young wife, whose trembling heart was filled with foreboding.  Every few days reports that seemed true startled her,—­he was dead.  Alas! it might be true, for how could he live in the midst of enemies to whom his high spirit would not bend, wounded, suffering, deprived of the loving care for which he pined?  Again, he had tried to escape in the garb of a peddler, and had been taken up as a spy (which no one who knew him believed).  In that sad household Mrs. Caldwell’s duties became onerous and multifarious enough to appall one less stout-hearted or less devoted to the cause.  The inmates of the dwelling looked to her for sympathy, advice, nursing, and all kinds of attention, as well as for the comfort which could come only by superexcellent housekeeping.  And all this was done, and well done, by one woman, inspired by supreme devotion to the Confederate cause and its defenders.  Truly such a woman deserves to be immortalized, to live in history long after the hearts that now enshrine her image shall have ceased to beat.

Later, larger hospital accommodation having been provided, it became difficult to obtain permission for private soldiers to leave the wards to which they had been assigned.

Mr. and Mrs. J. Edwards Caldwell then resolved to fill up the “Refuge” with their own friends among the officers, saying to each other, “We will do all the good we can, and will agree to sustain each other in any course without consulting.”  Very sick and very badly-wounded patients were now sent to Mrs. Caldwell.  In fact, cases which were considered hopeless, but lingering, were despatched from the hospital to the “Refuge” to die, but not one of them did what was expected of him.  The efforts of Mrs. Caldwell were blessed of God, and her patients, without exception, improved.  One of these was Lawson Lewis Davis, of New Orleans, wounded at Frazier’s Mills, near Richmond.  He was suffering from a terrible wound, the cap of the shoulder having been removed.  He suffered for a whole year before recovering.  A still more remarkable case was that of Captain Charles Knowlton, Tenth Louisiana Regiment.  He was wounded in the knee in November, 1863, and was at once invited to the “Refuge,” but, having recession of the knee, was compelled to remain under surgical treatment until April, 1864, when he was sent to Mrs. Caldwell, and remained nine months more under her care.  An order had been issued that in all such cases amputation should be performed, but Dr. Reid, of Richmond, his attendant surgeon, decided to attempt to save the limb, and was successful.  Out of many cases of the kind, this was the only one recorded where amputation was avoided and the patient’s life was saved.

Captain Knowlton now resides near Hopevilla, East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is married, and has two children.  Another desperate case was that of John McCormick, from whose leg nearly all the bones were removed, but who also recovered.