The story of her life from this time on is one with the story of the work of the Red Cross during the stress of such disasters as the Mississippi River floods, the Texas famine in 1885, the Charleston earthquake in 1886, the Johnstown flood in 1899, the Russian famine in 1892, and the Spanish-American War. The prompt, efficient methods followed in the relief of the flood sufferers along the Mississippi in 1884 may serve to illustrate the sane, constructive character of her work. Supply centers were established, and a steamer chartered to ply back and forth carrying help and hope to the distracted human creatures who stood "wringing their hands on a frozen, fireless shore--with every coal-pit filled with water." For three weeks she patrolled the river, distributing food, clothing, and fuel, caring for the sick, and, in order to establish at once normal conditions of life, providing the people with many thousands of dollars' worth of building material, seeds, and farm implements, thus making it possible for them to help themselves and in work find a cure for their benumbing distress. "Our Lady of the Red Cross" lived past her ninetieth birthday, but her real life is measured by deeds, not days. It was truly a long one, rich in the joy of service. She abundantly proved the truth of the words: "We gain in so far as we give. If we would find our life, we must be willing to lose it." A MAIDEN CRUSADER: FRANCES E. WILLARD Instead of peace, I was to participate in war; instead of the sweetness of home, I was to become a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I have felt that a great promotion came to me when I was counted worthy to be a worker in the organized crusade for "God and Home and Native Land."... If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would say it is to make the whole world homelike. The true woman will make every place she enters homelike--and she will enter every place in this wide world. FRANCES E. WILLARD. A MAIDEN CRUSADER There is no place like a young college town in a young country for untroubled optimism. Hope blossoms there as nowhere else; the ideal ever beckons at the next turn in the road. When Josiah Willard brought his little family to Oberlin, it seemed to them all that a new golden age of opportunity was theirs. Even Frances, who was little more than a baby, drank in the spirit of the place with the air she breathed. It was not hard to believe in a golden age when one happened to see little Frances, or "Frank," Willard dancing like a sunbeam about the campus. She liked to play about the big buildings, where father went every day with his big books, and watch for him to come out. Sometimes one of the students would stop to speak to her; sometimes a group would gather about while, with fair hair flying and small arms waving, in a voice incredibly clear and bird-like, she "said a piece" that mother had taught her.