Her poems, written chiefly for weekly papers--since they were either on homely fireside topics or incidents of the war, or else were religious meditations--were widely copied, and found their way into the scrap-books of thoughtful households all over the land. Referring to the winter of 1863, she said, “I have written for the newspapers this winter. My ideas of the ‘Atlantic’ are too high for me often to offer it anything my thoughts let slip. My standard is so far beyond my performances, that I am very glad to let them glide away unnoticed, and unnamed, on the path of the weekly tide wave of print.” Though Mr. Fields was equal to the task of polite editorial refusal, he gladdened her heart by occasionally accepting a poem. It was through his literary judgment that “Hilary,” that tender lyric of sea-sorrow, with its wistfulness and pathos, first saw the light; and the indignant strains of “A Loyal Woman’s No” were first heard from the pages of the “Atlantic.” These successes opened the way for poems of greater merit, like the “Rose Enthroned.” Her interest in the war was intense. She followed eagerly the progress of the campaigns, and rejoiced in every victory, often writing verses to celebrate the events, as in the case of the sinking Merrimac:-- “Gone down in the flood, and gone out in the flame! What else could she do, with her fair Northern name?” Her satire was ready for those able-bodied men who, when the drafting was talked of, were suddenly seized with many varieties of disease, or those who went a-fishing for the season--because mariners were exempt--or, like one man, who cut off three fingers, hoping that the loss of these members would be sufficient to keep him at home. She wanted to do something herself: “I am almost ashamed of these high sentiments in print, because I really have done nothing for our dear country as yet. These things sound conceited and arrogant to me, under the circumstances, but I only write from an ideal of patriotic womanhood, and for my country-women.” She came near offering herself as a teacher for the “Contrabands,” but some of her friends thought it unwise in the state of her health at the time, and she concluded that she was not fitted for the work, with the rather sad confession, “I have an unconquerable distrust of my own fitness for these angel ministries; I fear I am not worthy to suffer. I can think, write, and teach, but can I live?” In August, 1863, she was called to the West by the serious illness of her sister Louisa, which terminated fatally. TO MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS. HAMMOND, WIS., September 11, 1863.