As I was returning from Washington the next day, where I had been to look after my Fairfax patients, I met on the boat a lady with a little child, who had come from Maine to see her husband, who was sick at Camp Convalescent. What a look, almost of despair, was depicted on her countenance when she learned that this camp was nearly four miles from Alexandria, the going very bad, and there being no public mode of conveyance. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “What shall I do? what shall I do? Were it not for my child, I would go on foot.” It was my happy privilege to relieve her distress by assuring her that a way should be provided. Arriving at Alexandria, I ordered an ambulance and carried her to the camp. What a happy meeting! Had I never before seen gratitude, I saw it then. In working for the soldiers, every little deed of kindness was so fully appreciated, and so richly rewarded with thanks and tears, that there was a pleasure experienced in it no where else to be found. The month of July, 1863, was an eventful period in the history of the nation. A period of hope and fear, of joy and sorrow, of excitement and alarm, of bloody conflicts, of defeat and victory, of untold suffering and death. Lee’s advance into Pennsylvania, the terrible battles of Gettysburg, of Falling Waters, the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the wearisome march from Vicksburg to Jackson, in which so many died from exhaustion, from thirst and the oppressive heat, the re-taking of Jackson, the capture of Huntsville, Morgan’s raid into Ohio, the great draft riot in New York, and much else of importance that transpired during the month of July, are too well remembered to need repetition here. The nation has not yet forgotten the joyful tidings, that the discomfited Lee was in full retreat from Gettysburg; nor the wild bursts of enthusiasm, the shouts of victory that rent the air when the news came flashing over the wires that Vicksburg, “the city of an hundred hills,” “the heroic city,” had fallen. Fortune, the “fickle goddess,” so long, it would seem, in league with the enemy, became propitious and smiled upon our cause. _CHAPTER VIII._ PLACES OF INTEREST IN ALEXANDRIA--BALTIMORE--A SINGULAR STORY--DEATH OF A MASSACHUSETTS SOLDIER--THE SERIOUSLY WOUNDED--ERIE--MY SISTER’S SICKNESS--HARRISBURG--YORK--REBEL WOUNDED--A PARALYTIC--WASHINGTON HOSPITALS--FREQUENT BATTLES--NEW ARRIVALS--MRS. GRAY--AFFLICTED FRIENDS--DR. TRUE. On returning to Alexandria I found comparatively few Michigan men in the hospitals, and these mostly convalescent; therefore my work in this place entirely ceased for several weeks.