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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 13, 17 July 1885, Page 19

A war veteran, "G. X., " tells in the Boston Journal of his surprise on discovering the breadth of Catholic charity, when it was bis lot to experience it in person. He was one of a body of wounded soldiers bound homeward after Gettysburg, who were temporarily detained on the street near a Catholic church ia Baltimore. Ifld. The well-dressed, refined ladies on their way to church at once surrounded the invalids, and insisted upon dressing their wounds and serving them with refreshments. • One elegantly attired lady took charge of the narrator, as he lay awaiting his turn on the sidewalk. "At her command," nays be, "a stretcher was brought, and despite my mild remonstrances I was conveyed to the interior of the building. Here she performed her friendly service with as much skill and heroism ai the most experienced nurse could have commanded, and when mv wound had been cleansed,, my soild and bloody garments exchanged v for new ones, my appetite satisfied with steaming hot coffee and toast, and I lay comfortably upon a bench while her fan was waving gently to and fro before my face, 1 fancied there was not a king <in the wide world who felt ' any better or happier than I. Born and raised in a New England town where Catholics were almost unknown, my religious training, what little I had received, had led me to look npon them as somewhat exclusive and shut up within themselves. I had read, of course, of their charitable work and of their great devotion to suffering humanity, but I had the mistaken' idea that alb* or nearly all, of their efforts v?ere in behalf pf those of their own way of thinking. But I took it alt back ,there,and then, and thought that if the religious teachers of my boyhood days could have been upon the spot, they, too, would have said with me that, after all, accidents of race and creed are of little account when the real welfare of humanity is at stake."