a thought not
far from the heart and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or
doing, or possible for them, held worthiest of our thought and time.

Respecting these, we have had all to learn. True, with us, satisfaction
has at all times followed close upon the announcement of a need; but
wisdom in planning and administering is not a marketable commodity, and
so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,--the whole mighty
nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee
quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some
of our grandest charities--I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest
sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers--have been the inspiration
of a moment's need,--thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at
instance of the heart, think well and swiftly. Take this one example.

When New England's sons seized their arms, the first to answer the
trumpet-call that rang out over the land, and went in the spirit of
their fathers to the battle,--when these men passed through
Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the great heart of the city went out to
meet them. Citizens brought them into their houses, the neighboring
shops gave gladly what they could, women came running with food snatched
from their own tables, and even little squalid children toddled out of
by-lanes and alleys with loaves and half-loaves, all that they had to
give, so did the whole people yearn over their defenders; and then it
was seen how other regiments would come to them, ready for the fray, but
dusty and way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring them back parched
and fainting, and--it was hardly known how, only that, as in the old
times, "the people were of one mind and one accord," and brought of such
things as they had; but on that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to
them those who fell in Baltimore on the memorable nineteenth of
April,--the heroes in whom all claim a share, and the right to say, not
only Massachusetts's dead and wounded, but ours--there was ready for
them a shelter in the unpretending building famous since as the Cooper
Shop. There the people crowded about them, weeping, blessing, consoling;
and from that day there has no regiment from New England, New York, or
any other State, been suffered to pass through Philadelphia unrefreshed.
Water was supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the Volunteer Corps
always in attendance, within five minutes after the firing of