ver suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,--and
yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope
given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything
heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital
Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening
suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son,
mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out
in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,--or your lover,
girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,--or your
husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your
tears.

"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and
its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine
hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care
now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,--you
can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but
the officers must care for the living,--"let the dead bury their dead";
and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying,
suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital
Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the
Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put
you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong
upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I
call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the
inquiries:--"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy
is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two
nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the
service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put
soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown,
Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.

"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States
Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of
November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to
Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western
Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in
that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to
Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty perf