How she felt about going to the front at this time is finely set forth in a letter to her cousin, Corporal Leander A. Poor, who was sick in a hospital at Point Lookout, Maryland, and whom she succeeded in getting transferred to a hospital in Washington. She did not expect to be there when he arrived, for she was committed to her plan of getting to the front. Not that she expected to stay continuously; it was her purpose to come and go; to get relief directly where it was needed, and to keep her lines of communication open. This letter shows that she labored under no delusion concerning the difficulties of transportation. She was going in with her eyes open. WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug. 2, 1862 Saturday P.M. OH, MY DEAREST COUZ: Can you believe it! that this afternoon’s mail takes an order from the Surgeon-General for you to report in Washington (provided the state of your health will permit)? I have just seen the order written. You are to report to Dr. Campbell, Medical Director, and he is to assign you to some hospital. Now I want you assigned near me, but am not certain that I can influence it in the least,--but I’ll try! I can tell you the ropes and you can help pull them when you go to report. At the Medical Director’s, I have an especial friend in the person of Dr. Sheldon, one of the _chargés des affaires_ of the Institution. I will acquaint him with the facts before your arrival either by a personal interview or a note, and then, when you go to report to Dr. Campbell, see first, if possible, Dr. Sheldon, and ask him if he can assist you in getting assigned to some hospital near me (7th Street) or in the vicinity of the Post-Office, he knows my residence, having called upon me. My choice would be the “Armory Square,” a new hospital on 7th Street a few rods the other side of the Avenue from me, on the way to the Arsenal, you will recollect, just opposite the Smithsonian Institute, on the east side of 7th. This is designed as a model hospital, but perhaps one difficulty will be that it is intended more exclusively for extreme cases, or desperately wounded who can be conveyed but little distance from the boat. There are in it _now_, however, some very slight cases, some whom I visit every day. The chaplain, E. W. Jackson, is from Maine, near Portland,--and I would not be surprised if more Maine men were in charge there, too.