inished, they went there to dine, at seven o'clock. Often, despite
pleasant conversation, and attractive viands, the sense of fatigue,
before unfelt, would attack Mrs. Gibbons, and at the table she would
fall asleep. But the morning would find her with strength restored, and
ready for the toil of the coming day.

The winter of 1865 will long be remembered in New York for the ravages
of small-pox in that city. The victims were not confined to any class,
or locality, and there were perhaps as many in the homes of wealth, as
in the squalid dwelling-places of the poor.

Mrs. Gibbons was suddenly summoned home to nurse her youngest daughter,
in an attack of varioloid. This was accomplished, and the young lady
recovered. But this closed the army labors of the mother. She did not
return, though Mrs. Emerson remained till the close of the hospital the
following spring, when the end of the war rendered their further
services in this work unnecessary, and they once more found themselves
settled in the quiet of home.

MRS. E. J. RUSSELL.

We have spoken in previous sketches of the faithfulness and devotion of
many of the government nurses, appointed by Miss Dix. No salary,
certainly not the meagre pittance doled out by the government could
compensate for such services, and the only satisfactory reason which can
be offered for their willingness to render them, is that their hearts
were inspired by a patriotism equally ardent with that which actuated
their wealthier sisters, and that this pitiful salary, hardly that
accorded to a green Irish girl just arrived in this country from the
bogs of Erin, was accepted rather as affording them the opportunity to
engage more readily in their work, than from any other cause. In many
instances it was expended in procuring necessary food or luxuries for
their soldier-patients, and in others, served to prevent dependence upon
friends, who had the disposition but perhaps hardly the ability to
furnish these heroic and self-denying nurses with the clothing or
pocket-money they needed in their work.

It is of one of these nurses, a lady of mature age, a widow, that we
have now to speak. Mrs. E. J. Russell, of Plattekill, Ulster County, New
York, was at the commencement of the war engaged in teaching in New York
city. In common with the other ladies of the Reformed Dutch Church, in
Ninth Street, of which she was a member, she worked for the soldiers at
every spare moment, but the cause se