In an empty store on Fourth Street, on the ground floor, there were long tables. For many days, at the noon hour, soldiers passing through the city or temporarily stopping there, marched in and sat down at those tables for their midday meal. I was asked by Drs. Eliot and Post to take my turn with them in preaching to these soldiers as they ate. To this I consented, but found it a difficult task. I stood at the head of the table and delivered my message, while the militant audience consumed their rations of hardtack, bacon and coffee. They had tin plates, cups and spoons, and cheap iron knives; and though they were always respectful, and declared that they wanted and enjoyed the preaching, the clatter of their metal dishes was so loud and incessant, that it disturbed not a little my course of thought. But I did my best. When the hospitals were opened I found in them the largest opportunities to labor on behalf of the soldiers. For a time I worked a part of almost every day in the Sisters’ Hospital. For years it had been cared for by the Sisters of Charity; but for the time being it was thrown open for the use of the government. Here I often found sick and wounded men from both of the contending armies; Federal and Confederate soldiers, the blue and the gray, here lay peacefully side by side. For the time at least their animosity was gone. Suffering had made them kin. The heart of the man in gray was touched, when he saw that he was as carefully nursed as the man in blue. In my ministrations to suffering Southerners, I carefully avoided all allusion to the war, and our political differences. But, apparently astonished at the kindness shown them, many of them would broach some question concerning the national conflict, and when they did so, I always answered their queries as best I could. On one point most of them were set, and that was that the North began the war. I assured them that in this they were altogether in error, and rehearsed to them the historical facts. They said that they could hardly believe my statement, since they had been often told the exact contrary.