At my request. General Grant, commanding the United States forces with headquarters at City Point, visited these famous kitchens.
Himself and two of his staff went in disguise.
With his slouch hat drawn down, and coming in citizen’s clothing, no one noticed him. They stood by the door of the largest kitchen, while the dinner was issued. He asked, when the food had been sent out, a few questions and looked at the bill of fare, then followed to the wards to see the patients receive it.
He said, when I next came down from Washington and called at headquarters, that he thought it was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. He was unusually enthusiastic.
“Why,” said he, “those men live better than I do; and so many of them too. How they manage to cook such a variety for so many hundreds is what puzzles me.”
Then he told me about his going through the wards while they were taking their dinner, and noticing how greatly they enjoyed the food. And when told THAT THE MOST OF THIS FOOD CAME FROM THE COMMUTATION OF GOVERNMENT RATIONS, he was still more surprised.
When he was passing through one of the wards, a convalescing soldier, taking him to be a delegate of the Christian Commission, called out, “Say, Christian, won’t you bring me a pair of socks?”
“I’ll see that you get a pair,” the general responded, and passed out; but he arranged to have the man get a pair of socks.
But where are the noble women who labored there with so much energy and zeal years ago?
Mrs. Jones, a most saintly woman, the widow of a Presbyterian minister, sits serene in the evening of life—her work done and well-done—at Wellesley, Mass., where her daughter is the attending physician of the college.