'Who sent you with that message to me?' she asked him, turning suddenly around. 'Dr. ----,' the soldier answered. 'Pish!' she replied, and swept on in ineffable contempt to the bedside, perhaps, of some sick soldier." CORDIAL FOR THE BRAVE [Eggleston's Recollections, pages 70-71.] The ingenuity with which these good ladies discovered or manufactured onerous duties for themselves was surprising, and having discovered or imagined some new duty they straightway proceeded to do it at any cost. An excellent Richmond dame was talking with a soldier friend, when he carelessly remarked that there was nothing which so greatly helped to keep up a contented and cheerful spirit among the men as the receipt of letters from their woman friends. Catching at the suggestion as a revelation of duty, she asked, "And cheerfulness makes better soldiers of the men, does it not?" Receiving yes for an answer, the frail little woman, already over-burdened with cares of an unusual sort, sat down and made out a list of all the men with whom she was acquainted even in the smallest possible way, and from that day until the end of the war she wrote one letter a week to each, a task which, as her acquaintance was large, taxed her time and strength very severely. Not content with this, she wrote on the subject in the newspapers, earnestly urging a like course upon her sisters, many of whom adopted the suggestion at once, much to the delight of the soldiers, who little dreamed that the kindly, cheerful, friendly letters which every mail brought into camp were a part of woman's self-appointed work for the success of the common cause. From the beginning to the end of the war it was the same. HOSPITAL WORK AND WOMEN'S DELICACY [Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.] There is one subject connected with hospitals on which a few words should be said--the distasteful one that a woman must lose a certain amount of delicacy and reticence in filling any office in them. How can this be? There is no unpleasant exposure under proper arrangements, and if even there be, the circumstances which surround a wounded man, far from friends and home, suffering in a holy cause and dependent upon a woman for help, care and sympathy, hallow and clear the atmosphere in which she labors. That woman must indeed be hard and gross who lets one material thought lessen her efficiency. In the midst of suffering and death, hoping with those almost beyond hope in this world; praying by the bedside of the lonely and heart-stricken; closing the eyes of boys hardly old enough to realize man's sorrow, much less suffer by man's fierce hate, a woman must soar beyond the conventional modesty considered correct under different circumstances.