us
faith, and this fact was known to one of the excellent Chaplains who
regularly officiated in the hospitals at St. Louis, and who belonged to
the Old School Presbyterian Church. He had, however, been very glad of
her co-operation and assistance in his work, and in conducting religious
worship in the hospitals, and thus spoke of her to Dr. Eliot, some
months after her death. "Chaplain P. said to me to-day, 'Can you not
send me some one to take the place of Mary Pettes, who died literally a
martyr to the cause six months ago?' 'I don't think,' said he, 'that you
can find another as good as she, for her whole heart was in it, and she
was like sunshine to the hospital. But,' he added, 'all your people [the
Unitarians] work as if they really cared for the soldiers and loved the
cause, and I want more of them.'"

Such was the impression of her goodness and worth, and moral beauty left
by this New England girl upon the minds of those who saw her going about
in the hospitals of St. Louis, during the first year and a-half of the
war, trying to do her part in the great work given us to do as a nation,
and falling a martyr, quite as much as those who fell on the field of
battle, to the cause of her country and liberty:--such the brief record
of a true and spotless life given, in its virgin purity and loveliness,
as a sacrifice well pleasing to God.

LOUISA MAERTZ.

During the winter of 1863, while stationed at Helena, Arkansas, the
writer was greatly impressed with the heroic devotion to the welfare of
the sick soldier, of a lady whom he often met in the hospitals, where
she was constantly engaged in services of kindness to the suffering
inmates, attending to their wants, and alleviating their distress. He
soon learned that her name was Louisa Maertz, of Quincy, Illinois, who
had come from her home all the way to Helena--at a time when the
navigation of the river was rendered dangerous by the firing of
guerrillas from the shore upon the passing steamers--that she might
devote herself to the work of a hospital nurse. At a later period, when
he learned that she had left a pleasant home for this arduous service,
and saw how bravely she endured the discomforts of hospital life in
Helena, where there was not a single well-ordered and well-provided
hospital; how she went from one building to another through the filthy
and muddy town, to carry the delicacies she had obtained from the
Sanitary Commission, and dispense them to