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CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CINCINNATI SANITARY FAIR.

[BY LIDA BICKHAM LAIR]

IT was a bitter, bitter winter. War had been stalking through the land long enough to leave a very shiny trail. Trains had been pouring in their sad loads of wounded and sick; steamboats had been emptying into our midst armies of men gathered up after the battle, and schoolhouses, hotels, shut-clown factories, turned into temporary hospitals, were equipped with volunteer nurses from the ranks of mothers and sisters " left behind." The great Sanitary Commission had been born of the hour of need, and yet with all its ramifications, all the free giving, the more than generous donations, the time had come when still other resources were to be taxed, and so sprang into being the great Sanitary Fair with its beautiful Bazaaras we christened the old Fifth street market-house, now a thing of the past.

We who look back at Cincinnati from Race to Walnut on Fifth, not as those who look to-day, pointing with pride to its Fountain Square ; but we point with

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even greater pride to that spot as the great rendezvous for the " boys" just ready for the front. There was the grimy old market-house, squatty, black, obtrusive, but hallowed for us ; there on the great open Plaza our boys drilled, there they gathered, boys, blankets, knapsacks and guns ; and there all along the lines hovered the mothers, sweethearts, wives and babies. Who can with words paint the pent-up agony of such a scene Each recalls the day her own went forth, and can weep even now at the feeble results so far as cheer went, when the band struck up " The girl I left behind me," while the boys faced down Vine to the landing ; and despite our patriotism, love of country and pride in our soldier boys, we "left-behind girls" with aching, aching hearts faced homeward, where vacant chairs were so hopelessly vacant.

You are not surprised then to know that, when a mass meeting was called to raise money for the Sanitary Commission, every "lint picker," "bandage roller," "soldier-lover" of us sprang to our feet to help. For months we had been sending off "boxes" to the front-boxes filled with love, clothing, socks, jellies, needle books and Bibles ! Oh ! the impossible needle-books, the useless handkerchief cases, look-marks, paper flowers (save the mark!) to decorate their tents ! The lovely velvet slippers and embroidered smoking-caps, dressing-gowns, and dear knows what of useless stuff, not forgetting well-filled tobacco pouches : and yet with all this nonsense, were the good warm mother-knit socks, reliable underwear, and generous mufflers, while tucked in between were letters, and letters, and letters, written by whom, to whom, no one knew or cared-letters full of good honest encouragement from some one's dear girl to some one's dear boy.

You see how much more to the purpose organized effort would prove than all of these random shots, as likely as not, like enemies' bullets, to fall all in one spot ; hence, as I said before, the Sanitary Commission ; and hence. again, our great Cincinnati Sanitary Fair. To tell how much we made is beyond me, many, many thousands, I know. To tell who was on hand and moving spirit is also beyond me ; or do I dream it was Philip Hinkle ? I can tell of busy hours, of the old house a blaze of glory, booths where roasts of pork and roasts of beef were wont to jostle quarters of lamb ; where overhanging strings of bologna decorated the greasy hooks, and piles of steak tempted the busy housewife ; other booths where bursting cabbages crowded aside the odoriferous onions and long slender spikes of tender radishes, hunched and neat, obtruded among spires of yellow parsnips, while great white globes turnips, and the greater orange globes, suggestive of Thanksgiving dinners, rolled about better skelter ; where rotund, white-bibbed butcher boys flirted with comely farm lasses, and the somber Shakers measured solemnly their stores of apple butter, dried corn, pumpkin sauce, and what-not of their dainty preparations. Gone all the common place, come all the glories, lights, decorations, music, merry faces ; booth after booth, a bower of beauty presided over by the fairies whose fingers transformed it, and every booth a stall for sale of articles useful, beautiful or not, as it happened, from the rarest bit of delicate bric-a-brac to a cook stove, and, on order, everything for sale from a rooster to a load of hay. How the supplies poured in ! Men, women and children vied, one with another, to see who would give most and best, and after the giving who would sell most and best. And over all these unusually bedecked booths " Old Glory " flung out his Stripes and Stars, floating in the outside air, covering with its draping every discolored patch in or on the old market-house-flags, flowers, fruit, foliage and fair women. Scarcely an industry ; scarcely a society, secular or religious ; scarcely a family or school in Ohio, but was represented in that. great Sanitary Bazaar. Men and women, aye, little children went about soliciting from the ready givers. Women and girls had " serving bees" that hummed day after day ; and riot content with that we would carry home unfinished articles and work into the night ; how earnest, bow loving the service no one. will ever know who had not a hand in it. Not a work of charity!

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Never ! It was the most stupendous bit of generous, free-will offering, from a grate ful people, ever made in the city of Cincinnati, Men did not hesitate to give their substance where they had given their sons. Should women shrink from working for sons and brothers upon whose lips they had placed the "God bless you, go!" kiss ? Not for one moment. The question was not "where shall we get supplies for our bazaar, but where shall we put our immense supplies? " To be sure, what a conglomeration of articles useful and useless. What a merry and busy, busy time, night after day, day after night, music, laughter, the fair, the brave, selling, flirting, and beneath all, the corner-stone of all, the one earnest purpose of our lives, not one of us care-free while our unblanketed boys stood in the cold, a breastwork of beating hearts to ward off danger ; none of us but, as we smiled, felt how very near together the source of smiles or tears. We all were buyers as well as sellers ; but the money came most readily, most larely- I was going to say, most freely--but everybody did that----from the officers' at home on leave, or detailed for duty or what not, for Cincinnati was Western headquarters, and "the blue was an item on our streets." What profitable buyers they were, because if they bought anything of use it was to turn it right back for its to sell again ; if they bought trash-and they did---it was to pay for it a most fabulous price, and march of decorated with the purchase, be it paper flowers, needle-book. or kitchen apron, followed by merry peals of laughter. We were morally sure the purchaser would find his way back again, and still again, leaving with us, not a heap of silver, for we didn't use silver, but paper money, "shinplasters" the boys called them, of as low denomination as three cents, all our change being of paper. How the wraiths of that passing crowd elbow each other in my memory. The cheery soldier-boy fresh from the hospital with arm in a sling, or empty sleeve, or crutch ; jolly, hopeful, merry. "Going to the front again ?" "You bat !"

It is impossible for the there reader of any part of the history of that time to compass in thought the quality of good humor with which they bore their ills, as well its the earnest purpose that was the mainspring of the true soldier's life ; just as it is impossible for the young women of to-day to comprehend with what inflexible crowding out of womanly weakness, the mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts of the " sixties" bade them go, almost every circle was a broken circle, home, social, business, many of them never to reunite But if those men and women of us, still living, who worked inn that great Sanitary Fair, were privileged to meet. about one board. I think Cincinnati had rarely such a reminiscent meeting. The walks would ring again with laughter over the comical situations, amusing incidents, merry jests ; and through it all would run the. strains of sadness for those for whom we wrought, who came not back again, the great army who with face to the foe went down to death bravely, sustained by love, home and loyalty to the glorious old flag.