ordered to report for service to Surgeon General Hammond. Here we
met Isaac Newton, Commissioner of Agriculture, waiting for our arrival,
and James Austin of Nantucket, expecting his son, Charles L. Austin, and
Edward W. Holway of Sandwich, Mass., conscripted Friends like ourselves,
and ordered here from the 22nd Massachusetts.

We understand it is through the influence of Isaac Newton that Friends
have been able to approach the heads of Government in our behalf and to
prevail with them to so great an extent. He explained to us the
circumstance in which we are placed. That the Secretary of War and
President sympathized with Friends in their present suffering, and would
grant them full release, but that they felt themselves bound by their
oaths that they would execute the laws, to carry out to its full extent
the Conscription Act. That there appeared but one door of relief
open,--that was to parole us and allow us to go home, but subject to
their call again ostensibly, though this they neither wished nor
proposed to do. That the fact of Friends in the Army and refusing
service had attracted public attention so that it was not expedient to
parole us at present. That, therefore, we were to be sent to one of the
hospitals for a short time, where it was hoped and expressly requested
that we would consent to remain quiet and acquiesce, if possible, in
whatever might be required of us. That our work there would be quite
free from objection, being for the direct relief of the sick; and that
there we would release none for active service in the field, as the
nurses were hired civilians.

These requirements being so much less objectionable than we had feared,
we felt relief, and consented to them. I.N. went with us himself to the
Surgeon General's office, where he procured peculiar favours for us:
that we should be sent to a hospital in the city, where he could see us
often; and that orders should be given that nothing should interfere
with our comfort, or our enjoyment of our consciences.

Thence we were sent to Medical Purveyor Abbot, who assigned us to the
best hospital in the city, the Douglas Hospital.

The next day after our coming here Isaac Newton and James Austin came to
add to our number E.W.H. and C.L.A., so now there are five of us instead
of three. We are pleasantly situated in a room by ourselves in the upper
or fourth story, and are enjoying our advantages of good quarters and
tolerable food as no one can excep