were involved in the famous retreat from that place, the enemy seizing the town, and holding even the hospital nurses prisoners, till the main body of their army had secured its escape southward.

Point Lookout, Maryland, was the next post of these tireless women, that vast caravansary of sick and wounded, of released prisoners and destitute contrabands, which was, in some respects, the most sorrowful and awful of those widespreading encampments of misery known as the hospital service. Here, through summer heat and winter cold, cooking, nursing, encouraging the sick or comforting the dying, they had labored for fifteen months, when news of the draft riots in New York summoned them home.

On Monday, July 13, 1863, a mob attacked the office of the provost-marshal, where the drawing of names for the conscription was in progress, assaulted the officers in charge, scattered the enrolment lists, and burned the building to the ground. Growing in numbers and excitement, and finding a recruiting station in every drinking-shop, the howling horde spread itself over the town, pillaging and burning as it went. For four days the great city lay helpless under this reign of terror. The militia companies were at the front. The police, brave and faithful as they proved, were too few in numbers to cope with the insurgent multitude. Street-cars and stages were stopped. Unarmed citizens barricaded themselves within their homes and places of business, going out stealthily and in old clothes. All trade was at an end except the trade in liquor, and a portentous stillness pervaded the town, save where the yells and curses of the drunken mob, hounding to death some harmless negro, or threatening mischief to some obnoxious citizen, broke the appalling silence. By night the sky was red with the glare of burning buildings, and every hour the fire-bells sounded the vain alarm which the incendiaries forbade the firemen to obey.

The "Tribune" newspaper was especially hateful to the mob, from its vigorous support of the war and the odious draft-measure. Its office was attacked, but found too strongly

1. THE REIGN OF TERROR DURING THE DRAFT RIOTS IN NEW YORK.-THE INFURIATED MOB ATTACKING MRS. GIBBON'S HOUSE. 2. THE TOMBS, THE CITY PRISON.

guarded for that easy conquest which a mob prefers. It was whispered about, however, that Mr. Greeley lived in West Twenty-ninth street, where he might be more safely punished. On the afternoon of Wednesday a motley crowd, made up, for the most part, of shrieking beldames and halfgrown boys, armed with guns, pistols, clubs, staves, pavingstones, and knives, streamed down the quiet block called Lamartine Place, in search of that kind and steadfast friend of the ignorant and vicious, whom they thought their enemy. Swaying uncertainly to-and-fro, up and down the street, and unable to identify Mr. Greeley's lodgings, the rioters might have passed on without further mischief had not a young gutter-snipe, ambitious of distinction, pointed out Mr. Gibbons' house, some doors further on, as the doomed dwelling.

So fierce and sudden was the assault that the two young daughters, with a servant, had hardly time to escape by the roof before the door was battered in, the windows broken, and fires set in many places. The arrival of the police drove off the mob for the time, and neighbors extinguished the flames. But under cover of night the vandals returned to steal and violate.

When Mrs. Gibbons and her daughter reached the place that had been home, havoc and devastation confronted them. The panels of the doors were beaten in. Not a pane of glass remained unbroken. The furniture was destroyed or stolen. The carpets were soaked with oil and filth and trampled into ruin by the feet of the struggling crowd. On the key-board of the piano fires had been kindled. Everywhere were

scattered the fragments of books and valuable letters, the correspondence of a lifetime with the great minds of the country, and all the papers and remembrances of Friend Hopper, who had died under his daughter's roof.

Eight years before this the irremediable sorrow of their lives had befallen that tender household, in the sudden loss of the only son and brother, William, then a young man at college. In this noble youth were garnered up the promise and power of generations. With rare mental capacity and

an irresistible social charm that captivated all acquaintances, he possessed a singular strength, sweetness, and purity of character. The president of his university lamented him as the strongest influence for good the college possessed; his classmates mourned long and truly for him as the best of good fellows, tremendous in work and tremendous in play. But to his mother, his most intimate and trusted friend, his death was desolation. From her thoughts he was never absent. One room in her house was sacred to his memory, where were gathered the pictures he had loved, the gifts he had received, the prizes he had earned, his desk and books, the thousand trifles which love consecrates, and flowers daily renewed as if upon an altar.

In this sanctuary the defiling mob had left nothing unspoiled, and this sacrilege was the only disaster which bowed the heroic spirit of the mother. Strange irony of fate it seemed, that the woman who had spent her life in the service of the very class which wrecked her home should be the allotted victim of their blind fury! But she said only, "It was ignorance and rum. Their children must be taught

better."

The broken family was reunited under her brother's roof, and, as soon as she could be spared, Mrs. Gibbons, with her daughter, Mrs. Emerson, returned to camp and hospital, moving from post to post, and remaining in service, with short intervals of rest, till the close of the war.

With experiences such as these, and with the burden c more than threescore years upon her steadfast shoulders, another woman might have asked for rest. But the charitable hands of this indomitable worker could not be suffered to fold themselves. Her duties to the needy, the criminal, and the unfortunate were promptly resumed, and new obligations growing out of the war cheerfully recognized. Mission schools and other helps were to be maintained for the colored refugees, who, ignorant, destitute, and miserable, thronged the city. The widows and orphans of soldiers were in great need, and, fully convinced that the prevailing methods of relief