home, mother, wife and sister, tired,
disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary
exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are
always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels
enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of
grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have
seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to
every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only to work,--and
in place of one lost, their sons have been counted by thousands.

And not least of all the fields for exertion and Christian charity
opened by this war is that presented by womanhood. The war is
abstracting from the community its protecting and sheltering elements,
and leaving the helpless and dependent in vast disproportion. For
years to come, the average of lone women will be largely increased;
and the demand, always great, for some means by which they may provide
for themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will become more
urgent and imperative.

Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when two streets off are
the midnight dance-houses, where girls of twelve, thirteen, and
fourteen are being lured into the way of swift destruction? How many
of these are daughters of soldiers who have given their hearts' blood
for us and our liberties!

Two noble women of the Society of Friends have lately been taking the
gauge of suffering and misery in our land, visiting the hospitals at
every accessible point, pausing in our great cities, and going in
their purity to those midnight orgies where mere children are being
trained for a life of vice and infamy. They have talked with these
poor bewildered souls, entangled in toils as terrible and inexorable
as those of the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened and
distressed at the life they are beginning to lead, and earnestly
looking for the means of escape. In the judgment of these holy women,
at least one third of those with whom they have talked are children so
recently entrapped, and so capable of reformation, that there would be
the greatest hope in efforts for their salvation. While such things
are to be done in our land, is there any reason why any one should die
of grief? One soul redeemed will do more to lift the burden of sorrow
than all the blandishments and diversions of art, all the alleviations
of luxury, all the sympathy of friends.

In the Roman