Meantime immense boxes arrived from the depot, sent by the people of Alabama.  These contained pillows, comforts, sheets, as well as wines, cordials, and every delicacy for the sick, also quantities of shirts, drawers, and socks, old and new.  The boxes were wrenched open, pillows placed quickly under the heads of the sickest, and cordials administered.  As the beds came in they were placed, made up, and the worst cases first, others afterward, were transferred to them, until all were lying comfortably between clean sheets and clad in clean shirts and drawers.  There was no lack of food, both substantial and of a kind proper for the very sick.

I do not believe that a squad of sick soldiers arrived in Richmond, at least during the first year of the war, who were not discovered and bountifully fed shortly after their arrival.  In this case waiter after waiter of food was sent in, first from the house of Mr. Yarborough and afterward by all the neighborhood.  Hospital supplies having been ordered as soon as it was known the sick men were expected, all necessaries were soon at hand, while the boxes referred to supplied many luxuries.  The large room into which all these were huddled presented for days a scene of “confusion worse confounded.”  The contents of two of the largest boxes were dumped upon the floor, the boxes themselves serving, one as a table for the drugs, the other as a sort of counter where the druggist quickly compounded prescriptions, which the surgeons as hastily seized and personally administered.  Carpenters were set at work; but of course shelves, etc., could not be magically produced, so we placed boards across barrels, arranging in piles the contents of the boxes for ready use.

Mrs. Hopkins, sitting upon a box, directed these matters, while I had my hands full attending to the poor fellows in the wards where they had been placed.

Four of our sick died that night.  I had never in my life witnessed a death-scene before, and had to fight hard to keep down the emotion which would have greatly impaired my usefulness.

At the end of a long, large wing of the factory were two excellent rooms, formerly the offices of the owners.  These were comfortably fitted up, the one as a bedroom for myself, and the other as a sitting-room and private office.  A female servant was specially assigned to me, who slept on a mattress on the floor of the sitting-room, and whose duty it was to accompany me through the wards and render any special or personal service required.  A long hall ran along this wing, connecting the offices with the main building.  The long, broad room opening out of this hall was fitted up as a ward specially mine, for the reception of my own friends and very ill patients who needed my special attention day and night.  This favor was granted me because I had shown some unwillingness to place myself in any position where I could not nurse any Louisiana soldier friends or others who