nt her request, but once a
sergeant told her, in reply, if she gave any of them a drop of water or
a piece of bread, or dared to come outside her gate for that purpose, he
would pin her to the earth with his bayonet. She defied him, and taking
her pail of water in one hand, and a basket of bread in the other, she
walked directly past him on her errand of mercy; he followed her,
placing his bayonet between her shoulders, just so that she could feel
the cold steel. She turned and coolly asked him why he did not pin her
to the earth, as he had threatened to do, but got no reply. Then some
of the rebels said, "Sergeant, you can't make anything on that woman,
you had better let her alone," and she performed her work unmolested.

Not content with these labors, she visited the burial-place where the
deceased Union prisoners of that loathsome prison-pen at Salisbury were
buried, and transcribed with a loving fidelity every inscription which
could be found there, to let the sorrowing friends of those martyrs to
their country know where their beloved ones are laid. The number of
these marked graves is small, only thirty-one in all, for the greater
part of the four or five thousand dead starved and tortured there till
they relinquished their feeble hold on life, were buried in trenches
four or five deep, and no record of their place of burial was permitted.
Mrs. Johnston also copied from the rebel registers at Salisbury after
the place was captured the statistics of the Union prisoners, admitted,
died, and remaining on hand in each month from October, 1864, to April,
1865. The aggregates in these six months were four thousand and
fifty-four admitted, of whom two thousand three hundred and ninety-seven
died, and one thousand six hundred and fifty-seven remained.

Mrs. Johnston came North in the summer of 1865, to visit her daughter,
who had been placed at a school in Connecticut by the kindness of some
of the officers she had befriended in prison; transportation having been
given her by Generals Schofield and Carter, who testified to the
services she had rendered our prisoners, and that she was entitled to
the gratitude of the Government and all loyal citizens.

[Illustration: MISS EMILY E. PARSONS.
Eng^d. by John Sartain.]

EMILY E. PARSONS.

Among the honorable and heroic women of New England whose hearts were
immediately enlisted in the cause of their country, in its recent
struggle against the rebellion of the