sanctum of my good friend Mr. Knapp,
the head of the Special Relief Department. Starting from that base of
operations, I spent two crowded weeks in ceaseless inquiries. Every
avenue of information was thrown wide open. Two days I wandered, but not
aimlessly, from office to office, from storehouse to storehouse, from
soldiers' home to soldiers' home, conversing with the men who have given
themselves up unstintedly to this charity, examining the books of the
Commission, gathering statistics, seeing, as it were, the hungry soldier
fed and the naked soldier clothed, and the sick and wounded soldier
cared for with a more than fraternal kindness. I visited the hospitals,
and with my own hands distributed the Sanitary delicacies to the
suffering men. Steaming down the Chesapeake, and up the James, and along
its homeless shores, I came to City Point; was a day and a night on
board the Sanitary barges, whence full streams of comfort are flowing
with an unbroken current to all our diverging camps; passed a tranquil,
beautiful Sabbath in that city of the sick and wounded, whose white
tents look down from the bluffs upon the turbid river; rode thirteen
miles out almost to the Weldon Road, then in sharp contest between our
Fifth Army Corps and the Rebels; from the hills which Baldy Smith
stormed in June saw the spires of Petersburg; went from tent to tent and
from bedside to bedside in the field hospitals of the Fifth and Ninth
Corps, where the luxuries prepared by willing hands at home were
bringing life and strength to fevered lips and broken bodies. I came
back with my courage re-animated, and with a more perfect faith in the
ultimate triumph of the good cause. I came back with a heartier respect
for our soldiers, whose patience in hardship and courage in danger are
rivalled only by the heroism with which they bear the pains of sickness
and wounds. I came back especially with the conviction, that, no matter
how much we had contributed to the Sanitary work, we had done only that
which it was our duty to do, and that, so long as we could furnish
shelter for our families and food for our children, it was our plain
obligation to give and to continue giving out of our riches or out of
our poverty.

* * * * *

I have felt that in no way could I do better service than by seeking to
answer for others the very questions which my fortnight with the
Sanitary has answered for me. Most, no doubt, have a genera