ng. Potatoes, received from Iowa, and dried fruit and
canned, have been distributed among the men. Many of them are from Iowa.
'What could we do without these stores?' is the constant inquiry."

"Almost every article of special diet has been cooked by Mrs. Bickerdyke
personally, and all has been superintended by her."

After the close of the Atlanta Campaign and the convalescence of the
greater part of the wounded, Mrs. Bickerdyke returned to Chicago for a
brief period of rest, but was soon called to Nashville and Franklin to
attend the wounded of General Thomas's Army after the campaign which
ended in Hood's utter discomfiture. When Savannah was surrendered she
hastened thither, and after organizing the supply department of its
hospitals, she and Mrs. Porter, who still accompanied her, established
their system of Field Relief in Sherman's Campaign through the
Carolinas. When at last in June, 1865, Sherman's veterans reached the
National Capitol and were to be mustered out, the Sanitary Commission
commenced its work of furnishing the supplies of clothing and other
needful articles to these grim soldiers, to make their homeward journey
more comfortable and their appearance to their families more agreeable.
The work of distribution in the Fifteenth and Seventeenth Army Corps was
assigned to Mrs. Bickerdyke and Mrs. Porter, and was performed, says
Mrs. Barker, who had the general superintendence of the distribution,
admirably. With this labor Mrs. Bickerdyke's connection with the
sanitary work of the army ceased. She had, however, been too long
engaged in philanthropic labor, to be content to sit down quietly, and
lead a life of inaction; and after a brief period of rest, she began to
gather the more helpless of the freedmen, in Chicago, and has since
devoted her time and efforts to a "Freedmen's Home and Refuge" in that
city, in which she is accomplishing great good. Out of the host of
zealous workers in the hospitals and in the field, none have borne to
their homes in greater measure the hearty and earnest love of the
soldiers, as none had been more zealously and persistently devoted to
their interests.

[Illustration: MISS MARGARET E. BRECKENRIDGE.
Eng^d. by A.H. Ritchie.]

MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE.

A true heroine of the war was Margaret Elizabeth Breckinridge. Patient,
courageous, self-forgetting, steady of purpose and cheerful in spirit,
she belonged by nature to the heroic order, while all the circu