hospitals; comforted the sick; smoothed the pillows of
the dying; inscribed the last messages of love to those far away; and
marked the resting-places where the brave men fell. The labor women
accomplished, the hardships they endured, the time and strength they
sacrificed in the war that summoned three million men to arms, can
never be fully appreciated.

Think of the busy hands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making
garments, canning fruits and vegetables, packing boxes, preparing lint
and bandages[1] for soldiers at the front; think of the mothers, wives
and daughters on the far-off prairies, gathering in the harvests, that
their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons might fight the battles of
freedom; of those month after month walking the wards of the hospital;
and those on the battle-field at the midnight hour, ministering to the
wounded and dying, with none but the cold stars to keep them company.

Think of the multitude of delicate, refined women, unused to care and
toil, thrown suddenly on their own resources, to struggle evermore
with poverty and solitude; their hopes and ambitions all freighted in
the brave young men that marched forth from their native hills, with
flying flags and marshal music, to return no more forever. The
untiring labors, the trembling apprehensions, the wrecked hopes, the
dreary solitude of the fatherless, the widowed, the childless in that
great national upheaval, have never been measured or recorded; their
brave deeds never told in story or in song, no monuments built to
their memories, no immortal wreaths to mark their last resting-places.

How much easier it is to march forth with gay companions and marshal
music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting
scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of
reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling
every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How
much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing to
stimulate hope or ambition.

The evils of bad government fall ever most heavily on the mothers of
the race, who, however wise and far-seeing, have no voice in its
administration, no power to protect themselves and their children
against a male dynasty of violence and force.

While the mass of women never philosophize on the principles that
underlie national existence, there were those in our late war who
understood the political signific