Rev. Henry Hopkins to Eliza Woolsey Howland.
City Hotel Hospital, ……………
Alexandria, Oct, 1861.
My dear Mrs. Howland: I want to tell you how I am coming on here in my new field, for at Washington I received the impression, which it will take a long time to wear away, that you and Miss Woolsey are cordially interested in all that concerns me in this work.
Dr. Sheldon is entirely propitious thus far. . . . Those who are religious women among the nurses hail my coming with real joy. The very first one whom I encountered was such a woman, and as I sat down in her cheerful ward before the bright fire on the hearth, talking with the men, a poor emaciated creature who was sitting wrapped in blankets, with his feet upon a pillow, asked me–“Are you a physician?” “No,” I told him, “I am a clergyman.” He stretched out his lean hand to me, and said–“Oh, sir, I am so glad to see you. I have been very sick, so that they gave me up, and now I am getting well, and I am not a Christian, and I must be.” Could the most trembling faith ask more than this?
I have just come from attending the funeral of a soldier of the 27th N. Y. regiment, who died last evening of typhoid fever. It was severely simple in all its accompaniments, only a little gathering in the hospital dining room, and a simple exercise; while a corporal’s guard were the only ones to attend the body to the grave, to hear the last sad words spoken. But in the very simplicity of it, and in the peculiar circumstances of those concerned, and especially from being the first time that I had ever officiated on such an occasion, it was to me very impressive. Had I not been here it is unlikely that he would have received a Christian burial.
. . . . Dr. Sheldon called me Mr. Woolsey this morning, and as long as that association of ideas continues I am sure of most excellent treatment.