Mrs. Brainard remained a couple of days and returned to Washington. I was soon comfortably provided for. Doctor Wilson, the Brigade Surgeon, furnished me with a good wall tent, which the boys fitted up nicely by flooring, making table, bedstead and chairs, and surrounding it with evergreens, which made my little home as pleasant and inviting as one could desire. About the first work I did was to clean the brick house of which mention has been made. I worked hard two days and a half, assisted by several soldiers detailed from the ambulance corps. The windows, paint and floors looked as though they had been for a long time strangers to soap and water. After I had finished cleaning, and arranged the beds to my liking, supplying those that were destitute with sheets and pillows, I made flower-vases and bouquets with flowers gathered from Secesh gardens, and tried to make the place assume a somewhat home-like appearance. The Seventh seemed to suffer more from disease than the other regiments, yet there was much sickness in all of them. It was often my painful duty to stand by the dying-bed and go down with the departing soul to the “River’s” brink. And then another sad duty remained--that of writing to the friends of the deceased; and I sometimes thought this the saddest part of all. I never held a dying hand until the pulse grew still without wishing I might exchange places with some dear absent one. I will give an extract from a letter received from a bereaved wife, which will express the language of thousands of hearts: “How thankful I am for your kindness to one dearer to me than all earthly friends. Oh, it is hard to give him up!--it seems like tearing my poor heart in pieces. I would have given worlds, had I possessed them, for the privilege of sitting by his side, as you did, even for one short hour. Oh, how anxiously I had looked forward to his coming home, that we might once more enjoy life together. My dear husband did not go into the army for money or pleasure, but because he felt it his duty to serve his country in her hour of peril, and to defend the old flag which had always protected him.... His poor little fatherless children, they know not what a blessing they have lost; but I am comforted with the thought that he is at rest.”