ich they were passing and demanded her purse. She did not scream or
faint. She asked him if he was not ashamed to molest a woman who was
going through the country to help prisoners. She told him if he was
really poor, she would give him some money. And what do you think?
Before she finished speaking, the robber recognized her voice. He had
heard her talk to the prisoners when he was a convict in a Philadelphia
prison! He begged her to go on her way in peace.

For twelve years Miss Dix went through the United States in the
interests of the deaf and dumb, the blind, and the insane. Then she went
to Europe to rest. But she found the same suffering there as here. In no
time she was busy again. She tried to get audience with the Pope in Rome
to beg him to stop some prison cruelties but was always put off. Any one
else would have given up, but Dorothea Dix always carried her point.
One day she met the Pope's carriage in the street. She stopped it, and
as she knew no Italian, began talking fast to him in _Latin_. She was so
earnest and sensible that he gave her everything she asked for.

It was not long after her return to America before the Civil War broke
out. She went straight to Washington and offered to nurse the soldiers
without pay. As she was appointed superintendent, she had all the nurses
under her rule. She hired houses to keep supplies in, she bought an
ambulance, she gave her time, strength, and fortune to her country. In
the whole four years of the Civil War, Dorothea Dix never took a
holiday. She was so interested in her work that often she forgot to eat
her meals until reminded of them.

After this war was over, the Secretary of War, Honorable Edwin M.
Stanton, asked her how the nation could show its gratitude to her for
the grand work she had done. She told him she would like a flag. Two
very beautiful ones were given her, made with special printed tributes
on them. In her will Miss Dix left these flags to Harvard College. They
hang over the doors of Memorial Hall.

Nobody ever felt sorry that Dorothea ran away from those tiresome
tracts. For probably all the tracts ever written by Joseph Dix never did
as much good as a single day's work of his daughter, among the wounded
soldiers. And as for her reforms--they will go on forever. She has been
called the most useful woman of America. That is a great name to earn.

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

Once upon a time, at Point Pleasant, a small town on the Ohio