tive training
made her shrink from it, and, unfortunately, made her feel incapable
of doing it.

"I cannot speak!" she said to the women who had asked her to come.

Disappointed and disheartened, they finally arranged with a prominent
statesman to jot down the facts from her lips; and then, as best he
could, tell to the audience the experiences of the woman who had been
on battle-fields, amid the wounded and dying. Just as they were about
to go upon the platform, the gentleman said, "Mrs. Livermore, I have
heard you say at the front, that you would give your all for the
soldiers,--a foot, a hand, or a voice. Now is the time to give your
voice, if you wish to do good."

She meditated a moment, and then she said, "I will try."

When she arose to speak, the sea of faces before her seemed blurred.
She was talking into blank darkness. She could not even hear her own
voice. But as she went on, and the needs of the soldiers crowded upon
her mind, she forgot all fear, and for two hours held the audience
spell-bound. Men and women wept, and patriotism filled every heart. At
eleven o'clock eight thousand dollars were pledged, and then, at the
suggestion of the presiding officer, they remained until one o'clock
to perfect plans for a fair, from which they cleared sixty thousand
dollars. After this, Mrs. Livermore spoke in hundreds of towns,
helping to organize many of the more than twelve thousand five hundred
aid societies formed during eighteen months.

As money became more and more needed, Mrs. Livermore decided to try
a sanitary commission fair in Chicago. The women said, "We will
raise twenty-five thousand dollars," but the men laughed at such
an impossibility. The farmers were visited, and solicited to give
vegetables and grain, while the cities were not forgotten. Fourteen of
Chicago's largest halls were hired. The women had gone into debt ten
thousand dollars, and the men of the city began to think they were
crazy. The Board of Trade called upon them and advised that the fair
be given up; the debts should be paid, and the men would give the
twenty-five thousand, when, in their judgment, it was needed! The
women thanked them courteously, but pushed forward in the work.

It had been arranged that the farmers should come on the opening day,
in a procession, with their gifts of vegetables. Of this plan the
newspapers made great sport, calling it the "potato procession." The
day came. The school children had a holiday, t