' friend who labored in some of our largest hospitals.
‘She is a character,’ writes a soldier,
a Napoleon of her department; with the firmness and courage of Andrew, she possesses all the energy and independence of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.
The officials hate her; the soldiers adore her. The former name her “The great Eastern,” and steer wide of her track; the latter go to her in all their wants and troubles, and know her by the name of “Miss sally.”
She joined the army in one of the regiments from Alabama, about the time of the battle of Manassas, and never shrunk from the stern privations of the soldier's life from the moment of leaving camp to follow her wounded and sick Alabamians to the hospitals of Richmond.
Her services are not confined, however, to the sick and wounded from Alabama.
Every sick soldier has now a claim on her sympathy.
Why, but yesterday, my system having succumbed to the prevailing malaria of the hospital, she came to my room, though a stranger, with my ward nurse, and in the kindest manner offered me her services, and soon after leaving returned to present me with a pillow of feathers, with case as tidy as the driven snow.
The very sight of it was soothing to an aching brow, and I blessed her from heart and lips as well.
I must not omit to tell why “Miss sally” is so disliked by many of the officials.
Like all women of energy, she has eyes whose penetration few things escape, and a sagacity fearful or admirable, as the case may be, to all interested.
If any abuse is pending, or in progress in the hospital, she is quickly on the track, and if not abated, off “The great Eastern” sails to Headquarters.
A few days ago, one of the officials of the division sent a soldier to inform her that she must vacate her room instantly.
“Who sent you with that message to me?”
she asked him, turning suddenly around.
“Dr. ——,” the soldier answered.
“Pish!”
she replied, and swept on in ineffable contempt to the bedside, perhaps, of some sick soldier.
She always has plenty of money to expend in her charitable enterprises, and when not attending in the wards, or at the cooking-stove, dresses with care in the neatest black silk.
Such a woman merits an honorable fame.
