ng
poverty and sorrow, and swallowing bitter tears, and whispering no word
of sorrows hard to bear, that the husband, far away fighting for his
country, might never know of their sufferings; of the small but
fervently offered alms of little children, of the anguish of parents
waiting the arrival through this channel of tidings of their wounded or
their dead; of heroic nurses going forth to their sad labors in the
hospitals, with their lives in their hands, or returning in their
coffins, or with broken health, the sole reward, beside the soldiers'
thanks, for all their devotion.

Journey after journey Mrs. Livermore made, during the next two years, in
pursuance of her mission, till her name and person were familiar not
only in the camps and hospitals of the great West, but in the assemblies
of patriotic women in the Eastern and Middle States. And all the time
the tireless pen paused not in its blessed work.

In the spring of 1865, another fair was in contemplation. As before,
Mrs. Livermore visited the Eastern cities, for the purpose of obtaining
aid in her project, and as before was most successful.

In pursuance of this object, she made a flying visit to Washington, her
chief purpose being to induce the President to attend the fair, and add
the eclat of his presence and that of Mrs. Lincoln, to the brilliant
occasion. An account of her interview with him whom she was never again
to see in life, which, with her impressions of his character, we gain
from her correspondence with the New Covenant, is appended.

"Our first effort was to obtain an interview with the President and
Mrs. Lincoln--and this, by the way, is usually the first effort of all
new comers. We were deputized to invite our Chief Magistrate to attend
the great Northwestern Fair, to be held in May--and this was our errand.
With the escort of a Senator, who takes precedence of all other
visitors, it is very easy to obtain an interview with the President, and
as we were favored in this respect, we were ushered into the audience
chamber without much delay. The President received us kindly, as he does
all who approach him. He was already apprised of the fair, and spoke of
it with much interest, and with a desire to attend it. He gave us a most
laughable account of his visit to the Philadelphia Fair, when, as he
expressed it, 'for two miles it was all people, where it wasn't houses,'
and where 'he actually feared he should be pulled from the carriage
windows