dent temperament and the intense sympathy with sorrow were
constitutional, or the result of years of ill-health, and that under
their depressing influence, with no step of her way lighted with the
sunshine of joy, she should have not only continued faithful to her
work, but have undergone more hardships and accomplished more, for the
soldiers than most others, reflects the highest credit upon her
patience, perseverance and devotion to the cause.

We have elsewhere in this volume given an account of the origin and
progress of the Ladies' Aid Society, of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harris,
though continued as its Corresponding Secretary through the war, was,
during the greater part of the time, its correspondent in the field, and
left to the other officers, the work of raising and forwarding the money
and supplies, while she attended in person to their distribution. This
division of labor seems to have satisfied her associates, who forwarded
to her order their hospital stores and money with the most perfect
confidence in her judicious disposition of both. Other Societies, such
as the Penn Relief, the Patriotic Daughters of Lancaster, and Aid
Societies from the interior of Pennsylvania, as well as the Christian
and Sanitary Commissions, made her their almoners, and she distributed a
larger amount of stores, perhaps, than any other lady in the field.

The history of her work during the war, is given very fully, in her
correspondence with the Ladies' Aid Society, published in their
semi-annual reports. From these we gather that she had visited in 1861,
and the winter of 1862, before the movement of the army to the
peninsula, more than one hundred hospitals of the army of the Potomac,
in and around Washington, and had not only ministered to the physical
wants of the sick and wounded men, but had imparted religious
instruction and consolation to many of them. Everywhere her coming had
been welcomed; in many instances, eyes dimmed by the shadow of the wings
of the death-angel, saw in her the wife or mother, for whose coming they
had longed and died, with the hallowed word "mother" on their lips.

When in the spring of 1862, the army of the Potomac moved to the
Peninsula, Mrs. Harris went thither, first distributing as far as
practicable, her stores among the men. Soon after her arrival on the
Peninsula, she found ample employment for her time. The Chesapeake and
Hygeia hospitals at Fortress Monroe, filled at first mostly with the
sick