Of the fourteen large hospitals in Washington, ten consisted of barracks and tents, containing from twenty to thirty, and even as many as eighty wards each. The barracks would accommodate from fifty to sixty patients each, and the tent wards about twenty. These buildings were not all constructed upon the same plan, but were variously arranged. In some, the barracks extended along three sides of a square enclosure, with head-quarters at the front; in others, they enclosed a triangular piece of ground with head-quarters at the apex; while in others this building was in the centre, with barracks extending to the right and left, and tents in the rear, and thus on for all the others--each being constructed upon a plan independent of the rest. Within the enclosed space were the kitchen, dining-room, chapel, and laundry, and the balance of the ground was devoted to gardening purposes and to the cultivation of flowers. The front yards were also beautifully laid out, containing gravel walks, evergreens, flower-beds, and in some were cooling fountains. The barracks were long, one-story, whitewashed buildings. In going through some of these, it seemed like entering the home of the fairies: the long row of cots on either side of the ward, with their clean pillow-slips and snowy counterpanes, the walls adorned with paintings and beautiful frames made by convalescents, while to each piece of scantling overhead were tacked sheets of red, white, and blue tissue-paper curiously cut, each piece representing the different corps badges. There was the new and full moon, the plain and Maltese cross, the clover-leaf, the diamond, the star, the acorn and the cross-sabre. The slightest breeze would keep these silken curtains gently swaying to and fro, making the sight really enchanting. All hospitals were not thus highly favored with tasty wardmasters and nurses; but in some they seemed to vie with each other in seeing whose ward should be the most gorgeously and beautifully decorated. The work of looking up from all these hospitals those belonging to any particular State was no light task, yet it was done by several State associations besides our own. Perhaps no more thorough or efficient work of the kind was done by any State than Massachusetts. Maine did a noble work for her soldiers, but her agents were more generally employed in the field, where there was a greater need of laborers. At this time, Michigan men were largely represented in the hospitals in Washington. At Lincoln I found seventy, at Finly forty, about the same number at Campbell, a large number at Armory square, and so for all the hospitals in the city, besides the many at Camp Stoneman, Camp Convalescent, and Fairfax Seminary.