of Count Schwabe. The officers and good people of Worcester have ever been eminently devoted to the welfare of the suffering inmates. Galloupe's Island was the residence of many thousands of the Union soldiers. It was under the command of Brig.-Gen. Hendrickson, a very gentlemanly officer. A library, a furnished church, and other contributions, were the memorials of Count Schwabe's generous interest in the comfort of the Union troops.

The first discharged-soldiers' home in the country was estab lished, in the early part of the war, in North Street, through the generosity of private individuals, and the deep interest of the Rev. Phineas Stowe, who was the pioneer in the enterprise, and to the present hour has labored hard for the institution. Eminent men

and ladies of Boston took a deep interest in the home. Among them were Edward S. Tobey, Joseph Story, E. Redington Mudge, the soldier's friend, L. B. Schwabe, Peter C. Brooks, Ginery Twichell, and others. The home was soon removed to the present fine location on Springfield Street. The noble structure was loaned by the city. The Legislature has donated several times from ten to twenty thousand dollars. The building was furnished by private generosity, societies and churches, and is supported principally by private contributions. Mr. Tobey is president; Mr. and Mrs. Rice and Miss Rice are the able managers; Dr. L. K. Sheldon, a surgeon of ability and all goodness to the sick, is the physician, with an excellent assistant. This institution is perhaps superior to any of its kind in the country.

The Soldier's Home at Weston is as old, within a few months, as the above; and has been carried on entirely under the care and management of Lieut. Califf, late of the Eleventh Regiment. It has given shelter and a home to men maimed for life, principally foreigners, who had no friends in the country. We might fill many pages with the record of woman's unambitious and blessed ministry of mercy among the sick, wounded, and dying. Such nurses as Mrs. Pomeroy of Chelsea, whose presence, like Florence Nightingale's amid the horrors of Crimean warfare, was itself a benediction to the suffering, and a host of co-workers in the field and at home, may yet have a fitting volume, whose title shall be, "Woman's Part in the War of a Nation's Redemption."

Surgeon-Gen. Dale.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MEDICAL SERVICE.

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Other Officers. State Agencies. - Col. Frank E. Howe, New York; Mr. Carson, Philadelphia; Mr. Robinson, Baltimore; Mr. Tufts, Washington. - Surgeon Dale's Testimony. - Gov. Andrew's Tribute to the Medical Service.

HERE was yet another form of benevolent care exercised by

little public notice, but was, in a part of its work at least, a noble charity, the medical service in the war.

At the head of it was the able, wise, and faithful Surgeon-General, William J. Dale, — a gentleman whose high-toned loyalty and character have shed lustre on the great work of the Good Samaritan in caring for the wounded and sick on hostile soil, performed on the grandest scale by the surgeons of the war. That inexperience, carelessness, and intemperance marred it, cannot be doubted; but we agree with Surgeon Dale, who says in his report, —

It is a satisfaction to add, in the exigency summoning so many medical men from the ordinary duties incident to civil life to the untried hardships of the camp and field, that no troops were ever cared for with more skill and faithfulness than the volunteer regiments in the service from Massachusetts.

We add the list of staff medical officers, appointed by Massachusetts, who have been brevetted, as given by the SurgeonGeneral:

Brevet Brigadier-General, United-States Army. Surgeon Charles H. Crane, United-States Army.

Brevet Major, United-States Army. - Assistant Surgeon Warren Webster, United-States Army.

Brevet Colonel, United States Volunteers. - Surgeon S. A. Holman, United-States Volunteers.

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonels, United-States Volunteers. - Surgeons David P. Smith, United-States Volunteers; Ira Russell, United-States Volunteers; J. Theodore Heard, United-States Volunteers; F. S. Ainsworth,

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United-States Volunteers; John W. Foye, United-States Volunteers; C. N. Chamberlain, United-States Volunteers; P. A. O'Connell, United-States Volunteers; A. M. Wilder, United-States Volunteers; Frank Meacham, United-States Volunteers; Lincoln R. Stone, United-States Volunteers; O. M. Humphrey, United-States Volunteers; Joel Seaverns, United-States Volunteers; George Derby, United-States Volunteers; George A. Otis, United-States Volunteers; Henry A. Martin, United-States Volunteers ; Brevet Major, United States Volunteers. — Assistant Surgeon J. W. Merriam, United-States Volunteers.

Brevet Captains, United-States Volunteers. Assistant Surgeons D. B. Hannan, United-States Volunteers; J. W. Hayward, United-States Vol

unteers.

It is gratifying to notice, that at the head of the above list of meritorious surgeons stands the name of a distinguished officer, whose loyalty, courtesy, energy, and executive ability, have been greatly instrumental in bringing the medical corps of the army to a condition securing the confidence of the Government and the lasting gratitude of the country.

Surgeon Dale, in closing his very valuable report, writes in memoriam,

The Angel of Death rested over the agency, and two of its most cherished members are gone.

IRVING S. VASSELL, of Oxford, chief assistant, died April 9, 1865, aged twenty-six years.

Expecting the summons to come, he was waiting to go; yet he walked cheerfully on to the last, fulfilling "the whole duty of man.

Brilliant in intellect, and pure in spirit, he adorned this life, and was fitted for a higher.

In his departure, the agency lost its most gifted and valued member, his parents their " chief joy," and the world a man by whose living it had been

made better.

ALDEN S. CARR, of West Newbury, died July 6, 1865, aged twenty-three years.

He was a young man of singular purity of character and refined manners. His good deeds and kind ways will long be remembered.

As the greater number of troops demanded increased that of suffering men, the State appointed agencies at important points for the relief of her soldiers. The Surgeon-General had the superintendence of the new and benevolent enterprise. The first agency opened was at Washington, in charge of Lieut.-Col. Tufts; a second at Baltimore, in charge of William Robinson, Esq.; a third at Philadelphia, Lieut. Robert R. Carson manager; a fourth

in New York, under the direction of Col. Frank E. Howe; and a fifth at Hilton Head, S.C., of which A. L. Stimson, Esq., was the agent.

The objects of the agencies were to visit the trains or boats having sick and wounded soldiers of Massachusetts, and extend all possible aid; to make weekly returns of all arrivals, and those in hospitals, adding an account of deaths and departures; and the care of discharged soldiers in distress.

Col. Frank E. Howe served the State, without salary, at the agency, 194, Broadway, New York; the record of whose noble work for our New-England troops alone would fill a volume.

William Robinson, Esq., of the Baltimore Agency, forwarded to Surgeon Dale interesting statements of relief extended to discharged soldiers, letters to friends respecting the missing ones, and replies to the manifold inquiries of anxious hearts at home.

At no point were the labors and touching scenes of the agency more varied and grateful to the worker than at Washington, under the care of Gardner Tufts, Esq., who devoted his energies to the suffering; offering as far as possible the presence of home, with its cheering aspects; and carrying its comforts to those prostrate ones whose smitten forms and depressed spirits needed all the reviving influences of that sacred place.

From the statement of Robert B. Carson, agent at Philadelphia, we take a single paragraph:

I have seen these men as they have been brought from shipboard; and I have stood over their beds, endeavoring to ease their last sufferings, to which a worse than hellish ingenuity had given such a fearful shape. And I say, that one may thread and brood over a fresh battle-field till there is forced in upon him a full appreciation of the agonies which his sense sickens to behold; or he may wander through all the loathsomeness of a half-old field; or he may take his daily path among our hospitals, and mark all the varied forms of suffering and of death known there he will never see such unmitigated horrors as in the maimed, distorted, shrunken, and sometimes half-rotten bodies of our soldiers returned from Southern prison-pens.

More than six thousand letters were written during a single year, and six hundred and ten telegrams sent in behalf of the troops.

The ways of serving the men and their families were manifold. At the office, applications for State aid, calls for intelligence of every kind, collection of pay, and the sending of agents to

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battle-fields to get reliable information of the wounded, were all a part of the ordinary round of business.

The care of the heroic dead was a sad labor, but a most welcome one to the bereaved friends afar.

Mr. Tufts dwells with peculiar interest upon the grand furlough given to our troops at the last presidential campaign, and the Thanksgiving dinner furnished through the Union City Committee of Boston, of which S. B. Stebbins, Esq., was secretary. Mr. Tufts reports,

We distributed fifteen and three-quarters tons of poultry, pies, &c., to thirty-six different hospitals, containing eighteen thousand patients; and also to twenty-six companies Massachusetts heavy artillery, the Sixteenth Light Battery, and to other scattered detachments. We received by contribution

$3,603; of which $3,433.01 was expended, and the balance, $169.99, by direction of the committee, turned over to our relief fund. It is needless to dwell upon the hearty good-will developed towards our State by the splendid display of its liberality.

The Massachusetts Army and Navy Union, of which Gen. Hinks is president, and Col. Lounsbury secretary, is an excellent association, designed to perpetuate pleasant associations, protect the members against fraud, and secure necessary aid to disabled soldiers and the needy families of dead or invalid troops.

During the summer of 1865, Surgeon-Gen. Dale, Col. F. L. Lee, A.A.D.C., and Col. J. M. Day, Provost-Marshal of the Commonwealth, were appointed trustees of a fund for the benefit of disabled soldiers and their families. A part of it was money deposited with the Provost-Marshal to procure representative recruits in the army, they having cost less than was anticipated. The depositors not only surrendered the amount cheerfully for the charitable use, but, in several instances, increased the sum.

The constant forethought of the Government, in the generous care of the soldier, was also expressed in the early part of the year in a general order issued in his behalf, establishing a registery in the office of the Surgeon-General, recording the name, age, occupation, &c., of disabled officers and men. To this the attention of those having situations at their disposal was invited. Later an association of returned Massachusetts volunteers was formed for aiding disabled soldiers honorably discharged; which soon after, on the recommendation of the treasurer, Col. H. S. Russell, late Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, was attached to the bureau of employment. D. S. Walker, Superintendent of the Bureau, and