Birmingham age-herald., 1895-04-21
Their Influence on Men Before
 and After Battle.
THE OLD SOLDIERS RESTS
And WaysiIe Homes-HospitaI lncidents-An Old Ladys Mistake at Leesburg Sym
 pathy that Skipped over,"
"Reminiscences and Anecdotes by F. c. de
 Fontaine, "perso'sne'f)

The Rev. pr. StorrS, { an anniversary address at the Holyoke seminary, Massa- chusetts, said a returned prisoner once told him that while at the south he could easily endure the taunts of men, but he had never before realized how terrible was the stinging hate of women; so in tensely bitter and beyond all belief; and he had returned with one additional mer- cy for which to thank God, namely, that the devil was not woman.
 That soldier was not alone in his expe- rience The women of the south fur nished what may be called the nerve force of the war. From the very begin ming they made it disgraceful for any man of fighting age to stay at home with out good and sufficient cause, and though it might rack their heart strings, they sent their husbands, fathers, brothers and lovers to the field as if 1t was a re- ligious duty to make the sacrifice. Their earliest organizations were Soldiers Sew ing societies, in which every finger that could ply needle was busy from morn ing until night fabricatng garments, a task, by the way, for which few were fitted, as a good many men found when they discovered the buttons on the wrong side of their trousers, stockings without heel or toe, and shirt sleeves facing to the rear. Poor children Their hands
 
 full to see how soon they learned to cut and stitch, and knit, and pick lint, and roll bandages for the boys in camp. Many a matron whose hair is now white will remember the time when the president, secretary or treasurer of one of these as sociations, being called upon to read her report, hesitated, trembled and then turned her back upon her audience be- fore she could read allud. It was her first appearance in public. Women then I,a6 n turer or reader upon southern platform was something they had not conceived.
 little later, in the fall of 1861, when the soldiers began to flock homeward sick and wounded, the ladies opened first little rooms by the wayside, where as the trains halted they distributed re- treatments through the cars. Then fol- lowed Soldiers Rests, as they were call ed, in which travel-weary men were re- moved from the cars and retained and nursed until strong enough to pursue their journey. After these were estab- lshed throughout the south, "Wayside Homes." It was here that the women became familiar with the ghastly sights and horrors of war Yet without this noble humanitarian work volunteered by them the Confederacy never would have been able properly to care for it's armies of sick and wounded.
 The credit of originating this system is due to the ladies of South Carolina. The first home of this character was small apartment in Columbia, but by degrees the demands upon it became so great that it grew to the dimensions of a hos pital, and before the end of the war 75,- 900 men had been cared for in this single institution.
 Throughout the south, except in the largest cities, the hospital facilities were exceedingly limited Hence, after a bat tie, it was not unfrequently the case that | every house for miles around, and along the railroads for hundreds of miles, was | tenanted by the wounded, while the mothers, daughters, old men and ser wants devoted themselves to the task of nursing the poor fellows and smoothing their pathway to health or the grave, as the case might be, with all the tender ness they could expect in their own homes
 Society in the south used to be more homogeneous than in the north. By in termarrage or association everybody knew everybody else in a state; at least by name, and the consequence was that very often kinShip more or less remote was discoverd between the families of the hostesses and the sufferers, and ten derer feelings than those existing be- tween mere nurse and patient were born. There is many southern home now filled with children whose fathers and mothers never would have met but for the booming of the guns on, some battle field.
 No better way of judging of the morale of any army can be furnished than by the conduct of its men when off duty and away from the surveillance of their officers. As a rule, southern soldiers stood this test admirably. A lady who was present in one or another of the wayside homes throughout the war has paid this tribute to them:
 'I must have been brought in contact with thousands of men, but among them all can recall but one who was what you might call drunk, and even he was eli. t.,fx -S..,k k01 manifestation of his condition was an insane desire to present one of the young ladies with a handsome black plume he wore in his hat. l never heard an oath or an objectionable expression and new CT a sentiment of disloyalty or dissats- faction. I never heard a doubt thrown upon the right of our cause, or a regret that the war had been begun. I never saw man, however much wasted by disease or disabled by wounds, whose chief desire did not seem to recover as speedily as possible, in order that he might go back to his place in the field again; and while I encountered many il- lterate, rough and uncouth men, never met one who failed in that courtesy which every southern man. however humble his station, instinctively accords to womanhood."
 Immediately after a battle the ladies seem to regard it as a sacred duty to hasten to the field, and, with whatever supplies they could gather, establish themselves as voluntary nurses In the hospitals. On several occasions I have seen them under fire, assisting at the rude operating tables in the outhouses, the barns and the open woods, and, when the surgeons had finished their bloody work bending over the sufferers, regardless of the whirr of shot and shell that under ordinary conditions would have dsmayed the stoutest heart.
 Many of the hospital incidents are very funny, for the sympathies of the fair sex were always sure to slop over. Scanning LID to the bedside of a sick sol-