under the title of "The Crutch." This was well supplied with articles, many of them of real merit, both by officials and patients. Whenever an important movement took place, or a battle, it was the custom to issue a small extra giving the telegraphic account; when, if it were a victory, the feeble sufferers who had sacrificed so much for their country, would spend the last remnants of their strength, and make the very welkin ring, with their shouts of gladness.

Exhausted by her labors, and the various calls upon her efforts, Mrs. Tyler, in the spring of 1864, was at length obliged to send in her resignation. Her health seemed utterly broken down, and her physicians and friends saw in an entire change of air and scene the best hope of her recovery. She had for some time been often indisposed, and her illness at last terminated in fever and chills. Though well accustomed during her long residence to the climate of Maryland, she no longer possessed her youthful powers of restoration and reinvigoration. Her physicians advised a sea voyage as essential to her recovery, and a tour to Europe was therefore determined upon.

She left the Naval School Hospital on the 27th of May, 1864, and set sail from New York on the 15th of June.

The disease did not succumb at once, as was hoped. She endured extreme illness and lassitude during her voyage, and was completely prostrated on her arrival in Paris where she lay three weeks ill, before being able to proceed by railroad to Lucerne, Switzerland, and rejoin her sister who had been some months in Europe, and who, with her family, were to be the traveling companions of Mrs. Tyler. Arrived at Lucerne, she was again prostrated by chills and fever, and only recovered after removal to the dryer climate of Berlin. The next year she was again ill with the same disease after a sojourn among the dykes and canals of Holland.

Mrs. Tyler spent about eighteen months in Europe, traveling over various parts of the Continent, and England, where she

remained four or five months, returning to her native land in November, 1865, to find the desolating war which had raged here at the time of her departure at an end. Her health had been by this time entirely re-established, and she is happy in the belief that long years of usefulness yet remain to her.

Ardent and fearless in her loyalty to her Government, Mrs. Tyler had ample opportunities, never neglected, to impress the truth in regard to our country and its great struggle for true liberty, upon the minds of persons of all classes in Europe. Her letters of introduction from her friends, from Bishop Whittingham and others, brought her into frequent contact with people of cultivation and refinement who, like the masses, yet held the popular belief in regard to the oppression and abuse of the South by the North, a belief which Mrs. Tyler even at the risk of offending numerous Southern friends by her championship, was sure to combat. Like other intelligent loyal Americans she was thus the means of spreading right views, and accomplishing great good, even while in feeble health and far from her own country. For her services in this regard she might well have been named a Missionary of Truth and Liberty.

One instance of her experience in contact with Southern sympathizers with the Rebellion, we take the liberty to present to the readers of this sketch. Mrs. Tyler was in London when the terrible tidings of that last and blackest crime of the Rebellion— the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was received. She was paying a morning visit to an American friend, a Southerner and a Christian, when the door was suddenly thrust open and a fiendish-looking man rushed in, vociferating, "Have you heard the news? Old Abe is assassinated! Seward too! Johnson escaped. Now if God will send an earthquake and swallow up the whole North-men, women, and children, I will say His name be praised !"

All this was uttered as in one breath, and then the restless form, and fierce inflamed visage as suddenly disappeared, leaving

horrid imprecations upon the ears of the listeners, who never supposed the fearful tale could be true. Mrs. Tyler's friend offered the only extenuation possible-the man had "been on board the Alabama and was very bitter." But in Mrs. Tyler's memory that fearful deed is ever mingled with that fiendish face and speech.

The next day the Rebel Commissioner Mason, replying to some remarks of the American Minister, Mr. Adams, in the Times, took occasion most emphatically to deprecate the insinuation that the South had any knowledge of, or complicity in this crime.

MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN.

T the opening of the war Mrs. Holstein was residing in a most pleasant and delightful country home at Upper Merion, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In the words of one who knows and appreciates her well—“Mr. and Mrs. Holstein are people of considerable wealth, and unexceptionable social position, beloved and honored by all who know them, who voluntarily abandoned their beautiful home to live for years in camps and hospitals. Their own delicacy and modesty would forbid them to speak of the work they accomplished, and no one can ever know the greatness of its results."

As Mrs. Holstein was always accompanied by her husband, and this devoted pair were united in this great patriotic and kindly work, as in all the other cases, duties and pleasures of life, it would be almost impossible, even if it were necessary, to give any separate account of her services for the army. This is shown in the following extracts from a letter, probably not intended for publication, but which, in a spirit far removed from that of self-praise, gives an account of the motives and feelings which actuated her, and of the opening scenes of her public services.

"The story of my work, blended as it is, (and should be) so intimately with that of my husband, in his earnest wish to carry out what we felt to be simply a matter of duty, is like an 'oft told tale' not worth repeating. Like all other loyal women in

our land, at the first sound and threatening of war, there sprang up in my heart an uncontrollable impulse to do, to act; for anything but idleness when our country was in peril and her sons marching to battle.

"It seemed that the only help woman could give was in providing comforts for the sick and wounded, and to this, for a time, I gave my undivided attention. I felt sure there was work for me to do in this war; and when my mother would say 'I hope, my child, it will not be in the hospitals,'-my response was ever the same 'Wherever or whatever it may be, it shall be done with all my heart.'

"At length came the battle of Antietam, and from among us six ladies went to spend ten days in caring for the wounded. But craven-like, I shrank instinctively from such scenes, and declined to join the party. But when my husband returned from there, one week after the battle, relating such unheard of stories of suffering, and of the help that was needed, I hesitated no longer. In a few days we collected a car load of boxes, containing comforts and delicacies for the wounded, and had the satisfaction of taking them promptly to their destination.

"The first wounded and the first hospitals I saw I shall never forget, for then flashed across my mind, 'This is the work God has given you to do,' and the vow was made, 'While the war lasts we stand pledged to aid, as far as is in our power, the sick and suffering. We have no right to the comforts of our home, while so many of the noblest of our land so willingly renounce theirs.' The scenes of Antietam are graven as with an 'iron pen' upon my mind. The place ever recalls throngs of horribly wounded men strewn in every direction. So fearful it all looked to me then, that I thought the choking sobs and blinding tears would never admit of my being of any use. To suppress them, and to learn to be calm under all circumstances, was one of the hardest lessons the war taught.

"We gave up our sweet country home, and from that date