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

ances.

the call came for nurses, she waited upon Miss Dix, was accepted, and sent first to the Regimental Hospital of the Twentieth New York Militia, National Guard, then stationed at Annapolis Junction. On arriving there she found that the regiment consisted of men from her own county, her former neighbors and acquaintThe regiment was soon after ordered to Baltimore, and being in the three months' service, was mustered out soon after, and Mrs. Russell was assigned by Miss Dix to Columbia College Hospital, Washington. Here she remained in the quiet discharge of her duties, until June, 1864, not without many trials and discomforts, for the position of the hired nurse in these hospitals about Washington, was often rendered very uncomfortable by the discourtesy of the young assistant surgeons. Her devotion to her duties had been so intense that her health was seriously impaired, and she resigned, but after a short period of rest, her strength was sufficiently recruited for her to resume her labors, and she reported for duty at West Building Hospital, Baltimore, where she remained until after Lee's surrender. She was in the service altogether four years, lacking eighteen days. During this time. nine hundred and eighty-five men were under her care, for varying periods from a few days to thirteen months; of these ninety died, and she closed the eyes of seventy-six of them. Her service in Baltimore was in part among our returned prisoners, from Belle Isle, Libby and other prisons, and in part among the wounded rebel prisoners.

Many of the incidents which Mrs. Russell relates of the wounded who passed under her care are very touching. Many of her earlier patients were in the delirium of typhoid fever, and her ears and heart were often pained in hearing their piteous calls for their loved ones to come to them,-to forgive them or to help them. Often had she occasion to offer the consolations of religion to those who were evidently nearing the river of death, and sometimes she was made happy in finding that those who were suffering terribly from racking pain, or the agony of wounds,

were comforted and cheered by her efforts to bring them to think of the Saviour. One of these, suffering from an intense fever, as she seated herself by the side of his cot, and asked him in her quiet gentle way, if he loved Jesus as his Saviour, clasped her hand in his and folding it to his heart, asked so earnestly, "Do you love Jesus too? Oh, yes, I love him. I do not fear to die, for then I shall join my dear mother who taught me to love him." He then repeated with great distinctness a stanza of the hymn, "Jesus can make a dying bed," etc., and inquired if she could sing. She could not, but she read several hymns to him. His joy and peace made him apparently oblivious of his suffering from the fever, and he endeavored as well as his failing strength would permit, to tell her of his hopes of immortality, and to commend to her prayers his only and orphaned sister.

Another, a poor fellow from Maine, dying of diphtheria, asked her to pray for him and to read to him from the Bible. She commended him tenderly to the Good Shepherd, and soon had the happiness of seeing, even amid his sufferings, that his face was radiant with joy. He selected a chapter of the Bible which he wished her to read, and then sent messages by her to his mother and friends, uttering the words with great difficulty, but passing away evidently in perfect peace.

Since the war, Mrs. Russell has resumed her profession as a teacher at Newburgh, New York.

MRS. MARY W. LEE.

T is somewhat remarkable that a considerable number of the most faithful and active workers in the hospitals and in other labors for the soldier during the late war, should have been of foreign birth. Their patriotism and benevolence was fully equal to that of our women born under the banner of the stars, and their joy at the final triumph of our arms was as fervent and hearty. Our readers will recall among these noble women, Miss Wormeley, Miss Clara Davis, Miss Jessie Home, Mrs. General Ricketts, Mrs. General Turchin, Bridget Divers, and others.

Among the natives of a foreign land, but thoroughly American in every fibre of her being, Mrs. Mary W. Lee stands among the foremost of the earnest persistent toilers of the great army of philanthropists. She was born in the north of Ireland, of Scotch parentage, but came with her parents to the United States when she was five years of age, and has ever since made Philadelphia her home. Here she married Mr. Lee, a gold refiner, and a man of great moral worth. An interesting family had grown up around them, all, like their parents thoroughly patriotic. One son enlisted early in the war, first, we believe, in the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, and afterward in the Seventy-second Pennsylvania Volunteers, and served throughout the war, and though often in peril, escaped any severe wounds. A daughter, Miss Amanda Lee, imbued with her mother's spirit, accompanied her