ess and gentleness of her external
demeanor, one soon detects a firmness of determination, and a fixedness
of will. No doubt, once determined upon the duty and propriety of any
course, she will pursue it calmly and persistently to the end. It is to
these qualifications, and physical and moral traits, that she owes the
undoubted power and influence exercised in her late mission.

MRS. JOHN HARRIS.

He would have been a man of uncommon sagacity and penetration, who in
the beginning of 1861, should have chosen Mrs. Harris as capable of the
great services and the extraordinary power of endurance with which her
name has since been identified. A pale, quiet, delicate woman, often an
invalid for months, and almost always a sufferer; the wife of a somewhat
eminent physician, in Philadelphia, and in circumstances which did not
require constant activity for her livelihood, refined, educated, and
shrinking from all rough or brutal sights or sounds, she seemed one of
those who were least fitted to endure the hardships, and encounter the
roughnesses of a life in the camp or field hospitals.

But beneath that quiet and frail exterior, there dwelt a firm and
dauntless spirit. She had been known by her neighbors, and especially in
the church of which she was an honored member, as a woman of remarkable
piety and devotion, and as an excellent and skilful attendant upon the
sick. When the war commenced, she was one of the ladies who assembled to
form the Ladies' Aid Society of Philadelphia, and was chosen, we believe
unanimously, Corresponding Secretary. She seems to have entered upon the
work from the feeling that it was a part of her duty, a sacrifice she
was called to make, a burden which she ought to bear. And through the
war, mainly from her temperament, which inclined her to look on the dark
side, she never seemed stimulated or strengthened in her work by that
abiding conviction of the final success of our arms, which was to so
many of the patient workers, the day-star of hope. Like Bunyan's Master
Fearing, she was always apprehensive of defeat and disaster, of the
triumph of the adversary; and when victories came, her eyes were so dim
with tears for the bereaved and sorrow-stricken, and her heart so heavy
with their griefs that she could not join in the songs of triumph, or
smile in unison with the nation's rejoicings. We speak of this not to
depreciate her work or zeal, but rather to do the more honor to both.
The despon