All that is necessary to remove floating doubts, to convince
all heads of the wisdom which projected this Commission, and to warm all
hearts up to its continued and sufficient support, is a knowledge of
what it has done, is doing, and purposes to do. This information the
Commission has, at different times, and by piecemeal, furnished:
necessarily by piecemeal, since, as this book justly remarks, the
immense mass of details which a circumstantial account of its operations
in field and hospital must involve would prove nearly as laborious in
the reading as in the performance. In this little volume we have,
photographed, a single phase of its operations. It consists simply of
extracts from letters and reports. There is no attempt at completeness
or dramatic arrangement; yet the most elaborate grouping would probably
fail to present one-half as accurately a picture of the work and its
ways as these unpretending fragments. It delights us to see the--we can
hardly say cheerful, as that savors too much of the "self-sacrifice"
which benevolence sometimes tarnishes by talking about--but, rather, the
gay, lively, merry manner in which the most balky matters are taken hold
of.
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