DR. CHARLES FOLLEN FOLSOM. 753 



It was a difficult xask that was set before this company of willing 

 but untried philanthropists, and it was well done. "Keenly as they felt 

 the past suffering and the present helplessness of the freedmen, they 

 had the supreme common-sense to see that these wrongs could not be 

 righted by any method so simple as that of giving. They saw that 

 what was needed was, not special favor, but even-handed justice. Edu- 

 cation, indeed, they would give outright; otherwise they would make 

 the negro as rapidly as possible a part of the economic world, a laborer 

 among other laborers. All that has happened since has only gone to 

 prove how right they were." 



It was natural that friendships formed among fellow-workers under 

 conditions such as these should be warm and lasting, and the small 

 group of men and women of which Charles Folsom formed a member 

 during the two years of their common labors in field and cabin on St. 

 Helena Island remained firmly bound through life. Dr. Folsom's 

 nearest friends w r ere William C. Gannett and Miss Mary E. Rice, with 

 whom he afterwards freely corresponded, Edward W. Hooper, and 

 Charles P. Ware. Mr. Gannett in a recent letter writes as follows: 

 "While we were together in Freedmen's work on St. Helena Island, in 

 1862-1864, he lived for a long time in our home, — Miss Rice's and 

 mine ; I remember well, when the malaria caught me, how he used to 

 sit on my sick bed and tell stories until the room rang with our laughter, 

 and how he journeyed ten or twelve miles to Beaufort and back through 

 the sand just to get me a little ice for the fever." 



The Port Royal experience was in some respects a disastrous, one 

 for Dr. Folsom, since he there received an accidental gun-shot wound 

 in his arm which caused him a great deal of pain, and in addition con- 

 tracted malaria and a valvular disease of the heart, both of which 

 troubles are believed to have contributed more or less directly to his 

 death. He also began to suffer from severe neuralgic headaches at 

 about this time, due partly to the shot-gun accident,* partly, perhaps, 

 to the malaria, and on this account he was advised by his physician, on 

 his return to Boston, in 1865, to make a long voyage by sea. Following 

 this advice he went around the Horn to San Francisco as passenger on 

 a sailing vessel, and came back before the mast, much improved in 

 health though not quite relieved of his headaches, which continued to 

 trouble him during his medical studies and even later. He writes to 

 Miss Rice of his experiences on this voyage : "How amused you would 

 have been to see the calm and stately way in which I wash down decks 



* Some of the shot lodged in the scalp, and many, though perhaps not 

 all of them, were extracted some years later. 

 vol. xliv. — 48 



