74 Ten Years of my Life. 



Governirient of that noble nation paid the last debt of respect 

 to their dead. I think the idea came directly from good 

 President Lincoln, a man than whom none better could be 

 found in the world. The dead were carefully collected from all 

 batde-fields, and carried often long distances to public grave- 

 yards, established in different parts of the country. These 

 graveyards are large beautiful gardens, kept up most carefully 

 at the expense of the Government. They are surrounded 

 with walls, provided with gates and good buildings for the 

 superintendent and gardeners, and with a finely-decorated 

 memorial hall. The graves of the soldiers are placed in rows, 

 and at the head of each stands a gravestone, on which is 

 inscribed each man's name, State, regiment, and company, 

 together with the place where the brave soldier died for his 

 country, and underneath is written always an appropriate sen- 

 tence or verse of the Bible. Of such graveyards several are 

 to be seen near Washington, and on the confiscated estate of 

 the rebel General Lee, Arlington Height, which has been 

 allotted for this purpose, rest nearly one hundred thousand 

 dead soldiers ! Thus America knows her citizens who died for 

 the Union. 



Hospitals were, of course, near all cities, and the most ex- 

 tensive were in the neighbourhood of Washington. The public 

 hospitals in Washington were not sufficient, and between that 

 city and the President's summer residence, called ' Soldier's 

 Home,' was to be seen a whole city of neat barracks, which 

 differed very much from many of the would-be imitations I 

 have seen in Germany. 



This city of the sick and wounded, though standing in a 

 nearly treeless plain, had not the appearance of a vale of sor- 

 row, but made a rather cheerful impression. There were tents 

 and houses built of wood, forming a rather extensive town 

 with wide streets. The tents, which were still preferred for 

 certain classes of patients, were arranged still more comforta- 

 bly than those in the field, which provided only for the most 

 urgent necessities ; they were half tents, half houses, having 

 all the advantages of the tents -without their inconveniences, 

 for they were not passtv^ere structures like field-tents, which 

 might have to be packed up for transport at a moment's notice. 

 I have seen such so-called tents in the Holy Ghost Hospital 

 in Frankfort, in which the essential conditions are ail to be 



