She endured persecution, received annoyances, anonymous threats, and had much to bear, which was borne cheerfully for the sake of these oppressed ones. General Lockwood, then commander of the post, was always the friend of herself and her protegés, a man of great kindness of heart, and a lover of justice.

As has been said, they remained at Point Lookout fifteen months. The summer following her introduction to the place, Mrs. Gibbons visited home, and after remaining but a short time returned to her duties. She had left all at home tranquil and serene, and did not dream of the hidden fires which were even then smouldering, and ready to burst into flame.

She had not long returned before rumors of the riots in New York, the riots of July, 1863, reached Point Lookout.

"If private houses are attacked, ours will be one of the first," said Miss Gibbons, on the reception of these tidings, and though her mother would not listen to the suggestion, she very well knew it was far from impossible.

That night they retired full of apprehension, and had not fallen asleep when some one knocked at their door with the intimation that bad news had arrived for them. They asked if any one was dead, and on being assured that there was not, listened with comparative composure when they learned that their house in New York had been sacked by the mob, and most of its contents destroyed.

The remainder of the night was spent in packing, and in the morning they started for home.

It was a sad scene that presented itself on their arrival. There was not an unbroken pane of glass in any of the windows. The panels of the doors were many of them beaten in as with an axe. The furniture was mostly destroyed, bureaus, desks, closets, receptacles of all kinds had been broken open, and their contents stolen or rendered worthless; the carpets, soaked with a trampled conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined;

beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, as had the sofas and chairs upon their velvet seats, fires that were, none knew how, extinguished.

Over all were scattered torn books and valuable papers, the correspondence with the great minds of the country for years, trampled into the grease and filth, half burned and defaced. The relics of the precious only son, who had died a few years before the beautiful memorial room, filled with pictures he had loved, beautiful vases, where flowers always bloomed; and a thousand tokens of the loved and lost, had shared the universal ruin. So had the writings and the clothing of the lamented father, Isaac T. Hopper-of all these priceless mementoes, there remained only the marble, life-size, bust of the son, which Mr. Gibbons had providentially removed to a place of safety, and a few minor objects. And all this ruin, and irreparable loss, had been visited upon this charitable and patriotic family, by a furious, demoniac mob, because they loved Freedom, Justice, and their country.

After this disaster the family were united beneath a hired roof for some time, while their own house was repaired, and the fragments of its scattered plenishing, and abundant treasures, were gathered together and reclaimed.

Mrs. Gibbons returned for a brief space to Point Lookout, where her purpose was to instal the Misses Woolsey, and then leave them in charge of the hospital.

Circumstances, however, prevented her from leaving the Point for a much longer period than she had intended to stay, and when she did leave, she was accompanied by the Misses Woolsey, and the whole party returned to New York together.

We have no record of the further army work of Mrs. and Miss Gibbons until the opening of the grand campaign of the Army of the Potomac, the following May.

Immediately after the battle of the Wilderness, Mrs. Gibbons

received a telegram desiring her to come to the aid of the wounded. She resolved at once to go, and urged her daughter to accompany her, as she had always done before. Miss Gibbons had, in the meantime, married, and in the course of a few weeks become a widow. She felt reluctant to return to the work she had so loved, but her mother's wish prevailed. The next day they started, and in a very short space of time found themselves amidst the horrible confusion and suffering which prevailed at Belle Plain.

Their stay there was but brief, and in a short time they were themselves established at Fredericksburg. There Mrs. Gibbons was requested to take charge of a hospital, or rather a large unfurnished building, which was to be used as one. In great haste straw was found to fill the empty bed-sacks, which were placed upon the floor, and the means to feed the suffering mass who were expected. The men, in all the forms of suffering, were placed upon these beds, and cared for as well as they could be, as fast as they arrived, and Mrs. Emerson prepared food for them, standing unsheltered in rain or sultry heat.

For weeks they toiled thus. One day when the town was beautiful and fragrant with the early roses, some regiments of Northern soldiers landed and marched through the town, on their way to the front. The patriotic women gathered there, cheered them as they marched on, and gathered roses which they offered in a fragrant shower, with which the men decorated caps and button-holes. They passed on; but two days later the long train of ambulances crept down the hill, bringing back these heroes to their pitying country women, the roses withering on their breasts, and dyed with their sacred patriot blood.

Through all the horrors of this sad campaign, Mrs. Gibbons and Mrs. Emerson remained, doing whatever their hands could find to do. When Fredericksburg was evacuated, they accompanied the soldiers, riding in the open box-cars, and on the way administering to them as they could.

They were for a time at White House, where thousands of wounded required and received their aid, and afterwards at City Point, where they remained for several weeks in charge of the hospital of the Second Division, being from first to last, among the most useful of the many noble women who were engaged in this work.

After their return home, Mrs. Gibbons accepted an appointment at the hospital in Beverly, New Jersey, where she had charge under Dr. Wagner, the excellent surgeon she had known, and to whom she had become much attached, at Point Lookout. As usual, Mrs. Emerson accompanied her to this place, and lent her efforts to the great work to which both had devoted themselves.

There were about nineteen hundred patients in this hospital, and the duties were arduous. They boarded with the family of Dr. Wagner, adjacent to the hospital, and after the labors of the day were mostly finished, they went there to dine, at seven o'clock. Often, despite pleasant conversation, and attractive viands, the sense of fatigue, before unfelt, would attack Mrs. Gibbons, and at the table she would fall asleep. But the morning would find her with strength restored, and ready for the toil of the coming day.

The winter of 1865 will long be remembered in New York for the ravages of small-pox in that city. The victims were not confined to any class, or locality, and there were perhaps as many in the homes of wealth, as in the squalid dwelling-places of the poor.

Mrs. Gibbons was suddenly summoned home to nurse her youngest daughter, in an attack of varioloid. This was accomplished, and the young lady recovered. But this closed the army labors of the mother. She did not return, though Mrs. Emerson remained till the close of the hospital the following spring, when the end of the war rendered their further services in this work unnecessary, and they once more found themselves settled in the quiet of home.

MRS. E. J. RUSSELL.

W

E have spoken in previous sketches of the faithfulness and devotion of many of the government nurses, appointed by Miss Dix. No salary, certainly not the meagre pittance doled out by the government could compensate for such services, and the only satisfactory reason which can be offered for their willingness to render them, is that their hearts were inspired by a patriotism equally ardent with that which actuated their wealthier sisters, and that this pitiful salary, hardly that accorded to a green Irish girl just arrived in this country from the bogs of Erin, was accepted rather as affording them the opportunity to engage more readily in their work, than from any other cause. In many instances it was expended in procuring necessary food or luxuries for their soldierpatients, and in others, served to prevent dependence upon friends, who had the disposition but perhaps hardly the ability to furnish these heroic and self-denying nurses with the clothing or pocketmoney they needed in their work.

It is of one of these nurses, a lady of mature age, a widow, that we have now to speak. Mrs. E. J. Russell, of Plattekill, Ulster County, New York, was at the commencement of the war engaged in teaching in New York city. In common with the other ladies of the Reformed Dutch Church, in Ninth Street, of which she was a member, she worked for the soldiers at every spare moment, but the cause seemed to her to need her personal services in the hospital, and in ministrations to the wounded o sick, and when