the front, but that often the need was so urgent that
they were compelled to do it. I am willing to knit socks and to hem
handkerchiefs, but I would like to do something else too. There is so
much to be done that I don't feel as if I were doing all that I might do."

"We don't either, Jeanne, and if you know of anything we will gladly help
to do it," cried the girls together.

"I don't know of anything else, girls, but maybe I can think of
something," said Jeanne, looking at the earnest faces before her.

It was a bright May afternoon in the year of 1862, and the great conflict
between the North and the South was waging fiercely. The terrible battle
of Shiloh of the month before had dispelled some of the illusions of
the North and the people were awakening to the fact that a few victories
were not sufficient to overthrow the Confederacy.

Aid societies under the United States Sanitary Commission for the relief
of the soldiers were springing up all over the Union, and patriotism
glowed brightly inflaming the hearts of rich and poor alike. This zeal
was not confined to the old but animated the minds of the young as well.
Numerous instances are recorded of little girls who had not yet attained
their tenth year denying themselves the luxuries and toys they had long
desired and toiling with a patience and perseverance wholly foreign to
childish nature, to procure or to make something of value for their
country's defenders.

Our group of girls was only one among many banded together for the purpose
of doing whatever they could for the relief of the boys in blue, and
their young hearts were overwhelmed with a sense of their impotence.
Jeanne Vance, a tall, slender, fair-haired girl of sixteen, serious and
thoughtful beyond her years, was the leader in every patriotic enterprise
of her associates.

Her father since the beginning of the war had devoted himself exclusively
to furthering the interests of the government; her mother was a prominent
worker in The Woman's Central Relief Association, giving her whole time
to collecting supplies and money to be forwarded to the front and
providing work for the wives, mothers and daughters of the soldiers.
Her brother, Richard Vance, had responded to the first call of President
Lincoln to arms: thus the girl was surrounded by influences that filled
her being to the utmost with intense loyalty to the Union.

As she looked at the eagerly waiting girls around her a sudden inspiration