der and system, the thorough ventilation, the well
regulated diet, and the careful and systematic treatment which marked
the management of the great hospitals, for these were to a considerable
extent impossible on shipboard, and especially where the changes of
patients were so frequent.

For a period of nearly seventeen months, during the last two years of
the war, the United States Steamship Connecticut was employed as a
hospital transport, bringing the sick and wounded from City Point to
Washington and Baltimore, and later, closing up one after another, the
hospitals in Virginia and on the shores of Maryland and Delaware, and
transferring their patients to convalescent camps or other hospitals, or
some point where they could be put _en route_ for home. On this
steamship Miss HATTIE R. SHARPLESS commenced her labors as matron, on
the 10th of May, 1864, and continued with only a brief intermission
till September 1st, 1865. She was no novice in hospital work when she
assumed this position. A native and resident of Bloomsburg, Columbia
County, Pa., she had first entered upon her duties as nurse in the Army
in July, 1862, when in connection with Miss Rose M. Billing and Miss
Belle Robinson, the latter being also a Pennsylvanian, she commenced
hospital work at Fredericksburg. Subsequently, with her associate, she
was at the Falls Church Hospital and at Antietam, and we believe also at
Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. She is a lady admirably adapted to the
hospital-work; tender, faithful, conscientious, unselfish, never resting
while she could minister to the suffering, and happiest when she could
do most for those in her care. During her service on the Connecticut,
thirty-three thousand sick and wounded men were conveyed on that steamer
to hospitals in Washington, Alexandria, Baltimore and other points.
Constant and gentle in the discharge of her duties, with a kind and if
possible a cheering word for each poor sufferer, and skillful and
assiduous in providing for them every needed comfort so far as lay in
her power, she proved herself a true Christian heroine in the extent and
spirit of her labors, and sent joy to the heart of many who were on the
verge of despair.

Her religious influence upon the men was remarkable. Never obtrusive or
professional in her treatment of religious subjects, she exhibited rare
tact and ability in bringing those who were in the possession of their
reason and consciousness to converse on their