untenance
expressive of kindness, and good will and sympathy to all. Her presence
in the hospital was always a blessing, and cheered and comforted many a
despondent heart, and compensated in some degree, for the absence of the
loved ones at home. Her gentle ministrations so faithful and cheering,
might well have received the reverent worship bestowed on the shadow of
Florence Nightingale, so admirably described by Longfellow in his Saint
Filomena:

"And slow, as in a dream of bliss
The speechless sufferer turned to kiss
Her shadow as it falls
Upon the darkening walls."

MRS. ALMIRA FALES.

Mrs. Fales, it is believed, was the first woman in America who performed
any work directly tending to the aid and comfort of the soldiers of the
nation in the late war. In truth, her labors commenced before any overt
acts of hostility had taken place, even so long before as December,
1860. Hostility enough there undoubtedly was in feeling, but the fires
of secession as yet only smouldered, not bursting into the lurid flames
of war until the following spring.

Yet Mrs. Fales, from her home in Washington, was a keen observer of the
"signs of the times," and read aright the portents of rebellion. In her
position, unobserved herself, she saw and heard much, which probably
would have remained unseen and unheard by loyal eyes and ears, had the
haughty conspirators against the nation's life dreamed of any danger
arising from the knowledge of their projects, obtained by this humble
woman.

So keen was the prescience founded on these things that, as has been
said, she, as early as December, 1860, scarcely a month after the
election of Abraham Lincoln, gave a pretext for secession which its
leaders were eager to avail themselves of, "began to prepare lint and
hospital stores for the soldiers of the Union, not one of whom had then
been called to take up arms."

Of course, she was derided for this act. Inured to peace, seemingly more
eager for the opening of new territory, the spread of commerce, the gain
of wealth and power than even for the highest national honor, the North
would not believe in the possibility of war until the boom of the guns
of Sumter, reverberating from the waves of the broad Atlantic, and
waking the echoes all along its shores, burst upon their ears to tell in
awful tones that it had indeed commenced.

But there was one--a woman in humble life, yet of wonderful benevolence,
of indomitable