NOTE.
During the late war, my daughter served in the
military hospitals of Fort Schuyler in New York;
Lawson Hospital in St. Louis; on a hospital steamer on
the Mississippi, from St. Louis to Vicksburg; and in
Benton Barracks Hospital in St. Louis,—from October,
1862, to August, 1864. This Memoir consists
mainly of letters which she wrote from those places.
It was prepared only for private distribution among
her friends, with no intention of sale or publication.
But the letters contain many details of hospital life,
and of incidents of the war connected with them; and
they who have read them think the book may have
some interest beyond that which arises from a personal
regard for the writer of the letters. An earnest effort
is about to be made to establish, upon a permanent
foundation, the Cambridge Hospital, instituted by her
in 1867; and I have been urged, by those whose opinions
I am bound to respect, and who are foremost in
that effort, to permit the publication of the book for the
benefit of the Hospital.
