ostly widows and children, who were constantly arriving from
the exposed and desolated portions of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee,
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, sent North often by military authority
as deck passengers on Government boats to get them away from the
military posts in our possession further South. For one year Miss
Elliott managed the internal affairs of this institution with great
efficiency and good judgment, under circumstances that were very trying
to her patience and fortitude. Many of the refugees were of the class
called "the poor white trash" of the South, filthy, ragged, proud,
indolent, ill-mannered, given to the smoking and chewing of tobacco,
often diseased, inefficient, and either unwilling or unable to conform
to the necessary regulations of the Home, or to do their own proper
share of the work of the household, and the keeping of their apartments
in a state of cleanliness and order.

It was a great trial of her Christian patience to see families of
children of all ages, dirty, ragged, and ill-mannered, lounging in the
halls and at the front door, and their mothers doing little better
themselves, getting into disputes with each other, or hovering round a
stove, chewing or smoking tobacco, and leaving the necessary work
allotted to them neglected and undone. But out of this material and this
confusion Miss Elliott, by her efficiency and force of character,
brought a good degree of cleanliness and order. Among other things she
established a school in the Home, gathered the children into it in the
evening, taught them to spell, read and sing, and inspired them with a
desire for knowledge.

At the end of a year of this kind of work Miss Elliott was called to the
position of matron of the Soldiers' Orphans' Home, at Farmington, Iowa,
which she accepted and filled for several months, with her usual
efficiency and success, when, after long and arduous service for the
soldiers, for the refugees and for the orphans of our country's
defenders, she returned to the home of her family, and to the society
and occupations for which she was preparing herself before the war.

MARY DWIGHT PETTES.

To one who was accustomed to visit the military hospitals of St. Louis,
during the first years of the war, the meeting with Mary Dwight Pettes
in her ministry to the sick and wounded soldiers must always return as a
pleasant and sacred memory. And such an one will not fail to recall how
she carried to