God himself had raised up those to fill this sacred office, in the form of frail women—woman, because no man could fill the hallowed sphere. Flitting from couch to couch, like a fairy thing, noiselessly; like an angel of mercy, administering, soothing; but like a woman, beautiful, frail, and slender, with a cheering smile, and sympathy, as much expressed in the light of the eye as the sound of the voice, she moistened the parched lips, lightened the pillows, and the hearts, and seemed never to tire in deeds of love and kindness to the distressed soldiers.
Next to the soldiers, the physicians know how to appreciate the true women at the hospital couch. After the manifestations of skill, labor, anxiety, and devotion to the cause by the physicians, thousands of men would have perished but for the hand and heart of woman, and who now live to speak her praise and cherish her memory forever.
“Ain’t she an angel?” said a gray-haired veteran, as she gave the boys their breakfast. “She never seems to tire; she is always smiling, and don’t seem to walk, but flies from one to another. God bless her.”
“Ma’am, where did you come from?” asked a fair boy of seventeen summers, as she smoothed his hair, and told him, with gleaming eyes, he would soon see his mother, and the old homestead, and be won back to life and health. “How could such a lady as you come way down here to take care of us poor, sick, dirty boys?”
“I consider it an honor,” she said, “to wait on you, and wash off the mud you have waded through for me.”
Said another, “Lady, please write down your name, that I may look at it, and take it home, and show my wife who wrote my letters, combed my hair, and fed me. I don’t believe you’re like other people.”
“God bless her, and spare her life,” they would say, with devotion, as she passed on.
(These things were written of Miss Breckenbridge by Mrs. Hoge, of Chicago.)
The Soldier Boy’s Dying Message.