Maria Theresa provided hospitals for the wounded soldiery in the country over which she ruled, until then a soldiery wholly neglected in their sufferings on the battlefield. Ever green in memory should be kept the name of Grace Darling, and that graphic picture of her as she hastens down from the lighthouse on Farne Island, and through the mists of that terrible night in 1838 goes to the rescue of the shipwrecked sailors. Born in Florence, Italy, reared in England, a little girl caring for the injured birds and animals in her improvised hospital at Lea Hurst, the student nurse in Germany, the superintendent of nurses in the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale became adored throughout Christendom, diffusing rays of glory on the closing years of the nineteenth century. Of England’s heroine, Longfellow sings: A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land; A noble type of good, Heroic Womanhood. CLARA BARTON! The Babe of Oxford, a Christmas gift to humanity. In a little corner room of a little farmhouse, her tiny eyes greeted, first, the eyes of highly esteemed but not far-famed parents. From this Huguenot Colony, with no prestige of birth and no power of wealth, the meek, brown-eyed maiden went forth unheralded to carry her message of love and service. No Star of Destiny had cast its rays aslant the cradle, and no omen betokened her future as Out of the quiet ways Into the world’s broad track she ventured. Timid as a fawn, “the sweet voiced retiring little woman” emerged from Youth’s environs. She had dreams romantic, but her romance was wrecked. She had visions of a mission, but for her no mission materialized. Things came to her “as if by a world controlling power.” In whatever her field of service, she stumbled over opportunities to be brave and good;—there seems to have been for her a decree of the Fates against “how circumscribed is woman’s destiny.” Having a wide vision, she laid the foundation for the superstructure. She was a student of the best English writers; of the classics that gave prestige to Aspasia, the mentor of Socrates and Pericles. She studied sanitary methods at Jackson Sanitorium, and treatment of diseases with Doctor Carpenter at London and with her co-worker, Doctor Hubbell. In statesmanship she learned at the feet of Webster, Calhoun, Sumner and Lincoln. In military tactics and military strategy, she studied Napoleon at Ajaccio, his birth-place, and at Paris made by him “Paris Beautiful,” whence the leader of men promulgated the Napoleon Code of Laws;—“Paris Beautiful” and the Code, two services which of themselves entitle Napoleon to lasting fame.