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or mend the gaping seams in their now 'historic garments.' When at last the supplies are exhausted, and sunset reminds us that we are yet many miles from home, we gather up the remnants, bid good by to the friendly faces which already seem like old acquaintances, promising to come again to visit new regiments to-morrow, and hurry home to prepare for the next day's work.

"Every day, from the first to the twentieth day of June, our little band of missionaries has repeated a day's work such as I have now described. Every regiment, except some which were sent home before we were able to reach them, has shared alike in what we had to give. And I think I speak for all in saying that among the many pleasant memories connected with our sanitary work, the last but not the least will be our share in the Field Relief.

"Yours respectfully,

"MRS. STEPHEN BARKER."

AMY M. BRADLEY.

ERY few individuals in our country are entirely ignorant of the beneficent work performed by the Sanitary Commission during the late war; and these, perhaps,

are the only ones to whom the name of Amy M. Bradley is unfamiliar. Very early in the war she commenced her work for the soldiers, and did not discontinue it until some months after the last battle was fought, completing fully her four years of service, and making her name a synonym for active, judicious, earnest work from the beginning to the end.

Amy M. Bradley is a native of East Vassalboro', Kennebec County, Maine, where she was born September 12th, 1823, the youngest child of a large family. At six years of age she met with the saddest of earthly losses, in the death of her mother. From early life it would appear to have been her lot to make her way in life by her own active exertions. Her father ceased to keep house on the marriage of his older daughters, and from that time until she was fifteen she lived alternately with them. Then, she made her first essay in teaching a small private school.

At sixteen she commenced life as a teacher of public schools, and continued the same for more than ten years, or until 1850.

To illustrate her determined and persistent spirit during the first four years of her life as a teacher she taught country schools during the summer and winter, and during the spring and fall attended the academy in her native town, working for her board in private families.

At the age of twenty-one, through the influence of Noah Woods, Esq., she obtained an appointment as principal of one of the Grammar Schools in Gardiner, Maine, where she remained until the fall of 1847. At the end of that time she resigned and accepted an appointment as assistant in the Winthrop Grammar School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, obtained for her by her cousin, Stacy Baxter, Esq., the principal of the Harvard Grammar School in the same city. There she remained until the winter of 1849-50, when she applied for a similar situation in the Putnam Grammar School, East Cambridge (where higher salaries were paid) and was successful. She remained, however, only until May, when a severe attack of acute bronchitis so prostrated her strength as to quite unfit her for her duties during the whole summer. She had previously suffered repeatedly from pneumonia. Her situation was held for her until the autumn, when finding her health not materially improved, she resigned and prepared to spend the winter at the South in the family of a brother residing at Charleston, South Carolina.

Miss Bradley returned from Charleston the following spring. Her winter in the South had not benefited her as she had hoped and expected, and she found herself unable to resume her occupation as a teacher.

During the next two years her active spirit chafed in forced idleness, and life became almost a burden. In the autumn of 1853, going to Charlestown and Cambridge to visit friends, she met the physician who had attended her during the severe illness that terminated her teacher-life. He examined her lungs, and gave it as his opinion that only a removal to a warmer climate could preserve her life through another winter, and that the following months of frost and cold spent in the North must undoubtedly in her case develop pulmonary consumption.

To her these were words of doom. Not possessed of the means for travelling, and unable, as she supposed, to obtain a livelihood

in a far off country, she returned to Maine, and resigned herself with what calmness she might, to the fate in store for her.

But Providence had not yet developed the great work to which she was appointed, and though sorely tried, and buffeted, she was not to be permitted to leave this mortal scene until the objects of her life were fulfilled. Through resignation to death she was, perhaps, best prepared to live, and even in that season when earth seemed receding from her view, the wise purposes of the Ruler of all in her behalf were being worked out in what seemed to be an accidental manner.

In the family of her cousin, Mr. Baxter, at Charlestown, Massachusetts, there had been living, for two years, three Spanish boys from Costa Rica, Central America. Mr. Baxter was an instructor of youth and they were his pupils. About this period their father arrived to fetch home a daughter who was at school in New York, and to inquire what progress these boys were making in their studies. He applied to Mr. Baxter to recommend some lady who would be willing to go to Costa Rica for two or three years to instruct his daughters in the English language. Mr. Baxter at once recommended Miss Bradley as a suitable person and as willing and desirous to undertake the journey. The situation was offered and accepted, and in November, 1853, she set sail for Costa Rica.

After remaining a short time with the Spanish family, she accepted a proposition from the American Consul, and accompanied his family to San Josè, the Capital, among the mountains, some seventy miles from Punta Arenas, where she opened a school receiving as pupils, English, Spanish, German, and American children. This was the first English school established in Central America. For three months she taught from a blackboard, and at the end of that time received from New York, books, maps, and all the needful apparatus for a permanent school.

This school she taught with success for three years.

At the

end of that time learning that the health of her father, then eighty-three years of age, was rapidly declining, and that he was unwilling to die without seeing her, she disposed of the property and "good-will" of her school, and as soon as possible bade adieu to Costa Rica. She reached home on the 1st of June, 1857, after an absence of nearly four years. Her father, however, survived for several months.

Her health which had greatly improved during her stay in the salubrious climate of San Josè, where the temperature ranges at about 70° Fahrenheit the entire year, again yielded before the frosty rigors of a winter in the Pine Tree State, and for a long time she was forced to lead a very secluded life. She devoted herself to reading, to the study of the French and German languages, and to teaching the Spanish, of which she had become mistress during her residence in Costa Rica.

In the spring of 1861, she went to East Cambridge, where she obtained the situation of translator for the New England Glass Company, translating commercial letters from English to Spanish, or from Spanish to English as occasion required.

This she would undoubtedly have found a pleasant and profitable occupation, but the boom of the first gun fired at Sumter upon the old flag stirred to a strange restlessness the spirit of the granddaughter of one who starved to death on board the British Prison Ship Jersey, during the revolution. She felt the earnest desire, but saw not the way to personal action, until the first disastrous battle of Bull Run prompted her to immediate effort.

She wrote to Dr. G. S. Palmer, Surgeon of the Fifth Regiment Maine Volunteers, an old and valued friend, to offer her services in caring for the sick and wounded. His reply was quaint and characteristic. "There is no law at this end of the route, to prevent your coming; but the law of humanity requires your immediate presence."

As soon as possible she started for the seat of

war,

and on the

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