In closing this inadequate sketch of our hospitals, I wish gratefully to call attention to the fact that they were an immeasurable blessing to St. Louis. They marvellously developed the benevolence of the city. By them scores of men and women were lifted up out of their selfishness. In ministering to those in need they forgot themselves. In spite of all the evils of the war, it led more people in our city to live in some measure the life of Christ than any other influence had ever before done. The best exhibition of Christianity ever witnessed within our gates was that band of devoted workers seen every day and night in the camps and hospitals. Hundreds of women whose Christian activities had never before gone beyond the family or the individual church, now like their divine Lord went about doing good. Like the good Samaritan, they had compassion upon all that they found in distress, irrespective of nationality or creed. CHAPTER XXII THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY SANITARY FAIR As the war went on, the demands on the Western Sanitary Commission became enormous. At the close of 1863 and the beginning of 1864 the Commission found its treasury well nigh empty. Something must be done to replenish it. After careful deliberation, the Commission decided to hold a fair, believing that thereby it could secure the funds required for its vastly important work. So on February 1st, 1864, it inaugurated this popular movement. General William Starke Rosecrans, who, in January, had succeeded General Schofield in command of the Department of Missouri, was made president of the Fair. From the start the project was popular. In St. Louis the people took hold of it with marked enthusiasm. They were ready to work and give to make it a success. That thoroughness might characterize all that was done they carefully organized their forces. They divided among themselves the multifarious tasks to be performed. They appointed committees to look after every important detail, and to report to the central authority. So amid the multiplicity of things there was unity and order. It was exhilarating to see a great community so stirred up in the doing of a patriotic and benevolent work, that, for a time, all conventionalities of society and distinctions of race or creed were forgotten. Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, Europeans and Americans, whites and blacks met, and elbowed, and emulated each other in working for the soldiers of the Union.