of acknowledgement had to be written, applications answered, accounts kept, proceedings recorded, information and advice given, reports written and published, all of which devolved upon the faithful and devoted Secretary, who was ever at her post, and constant and unremitting in her labors. Soldiers' families had also to be assisted; widows and orphans to be visited and cared for; rents, fuel, clothing, and employment to be provided, and the destitute relieved, of whom there were thousands whose husbands, and sons, and brothers, were absent fighting the battles of the Union.

Missouri was, during the first year of the war, a battle-ground. St. Louis and its environs were crowded with troops; the Hospitals were large and numerous; during the winter of 1861-2, there were twenty thousand sick and wounded soldiers in them; and the concurrent labors of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, and the Western Sanitary Commission, were in constant requisition. The visiting of the sick, ministering to them at their couches of pain, reading to them, cheerful conversation with them, were duties which engaged many of the ladies of the Society; and numerous interesting and affecting incidents were preserved by Miss Adams, and embodied in the Reports of the Association. She also did her share in this work of visiting; and during the winter of 1863-4, she went to Nashville, Tennessee, and established there a special diet kitchen, upon which the surgeons in charge of the hospitals, could make requisitions for the nicer and more delicate preparations of food for the very sick. She remained all winter in Nashville, in charge of a branch of the St. Louis Aid Society, and, by her influence, secured the opening of the hospitals to female nurses, who had hitherto not been employed in Nashville. Knowing, as she did, the superior gentleness of women as nurses, their more abundant kindness and sympathy, and their greater skill in the preparation of food for the sick; knowing also the success that had attended the experiment of introducing women nurses in the Military Hospitals in other cities,

she determined to overcome the prejudices of such of the army surgeons as stood in the way, and secure to her sick and wounded brothers in the hospitals at Nashville, the benefit of womanly kindness, and nursing, and care. In this endeavor she was entirely successful, and by her persuasive manners, her womanly grace and refinement, and her good sense, she recommended her views to the medical authorities, and accomplished her wishes.

Returning to St. Louis in the spring of 1864, she continued to perform the duties of Secretary of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, till the end of the year, when, in consequence of a contemplated change in her life, she resigned her position, and retired from it with the friendship and warm appreciation of her coworkers in the useful labors of the society. In the month of June, 1865, she was married to Morris Collins, Esq., a citizen of St. Louis.

MRS. C. R. SPRINGER, who has labored so indefatigably at St. Louis, for the soldiers of the Union and their families during the war, was born in Parsonsfield, Maine. Her maiden name was Lord. Previous to her marriage to Mr. Springer, a respectable merchant of St. Louis, she was a teacher in New Hampshire. On the event of her marriage, she came to reside at St. Louis, about ten years ago, and on the breaking out of the war, espoused with patriotio ardor the cause of her country in its struggle with the great slaveholding rebellion. To do this in St. Louis, at that period, when wealth and fashion, and church influence were so largely on the side of the rebellion, and every social circle was more or less infected with treason, required a high degree of moral courage and heroism.

From the first opening of the hospitals in St. Louis, in the autumn of 1861, Mrs. Springer became a most untiring, devoted and judicious visiter, and by her kind and gracious manners, her words of sympathy and encouragement, and her religious consolation, she imparted hope and comfort to many a poor, sick, and wounded soldier, stretched upon the bed of languishing.

Besides her useful labors in the hospitals, Mrs. Springer was an active member of the Ladies' Union Aid Society in St. Louis, from the date of its organization in August, 1861, to its final disbanding-October, 1865-in the deliberations of which her counsel always had great weight and influence. During the four years of its varied and useful labors for the soldiers and their families, she has been among its most diligent workers. In the winter of 1862, the Society took charge of the labor of making up hospital garments, given out by the Medical Purveyor of the department, and she superintended the whole of this important work during that winter, in which one hundred and twenty-seven thousand five hundred garments were made.

Mrs. Springer is a highly educated woman, of great moral worth, devoted to the welfare of the soldier, inspired by sincere love of country, and a high sense of Christian duty. No one will be more gratefully remembered by thousands of soldiers and their families, to whom she has manifested kindness, and a warm interest in their welfare. These services have been gratuitously rendered, and she has given up customary recreations, and sacrificed ease and social pleasure to attend to these duties of humanity. Her reward will be found in the consciousness of having done good to the defenders of her native land, and in the blessing of those who were ready to perish, to whom her kind services, and words of good cheer came as a healing balm in the hour of despondency, and strengthened them for a renewal of their efforts in the cause of country and liberty.

Among the devoted women who have made themselves martyrs to the work of helping our patriotic soldiers and their families in St. Louis, was the late MRS. MARY E. PALMER. She was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, June 28th, 1827, and her maiden name was Locker. She was married in February, 1847, to Mr. Samuel Palmer. In 1855 she removed to Kansas, and in 1857 returned as far eastward as St. Louis, where she resided until her death.

In the beginning of the war, when battles began to be fought, and the sick and wounded were brought to our hospitals to be treated and cared for, Mrs. Palmer with true patriotic devotion and womanly sympathy offered her services to this good cause, and after a variety of hospital work in the fall of 1863, she entered into the service of the Ladies' Union Aid Society of St. Louis as a regular visiter among the soldiers' families, many of whom needed aid and work, during the absence of their natural protectors in the army. It was a field of great labor and usefulness; for in so large a city there were thousands of poor women, whose husbands often went months without pay, or the means of sending it home to their families, who were obliged to appeal for assistance in taking care of themselves and children. To prevent imposition it was necessary that they should be visited, the requisite aid rendered, and sewing or other work provided by which they could earn a part of their own support, a proper discrimination being made between the worthy and unworthy, the really suffering, and those who would impose on the charity of the society under the plea of necessity.

In this work Mrs. Palmer was most faithful and constant, going from day to day through a period of nearly two years, in summer and winter, in sunshine and storm, to the abodes of these people, to find out their real necessities, to report to the society and to secure for them the needed relief.

Her labors also extended to many destitute families of refugees, who had found their way to St. Louis from the impoverished regions of Southern Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and who would have died of actual want, but for the charity of the Government and the ministering aid of the Western Sanitary Commission and the Ladies' Union Aid Society. In her visits and her dispensations of charity Mrs. Palmer was always wise, judicious, and humane, and enjoyed the fullest confidence of the society in whose service she was engaged. In the performance of her duties she was always thoroughly con

scientious, and actuated by a high sense of religious duty. From an early period of her life she had been a consistent member of the Baptist Church, and her Christian character was adorned by a thorough consecration to works of kindness and humanity which were performed in the spirit of Him, who, during his earthly ministry, "went about doing good."

By her arduous labors, which were greater than her physical constitution could permanently endure, Mrs. Palmer's health became undermined, and in the summer of 1865 she passed into a fatal decline, and on the 2d of August ended a life of usefulness on earth to enter upon the enjoyments of a beatified spirit in heaven.