strengthen the fainting heart; and
I remember how the notes penetrated to every part of the building.
Soldiers with less severe wounds, from the rooms above, began to crawl
out into the entries, and men from below crept up on their hands and
knees, to catch every note, and to receive of the benediction of her
presence--for such it was to them. Then she went away. I did not know
who she was, but I was as much moved and melted as any soldier of them
all. This is my first reminiscence of Helen L. Gilson."

Thus far Miss Gilson's cares and labors had been bestowed almost
exclusively on the white soldiers; but the time approached when she was
to devote herself to the work of creating a model hospital for the
colored soldiers who now formed a considerable body of troops in the
Army of the Potomac. She was deeply interested in the struggle of the
African race upward into the new life which seemed opening for them, and
her efforts for the mental and moral elevation of the freedmen and their
families were eminently deserving of record.

Dr. Reed relates how, as they were passing down the Rappahannock and up
the York and Pamunky rivers to the new temporary base of the army at
Port Royal, they found a government barge which had been appropriated to
the use of the "contrabands," of whom about a thousand were stowed away
upon it, of all ages and both sexes, all escaped from their former
masters in that part of Virginia. The hospital party heard them singing
the negroes' evening hymn, and taking a boat from the steamer rowed to
the barge, and after a little conversation persuaded them to renew their
song, which was delivered with all the fervor, emotion and _abandon_ of
the negro character.

When their song had ceased, Miss Gilson addressed them. She pictured the
reality of freedom, told them what it meant and what they would have to
do, no longer would there be a master to deal out the peck of corn, no
longer a mistress to care for the old people or the children. They were
to work for themselves, provide for their own sick, and support their
own infirm; but all this was to be done under new conditions. No
overseer was to stand over them with the whip, for their new master was
the necessity of earning their daily bread. Very soon new and higher
motives would come; fresh encouragements, a nobler ambition, would grow
into their new condition. Then in the simplest language she explained
the difference between their former relations wi