r scope, a better spirit and a more victorious faith.
But for the women of America, the great Fairs would never have been
born, or would have died ignominiously in their gilded cradles. Their
vastness of conception and their splendid results are to be set as an
everlasting crown on woman's capacity for large and money-yielding
enterprises. The women who led them can never sink back into obscurity.

But I must pass from this inviting theme, where indeed I feel more at
home than in what is to follow, to the consideration of what naturally
occupies a larger space in this work--however much smaller it was in
reality, _i. e._, to the labors of the women who actually went to the
war, and worked in the hospitals and camps.

Of the labors of women in the hospitals and in the field, this book
gives a far fuller history than is likely to be got from any other
source, as this sort of service cannot be recorded in the histories of
organized work. For, far the largest part of this work was done by
persons of exceptional energy and some fine natural aptitude for the
service, which was independent of organizations, and hardly submitted
itself to any rules except the impulses of devoted love for the
work--supplying tact, patience and resources. The women who did hospital
service continuously, or who kept themselves near the base of armies in
the field, or who moved among the camps, and travelled with the corps,
were an exceptional class--as rare as heroines always are--a class,
representing no social grade, but coming from all--belonging to no rank
or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old,
sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and
then of extraordinary robustness--but in all cases, women with a mighty
love and earnestness in their hearts--a love and pity, and an ability to
show it forth and to labor in behalf of it, equal to that which in other
departments of life, distinguishes poets, philosophers, sages and
saints, from ordinary or average men.

Moved by an indomitable desire to serve in person the victims of wounds
and sickness, a few hundred women, impelled by instincts which assured
them of their ability to endure the hardship, overcome the obstacles,
and adjust themselves to the unusual and unfeminine circumstances in
which they would be placed--made their way through all obstructions at
home, and at the seat of war, or in the hospitals, to the bed-sides of
the sick and woun