d, responded, by night or by day,
to the signal gun, fired whenever one or more regiments of soldiers were
passing through the city, and hastening to the Volunteer or the Cooper
Shop Refreshment Saloons, spread before the soldiers an ample repast,
and served them with a cordiality and heartiness deserving all praise.
Four hundred thousand soldiers were fed by these willing hands and
generous hearts, and in hospitals connected with both Refreshment
Saloons the sick were tenderly cared for.

In the large general hospitals of Washington, Philadelphia, New York,
Cincinnati, and St. Louis, in addition to the volunteer and paid nurses,
there were committees of ladies, who, on alternate days, or on single
days of each week, were accustomed to visit the hospitals, bringing
delicacies and luxuries, preparing special dishes for the invalid
soldiers, writing to their friends for them, etc. To this sacred duty,
many women of high social position devoted themselves steadily for
nearly three years, alike amid the summer's heat and the winter's cold,
never failing of visiting the patients, to whom their coming was the
most joyous event of the otherwise gloomy day.

But these varied forms of manifestation of patriotic zeal would have
been of but little material service to the soldiers, had there not been
behind them, throughout the loyal North, a vast network of organizations
extending to every village and hamlet, for raising money and preparing
and forwarding supplies of whatever was needful for the welfare of the
sick and wounded. We have already alluded to the spontaneity and
universality of these organizations at the beginning of the war. They
were an outgrowth alike of the patriotism and the systematizing
tendencies of the people of the North. It might have been expected that
the zeal which led to their formation would soon have cooled, and,
perhaps, this would have been the case, but for two causes, viz.: that
they very early became parts of more comprehensive organizations
officered by women of untiring energy, and the most exalted patriotic
devotion; and that the events of the war constantly kept alive the zeal
of a few in each society, who spurred on the laggards, and encouraged
the faint-hearted. These Soldiers' Aid Societies, Ladies' Aid
Associations, Alert Clubs, Soldiers' Relief Societies, or by whatever
other name they were called, were usually auxiliary to some Society in
the larger cities, to which their several contri