hardly missed being present a few moments at any of them, — never, I am sure, when I was in town. They fascinated me. There was such a pervasive feeling of a really noble purpose, of work done for good and worthy ends, that you felt better by contact with them. Much hard and wearing labor was given. But I doubt whether you can find a woman who was a faithful member of the Concord Soldiers' Aid Society who does not look back with genuine satisfaction to the days and weeks given to its service.

I was in a car bound to New York when a newsboy came through shouting, "Sheridan's great victory at Five Forks! Richmond taken!" Of course there was a great excitement. The tidings seemed too good to be true. But as their veracity became more and more clear, everybody congratulated everybody. The sun seemed to shine brighter and the horizon to grow wider. Then followed Lee's surrender. The war was over. A few days or weeks might elapse before all the scattered forces of the Confederacy should imitate the example of its central army. We had yet to pass through that Saturday, the blackest day in my memory, when we heard of the atrocious and meaningless murder of our great and good President. But the war was over. The great burdens would be lifted. The mighty strain might cease. Such of our sons and brothers as war and disease had spared might come home.

As I look back upon those four years of irrepressible conflict, I cannot feel that they were an unmixed evil. They destroyed forever that one institution which perpetually put apart and kept apart the North and the

South. That of course. They knit us as never before into one strong nationality. Few will deny that. They demonstrated that a republic can, as it were by one stamp of the foot, summon out of the ground an army, and then by one wave of the hand send it back whence it came. So quickly our farmers' boys, our mechanics, our clerks and professional men, became accustomed to the panoply of war; and so silently the great array melted into the ranks of civil life, leaving but little trace of itself. All this we see and admit.

But as memory carries me back to those days, I feel that in a higher than any material sense the war was not an unmixed evil. Great burdens had to be borne. Great gaps were made. Great sorrows were endured. But we were lifted out of ourselves. Mean and petty things were in abeyance. We felt our own pulse beat with the nation's pulse, and quicken or stagnate with its rising or falling fortunes. Yes, it was a great thing to live then. Life had the dignity which comes from consecration to large duties.

The memories of Concord in the Great Civil War are not therefore all sorrowful. How can they be, when they tell of simple devotion to great principles, of beautiful love of native land, of power in men like unto ourselves to do, to dare, to suffer, and to die that the nation might live?

I thank the members of this Grand Army Post for the pleasure, sad and solemn often, and for the renewed inspiration which has come to me, as at your bidding my mind has gone back through all the distractions of these later years, and communed with the mighty memories of a mighty past.

A FORTNIGHT WITH THE SANITARY.

PART OF AN ARTICLE PRINTED IN THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY,
FEBRUARY, 1865.

FOR

Font United States Sanitary Commission. Read

OR three years I had been a thorough believer in the United

ing carefully its publications, listening with tearful interest to the narrations of those who had been its immediate workers at the front, following in imagination its campaigns of love and mercy, from Antietam to Gettysburg, from Belle Plain to City Point, and thence to the very smoke and carnage of the actual battlefield, I had come to cherish an unfeigned admiration for it and its work. For three years, too, I had been an earnest laborer at one of its outposts, striving with others ever to deepen the interest and increase the fidelity of the loyal men and women of a loyal New England town. I was prepared, then, both from my hearty respect for the charity and from my general conception of the nature and vastness of its operations, to welcome every opportunity to improve my knowledge of its plans and practical workings. I therefore gladly accepted the invitation which came to me to visit the headquarters of the Commission at Washington, and to examine for myself the character and amount of the benefits which it confers.

The evening of August 23d found me, after a speedy and pleasant trip southward, safely ensconced in the

sanctum of my good friend Mr. Knapp, the head of the Special Relief Department. Starting from that base of operations, I spent two crowded weeks in ceaseless inquiries. Every avenue of information was thrown wide open. Two days I wandered, but not aimlessly, from office to office, from storehouse to storehouse, from soldiers' home to soldiers' home, conversing with the men who have given themselves up unstintedly to this charity, examining the books of the Commission, gathering statistics, seeing, as it were, the hungry soldier fed and the naked soldier clothed, and the sick and wounded soldier cared for with a more than fraternal kindness. I visited the hospitals, and with my own hands distributed the Sanitary delicacies to the suffering men. Steaming down the Chesapeake and up the James, and along its homeless shores, I came to City Point; was a day and a night on board the Sanitary barges, whence full streams of comfort are flowing with an unbroken current to all our diverging camps; passed a tranquil, beautiful Sabbath in that city of the sick and wounded, whose white tents look down from the bluffs upon the turbid river; rode thirteen miles. out almost to the Weldon Road, then in sharp contest between our Fifth Army Corps and the Rebels; from the hills which Baldy Smith stormed in June saw the spires of Petersburg; went from tent to tent and from bedside to bedside in the field hospitals of the Fifth and Ninth Corps, where the luxuries prepared by willing hands at home were bringing life and strength to fevered lips and broken bodies. I came back with my courage reanimated, and with a more perfect faith in the ultimate triumph of the good cause. I came back with a heartier respect for our soldiers, whose patience in hardship and courage in danger are rivalled only by

the heroism with which they bear the pains of sickness and wounds. I came back especially with the conviction that, no matter how much we had contributed to the Sanitary work, we had done only that which it was our duty to do, and that, so long as we could furnish shelter for our families, and food for our children, it was our plain obligation to give and to continue giving out of our riches or out of our poverty.

Just now the Sanitary is seeking to enter into closer relations with the hospitals through the agency of regular visitors. The advantages of such a policy are manifest. The reports of the visitors will enable the directors to see more clearly the real wants of the sick; and the frequent presence and inquiries of such visitors will tend to repress the undue appropriation of hospital stores by attendants. But the highest benefit will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home you are glad to have your neighbor step in and bring the healthy bracing air of outdoor life into the dimness and languor of your invalid existence. Much more does the sick soldier like it, for ennui, far more than pain, is his great burden. When I was at Washington I accepted with great satisfaction an invitation to go with a Sanitary visitor on her round of duty. When we came to the hospital, I asked the ward-master if he would like to have me distribute among his patients the articles I had brought. He said that he should, for he thought it would do the poor fellows good to see me and receive the gifts from my own hands. The moment I entered there was a stir. Those who could hobble about stumped up to me to see what was going on; some others sat up in bed full of alertness; while the sickest greeted me with a languid smile. As I