Here comes a ready helper. Yes, John, roll them right into our room, and please bring a hatchet and open that box for us; I know it’s all sticky, but that can’t be helped, we must do the best with it that we can. And now, while he is taking the lid of the box off for us, and opening the barrels, take a seat and look round you. This is the ladies’ room, where we spend so much of our time, and where all our work is done. But first, let me put our kettle on the stove, we must soon begin our cooking; for as I have told you, we prepare the delicacies for the men who are ill; cook eggs for them, stew oysters, make corn-starch, farina, arrow root, or chocolate; don’t laugh! yes, even I have found “ignorance” so far from “bliss,” that with M.’s valuable instructions, I am really learning to do something useful, incredible as it appears to you. What do you say? That you would not care to test the truth of my statements by taste? Ah well! you shall not be tried, and in the meantime the men are satisfied, which is my only aim. The clothing you see here on the shelves, consists almost entirely of donations. We do not keep the Government clothing here--at least only certain articles--as all the flannel is drawn by the men and taken from their pay; but we have been so liberally supplied from the different Churches, and from various societies, that it has generally been in our power to give them what they need, and allow them to retain the articles. “Well, little one, come here, bring me your box, and I will empty it for you. Nice fresh lint, all linen, and clean, too; that will be much better than what you brought before; and now here is your box; I will tell the poor wounded soldiers that a kind little girl made it for them; and, goodbye now, run home, for we have so little room here, and so many things to do, that little girls are only in the way.” This is only the advance guard of the little army, which daily, from “morn till dewy eve,” keeps pouring in, company after company,--I might almost say regiment after regiment,--with their little boxes or papers of lint, often made of muslin, and bearing the impress of the little soiled fingers that picked it. But we always receive it and thank them. Whether it can be used or not, the kind intention is the same, and who could have the heart to refuse the offering of a child? More than this, the beaming faces and sunny smiles with which they present it, as though it were some precious gift, more than atone for the time they occupy in attending to them.