CHARLOTTE BRADFORD.

HIS lady, like her friend, Miss Abby W. May, of Boston, though a woman of extraordinary attainments and culture, and an earnest outspoken advocate of the immediate abolition of slavery before the War, is extremely averse to any mention of her labors in behalf of the soldiers, alleging that they were not worthy to be compared with the sacrifices of those humbler and unnamed heroines, who in their country homes, toiled so incessantly for the boys in blue. We have no desire to detract one iota of the honors justly due to these noble and self-sacrificing women; but when one is called to a position of more prominent usefulness than others, and performs her duties with great ability, system and perseverance, though her merits may be no greater than those of humbler and more obscure persons, yet the public position which she assumes, renders her service so far public property, that she cannot with justice, refuse to accept the consequences of such public action or the sacrifices it entails. Holding this opinion we deem it a part of our duty to speak of Miss Bradford's public and official life. With her motives and private feelings we have no right to meddle.

So far as we can learn, Miss Bradford's first public service in connection with the Sanitary Commission, was in the Hospital Transport Corps in the waters of the Peninsula, in 1862. Here she was one of the ladies in charge of the Elm City, and afterward of the Knickerbocker, having as associates Mrs. Bailey,

Miss Helen L. Gilson, Miss Amy M. Bradley, Mrs. Balestier, Miss Gardner and others.

Miss Bradley was presently called to Washington by the officers of the Sanitary Commission, to take charge of the Soldiers' Home then being established there, and Miss Bradford busied herself in other Relief work. In February following, Miss Bradley relinquished her position as Matron of the Home, to enter upon her great work of reforming and improving the Rendezvous of Distribution, which under the name of "Camp Misery," had long been the opprobrium of the War Department, and Miss Bradford was called to succeed her in charge of the Soldiers' Home at Washington. Of the efficiency and beneficence of her administration here for two and a half years there is ample testimony. Thoroughly refined and ladylike in her manners, there was a quiet dignity about her which controlled the wayward and won the respect of all. Her executive ability and administrative skill were such, that throughout the realm where she presided, everything moved with the precision and quietness of the most perfect machinery. There was no hurry, no bustle, no display, but everything was done in time and well done. To thousands of the soldiers just recovering from sickness or wounds, feeble and sometimes almost disheartened, she spoke words of cheer, and by her tender and kind sympathy, encouraged and strengthened them for the battle of life; and in all her intercourse with them she proved herself their true and sympathizing friend.

After the close of the war, Miss Bradford returned to private life at her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

UNION VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT

SALOON OF PHILADELPHIA.

W

E have already in our sketch of the labors of Mrs. Mary W. Lee, one of the most efficient workers for the soldiers in every position in which she was placed, given some account of this institution, one of the most remarkable philanthropic organizations called into being by the War, as in the sketch of Miss Anna M. Ross we have made some allusions to the Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloon, its rival in deeds of charity and love for the soldier. The vast extent, the wonderful spirit of self-sacrifice and persevering patience and fidelity in which these labors were performed, demand, however, a more than incidental notice in a record like this.

No philanthropic work during the war was more thoroughly free from self-seeking, or prompted by a higher or nobler impulse than that of these Refreshment Saloons. Beginning in the very first movements of troops in the patriotic feeling which led a poor man * to establish his coffee boilers on the sidewalk to give a cup of hot coffee to the soldiers as they waited for the train to take them on to Washington, and in the generous impulses of women in humble life to furnish such food as they could provide for the soldier boys, it grew to be a gigantic enterprise in its results, and the humble commencement ere long developed into two rival but not hostile organizations, each zealous to do the most for the de

*Mr. Bazilla S. Brown.

fenders of their country. Very early in the movement some men of larger means and equally earnest sympathies were attracted to it, and one of them, a thorough patriot, Samuel B. Fales, Esq., gave himself wholly to it for four and a half years. The interest of the community was excited also in the labors of these humble men and women, and the enterprise seldom lacked for funds; the zealous and earnest Chairman, Mr. Arad Barrows, and Corresponding Secretary, Mr. Fales, of the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, took good care of that part of the work, and Mr. W. M. Cooper and his associates did the same for the Cooper Shop Saloon.

Ample provision was made to give the regiments the benefit of a bath and an ample repast at whatever hour of day or night they might come into the city. In the four and a half years of their labors, the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon fed between eight hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand soldiers and expended about one hundred thousand dollars in money, aside from supplies. The Cooper Shop Saloon, closing a little earlier, fed about four hundred thousand men and expended nearly seventy thousand dollars. Both Saloons had hospitals attached to them for sick and wounded soldiers. The Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon had, during the war, nearly fifteen thousand patients, the Cooper Shop, perhaps half that number.

But noble and patriotic as were the labors of the men connected with these Saloons, they were less deserving of the highest meed of praise than those of the women who, with a patience and fidelity which has never been surpassed, winter and summer, in cold and heat, at all hours of night as well as in the day, at the boom of the signal gun, hastened to the Refreshment Saloons and prepared those ample repasts which made Philadelphia the Mecca to which every soldier turned longingly during his years of Army life. These women were for the most part in the middle and humbler walks of life; they were accustomed to care for their own households, and do their own work; and it required no small degree of self-denial and patriotic zeal on their part, after a day of

the housekeeper's never ending toil, to rise from their beds at midnight (for the trains bringing soldiers came oftener at night than in the day time), and go through the darkness or storm, a considerable distance, and toil until after sunrise at the prosaic work of cooking and dish-washing.

Of some of these noble women we have the material for brief sketches, and we know of none more deserving a place in our record.

MRS. ELIZA G. PLUMMER was a native of Philadelphia, of revolutionary stock, born in 1812, and had been a widow for nearly twenty-five years. Though possessed of but little property, she had for many years been the friend and helper of the poor, attending them in sickness, and from her scanty purse and by her exertions, securing to them a decent and respectable Christian burial when they were called to die. At the very commencement of the War, she entered into the Refreshment Saloon enterprise with a zeal and perseverance that never flagged. She was particularly devoted to the hospital, and when the accommodations of the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon Hospital were too limited for the number who needed relief, as was the case in 1862, she received a considerable number of the worst cases of sick or wounded soldiers into her own house, and nursed them without any compensation till they recovered. At the second fair held by the Saloon in June, 1863, she was instant in season and out of season, feeding the soldiers as well as attending the fair; and often remaining at her post till long after midnight. In July and August, 1863, she was constantly engaged in nursing the wounded from Gettysburg, who crowded the Saloon Hospitals for some time, and in supplying the needs of the poor fellows who passed through in the Hospital Cars on their way to Northern hospitals. For these she provided tea and toast always, having everything ready immediately on their arrival. These excessive labors impaired her health, and being called to nurse her aged blind mother during a severe fit of sickness, her strength failed