spiracy against the life of Lincoln at about the time of the outbreak of the war. It was intended that he should never reach Washington alive, that Washington should be captured, that the national archives should be taken possession of on the part of the South, and that the South should be declared the United States. This was the plot. Who discovered it? Miss Dix. Her knowledge of the South, her intimate acquaintance with the condition of affairs there, made her fully aware of what was going on; and she went to the president of the Philadelphia & Baltimore Railroad, and told him all about it. This led to his sending out spies in every direction to ascertain the truth of what she had said; and he and those acquainted with the secret history of the Rebellion from that day to this know that probably the saving of Washington was due to Miss Dix, and that the fact that Lincoln lived and that we have the grand inheritance of his service and his name was due to our Unitarian saint.

But to return to Miss Dix's services at the beginning of the war. She is placed by the War Department in charge of all the women nurses in the national hospitals in and around the capital; and here throughout the war she stays, untiring, devoting day and night to her work. She makes a great many enemies, but is ever supported by the War Department, who know the efficient work she is doing. At the end, what is her reward? Secretary Stanton appealed to her, and said, "What shall the nation do for you now in recognition of your services in its time of need?" He proposed calling a great public meeting, which should be presided over by the highest officials of the land. This she refused. He proposed that Congress should pass a bill, making her an appropriation of money. She refused. "What, then, shall we do for you?" She answered, halfbanteringly, not expecting him to accept the suggestion, "Give me the flags of my country." Whereupon the Secretary of War immediately ordered a beautiful pair of United States flags to be made for and presented to her. At her

death she bequeathed these flags to Harvard College; and to-day they hang suspended over the main portal of Memorial Hall. This was the only reward she asked or would receive for her services to the nation.

For a year and a half after the war she devoted herself to carrying out the commissions that had been left in her hands by the sick and dying, and in helping to provide government support for the more pressing cases of need. She also devoted herself to the task of inducing Congress to erect a monument to the dead heroes in the cemetery at Hampton, Va. This she accomplished; and the monument now stands there, with orderly rows of arms and cannon about it, as a memorial to those thousands and thousands who are sleeping there. Was this, then, enough?

For the next fifteen years she devoted herself, still untiringly, to the same great cause to which she had given herself early in life. The South was utterly disorganized; and many of the asylums were left so impoverished that they were practically falling into decay. Curiously enough, though she had rendered such service to the North during the war, and had never concealed her loyalty, she had so won the love of the South by what she had done for them in years past that she was welcomed back with enthusiasm to take up her old work once more.

I have omitted many features of her life. She was one of the first to be interested in the life-saving service for sailors and those suffering from wreck on our coast, and also in such things as the establishment of drinking-fountains for poor and tired horses and other beasts of burden. Indeed, whatever could possibly enter the heart and the brain of a noble, consecrated woman in behalf of any creature that could feel and was suffering became her care. She labored on in this way, reorganizing, continuing, and completing her work until she was eighty years old. A characteristic picture of her at this time—the last time she was in New England-is drawn by an old friend of hers. He tells how she appeared at his house late one stormy winter night here

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in Massachusetts, old and chilled to the very marrow. built his fires as hot as he could: his wife got her to bed as speedily as possible, and piled on blankets to get her warm. He thoroughly believed that she was in for a long sickness, feared pneumonia, and thought that the end had surely come. When she started to go upstairs to bed, he offered to assist her; but she declined. Even then she must walk her way alone. The next morning, instead of finding her ill, she was up early, and off; for she was on one of her tours of inspection to see how the great work of her life was being carried on.

But the end was now near at hand. Eighty years of age, with a life-work like this behind her, she went at last to the asylum at Trenton, which she called her first-born child; for it was the first one she had thoroughly established and endowed by State aid. There she was taken too ill to pursue her work any farther; and for five years she lingered, the guest of this "first-born child," until at last, at the age of eighty-five, the end came, and she fell quietly asleep. She had asked the physician in charge not to give her anything to cloud her mind, even to ease the pain, and to be sure and let her know when the end was coming; for she wished to go through this last phase of her experience on earth clear-headed and open-eyed.

Such is just a brief outline, a little hint, of a work of this nineteenth century. Does it seem to you that the age of heroism has gone by, that the time for saints is in the days of old? Friends, let me repeat: In all the calendar of the saints, among all the revered women of all the world, so far as my knowledge extends, I do not know of one who, in a private station and as the result of her own initiative, the result of her own tireless devotion, accomplished anything like such a work in the alleviation of human suffering, the delivering of the world from wrong. I am proud of her as the product of humanity. They abuse this poor old humanity of ours. They tell us it is all and utterly evil, totally corrupt; but here was one inspired with a grand belief in

humanity, which was one of the cardinal doctrines of early Unitarianism as taught by Doctor Channing. Here was one who believed in humanity, and who has taught us in her own life what sort of beautiful, fragrant flower, and what sort of luscious fruit, this old stock of humanity is capable of producing. Point me out, if you will, all the mean, contemptible characters that ever lived, and say, "These are characteristic of man." I will turn then, and say: "Before you have exhausted the characteristics of this human race of ours, you must include in it characters like hers. These are what humanity is capable of on its upward side." She believed, as do I, that there is the germ, in the lowest, meanest, poorest creature that wears the human form, of all that she illustrated, of all that she became. Let us, then, instead of thinking that our life is commonplace and bare, and that humanity is contemptible,- let us learn that humanity is capable of this, and have an access of faith in our race.

Shall we, as Unitarians, be proud of her? Yes, if by the word "proud" we mean that grand rejoicing in the possibility of our faith to produce the noblest results of character and life, not that petty pride which is content with what is already achieved, but that grand pride which gathers from past achievements impulse for conquests in the years to

come.

Let us learn one more lesson, and that as cheer and comfort and assurance for ourselves. What did she do that any woman, any man set free from other tasks, might not have accomplished in her or his time? There must have been some marvellous personal power about her, of course; but there was no distinguishing intellectual ability. There was only this faithfulness, this tirelessness, this persistency, this determination that what ought to be done should be done. That is the dominant characteristic. You and I, friends, may not be able to achieve as much. There may not be the opportunity. The task clearly outlined may not be set before us. Our time may be frittered away by a thousand cares, by a thousand demands upon us; but the one thing that

never ought to be forgotten, and which we can each one of us cultivate, is the same spirit, the same temper, the same character, the same devotion, and be as much as in us lies, and as far as our opportunity goes, sainted like her. That is possible. And though we seem chained, hindered on every hand, let us remember that word of Browning,—

"What I would be,

And was not, comforts me."

It is what we would be, what we try to be, what we seek to accomplish, the aspiration, the purpose, the way we are facing, that classifies us and tells what we are. Well, then, we are proud of our Unitarian saint, and rejoice in the work that she accomplished. Let it be impulse and motive in our lives to do what we can to help on the cause of the same humanity that inspired her.

NOTE. That a character and a service like this are so little known is chiefly the result of her own shrinking from anything that looked like self-laudation. So long as she lived, she refused to have anything to do with the preparation of any story of her life-work. She lived an epic, and left others to sing it.