ly wounded in the assault, and among
the rest the son of this devoted mother, who at that very hour might
have been ministering to the wounded and dying son of some other mother.
This loss was to her but a stimulus to further efforts and sacrifices.
She mourned as deeply as any mother, but not as selfishly, as some might
have done. In this, as in all her ways of life, she but carried out its
ruling principle which was self-devotion, and deeds not words.

Mrs. Fales may not, perhaps, be held up as an example of harmonious
development, but she has surely shown herself great in self-forgetfulness
and heroic devotion to the cause of her country. In person she is tall,
plain in dress, and with few of the fashionable and stereotyped graces
of manner. No longer young, her face still bears ample traces of former
beauty, and her large blue eyes still beam with the clear brightness of
youth. But her hands tell the story of hardship and sacrifice.

"Poor hands! darkened and hardened by work, they never shirked any task,
never turned from any drudgery, that could lighten the load of another.
Dear hands! how many blood-stained faces they have washed, how many
wounds they have bound up, how many eyes they have closed in dying, how
many bodies they have sadly yielded to the darkness of death!"

She is full of a quaint humor, and in all her visits to hospitals her
aim seemed to be to awake smiles, and arouse the cheerfulness of the
patients; and she was generally successful in this, being everywhere a
great favorite. One more quotation from the written testimony of a lady
who knew her well and we have done.

"An electric temperament, a nervous organization, with a brain crowded
with a variety of memories and incidents that could only come to one in
a million--all combine to give her a pleasant abruptness of motion and
of speech, which I have heard some very fine ladies term insanity. 'Now
don't you think she is crazy, to spend all her time in such ways?' said
one. When we remember how rare a thing utter unselfishness and
self-forgetfulness is, we must conclude that she is crazy. If the
listless and idle lives which we live ourselves are perfectly sane, then
Almira Fales must be the maddest of mortals. But would it not be better
for the world, and for us all, if we were each of us a little crazier in
the same direction?"

MISS CORNELIA HANCOCK.

Among the most zealous and untiring of the women who ministered to the
wounded