Arriving in Washington, I was taken to the house of a lady widely known for her labors of love for the soldiers--a loyal Washingtonian, the only one of her family who remained true to the cause of freedom and right during the dark days of the rebellion. The fatigue of the journey brought on a relapse, so that I was not able to leave the city for five weeks. I then returned to Michigan, and remained through the winter, recruiting my health and collecting money for the benefit of the soldiers. I learned during that illness, as I never could in health, how to appreciate the gratitude so often manifested by soldiers, even for trifling favors. I can now understand the feelings expressed by a wounded soldier in a letter received from him since the close of the war, in which he asks if I remember the flowers I gave him while in a hospital at Fredericksburg; and then spoke of the good they did him, and the tears he shed over them. “Why,” he added, “for a while they caused me to forget my pain, and I felt a renewed courage to bear my sufferings more bravely, for to me they were a token of sympathy, and I felt that I was not forgotten.” As I perused this letter, how vividly I recalled a little incident that occurred in my own experience, while sick at City Point. One afternoon, Dr. Smith, of the First Michigan Cavalry, brought me a bunch of beautiful wild-flowers, most delicately tinted. I had not seen a flower, or scarcely a green leaf or a spire of grass for weeks before, which caused them to be the more fully appreciated. Oh, how many times during those lonely hours they were as a friend to me, with whom I conversed; and often-times tears would unbidden start as I gazed upon their loveliness, for of all the beautiful things in this beautiful world, they alone adorned my “canvas home.” They were placed in a cup by my bed, where they remained until they began to wither, and their little petals to fall off; then I pressed them in my Bible, and I still cherish them as sweet mementoes from a fragrant oasis in that sandy desert.