THE LIST OF SIXTY

One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black
mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window. Her eye was caught
by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched over
them. One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame. They were pulling a
rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel. On the seat a man, pallid
and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his feeble hands,
while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a ragged blanket. In
the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed down in the midst of
broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware, lay a gaunt woman in the
rain. Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the surface of the dirty quilt
beside her showed that a child must be there. From such a picture the
girl fled in tears. But the sight of it, and of others like it, haunted
her for weeks. Through those last dreary days of November, wretched
families, which a year since had been in health and prosperity, came to
the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes. The history of that
hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been written. Still they came
by the hundred, those families. Some brought little corpses to be buried.
The father of one, hale and strong when they started, died of pneumonia
in the public lodging-house. The walls of that house could tell many
tales to wring the heart. So could Mr. Brinsmade, did he choose to speak
of his own charities. He found time, between his labors at the big
hospital newly founded, and his correspondence, and his journeys of
love,--between early morning and midnight,--to give some hours a day to
the refugees.

Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already
overtaxed. All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains of
articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored