ur minds went trooping a procession of
the shoeless feet we had longed to comfort. But behold! every blessed
shoe of the one hundred and forty-four was for the left foot!

"There was an enormous box from a city laundry, containing the unclaimed
'washings' of many years--hundreds of waiters' aprons and cooks' caps,
worn hotel towels and napkins, ragged shirts and collars--not a thing
worth the lumber in the box, except as old linen for the hospitals.
There was a great deal of bedraggled finery, than which nothing could
have been less appropriate, when nine out of every ten women who applied
for clothes, wanted plain black in which to mourn for their dead. And
the hats and bonnets were of every shape and style within the memory of
man! They were mostly so crushed in careless packing that to have
worshiped them would have been no sin, according to Scripture, as they
were no longer in the 'likeness of anything in the heavens above, or the
earth beneath, or the waters under the earth.' There were workmen's
blouses and overalls, evidently shed in haste, under a sudden impulse of
generosity--plastered with grease, paint, and mortar, and odoriferous of
that by which honest bread is said to be earned.

"Occasionally a box or barrel was found to contain garments
disgracefully dirty and ragged, or dropping in pieces from the ravages
of moths. Possibly the sending of such worthless trash produced in the
hearts of the donors that comfortable feeling of lending to the
Lord--but it was no use at our end of the line. What to do with it was a
problem. The lowest plantation darky would regard the gift as an insult,
and to burn even the filthiest rags would give rise to stories of wanton
waste. So we hit upon an expedient which had been successfully employed
in other fields--that of putting worthless articles in nice, clean
barrels, rolling them out on the doorstep, and forgetting to bring them
in at night; and every morning the barrels were found empty.

"In striking contrast to these few 'shadows' were such gifts as that of
the New England girl, who sent a large, carefully packed satchel,
accompanied by a letter, explaining that she was seventeen years of age,
and had taken from her own wardrobe an outfit, intended for a
flood-sufferer of about her own age, whom the clothes would fit. The
satchel contained three good suits complete, from hat to hose--all that
a girl would need--even veil, handkerchiefs and fan; and it is needless
to a