own
hands and hearts to the wants of one sick and dying man.

It remains only to say a word about the influence of the work of the
women in the War upon the strength and unanimity of the public
sentiment, and on the courage and fortitude of the army itself.

The participation by actual work and service in the labors of the War,
not only took out of women's hearts the soreness which unemployed
energies or incongruous pursuits would have left there, but it took out
of their mouths the murmurs and moans which their deserted, husbandless,
childless condition would so naturally have provoked. The women by their
call to work, and the opportunity of pouring their energies, sympathies
and affections into an ever open and practical channel, were quieted,
reconciled, upheld. The weak were borne upon the bosoms of the strong.
Banded together, and working together, their solicitude and uneasiness
were alleviated. Following in imagination the work of their own hands,
they seemed to be present on the field and in the ranks; they studied
the course of the armies; they watched the policy of the Government;
they learned the character of the Generals; they threw themselves into
the war! And so they helped wonderfully to keep up the enthusiasm, or to
rebuke the lukewarmness, or to check the despondency and apathy which at
times settled over the people. Men were ashamed to doubt where women
trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they
did so much. If during the war, home life had gone on as usual; women
engrossed in their domestic or social cares; shrinking from public
questions; deferring to what their husbands or brothers told them, or
seeking to amuse themselves with social pleasures and striving to forget
the painful strife in frivolous caprices, it would have had a fearful
effect on public sentiment, deepening the gloom of every reverse, adding
to the discouragements which an embarrassed commerce and trade brought
to men's hearts, by domestic echoes of weariness of the strife, and
favoring the growth of a disaffected, compromising, unpatriotic feeling,
which always stood ready to break out with any offered encouragement. A
sense of nearness of the people to the Government which the organization
of the women effected, enlarged their sympathies with its movements and
disposed them to patience. Their own direct experience of the
difficulties of all co-operative undertakings, broadened their views and
rendered