Jewish women who preferred a death of torture,
to the acknowledgment of the power of the tyrant over their country's
rulers, and their faith--the women of the Pays-de Vaud, whose mountain
fastnesses and churches were dearer to them than life--the thousands of
wives and mothers, who in our revolutionary struggle, and in our recent
war, gave up freely at their country's call, their best beloved,
regretting only that they had no more to give; knowing full well, that
in giving them up they condemned themselves to penury and want, to
hard, grinding toil, and privations such as they had never before
experienced, and not improbably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes
of war, of those ties, dearer than life itself--those who in the
presence of ruffians, capable of any atrocity dared, and in many cases
suffered, a violent death, and indignities worse than death, by their
fearless defense of the cause and flag of their country--and yet again,
those who, in peril of their lives, for the love they bore to their
country, guided hundreds of escaped prisoners, through the regions
haunted by foes, to safety and freedom--all these and many others, whose
deeds of heroism we have not space so much as to name, have shown their
love of country as fully and worthily, as those who in hospital, in camp
or on battle-field have ministered to the battle-scarred hero, or those
who, in all the panoply of war, have led their hosts to the deadly
charge, or the fierce affray of contending armies.

Florence Nightingale, an English gentlewoman, of high social position
and remarkable executive powers, was the first of her sex, at least
among English-speaking nations, to systematize the patriotic ardor of
her countrywomen, and institute such measures of reform in the care of
sick and wounded soldiers in military hospitals, as should conduce to
the comfort and speedy recovery of their inmates. She had voluntarily
passed through the course of training, required of the hospital nurses
and assistants, in Pastor Fliedner's Deaconess' Institution, at
Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, before she entered upon her great mission in
the hospitals at Scutari. She was ably seconded in her labors by other
ladies of rank from England, who, actuated only by patriotic zeal, gave
themselves to the work of bringing order out of chaos, cheerfulness out
of gloom, cleanliness out of the most revolting filth, and the sunshine
of health out of the lazar house of corruption and dea