When the author of this volume was a schoolboy, the advanced readers in the public schools partook largely of a patriotic character, and the rhetorical exercises of Friday afternoons contained recitations and declamations inspired by the great Civil War. The author remembers a Friday when he came upon the platform with his left arm withdrawn from his coat-sleeve and concealed inside the coat, while he recited a poem of which he still remembers certain lines: My arm? I lost it at Cedar Mountain; Ah, little one, that was a dreadful fight; For brave blood flowed like a summer fountain, And the cannon roared till the fall of night. Nay, nay! Your question has done me no harm, dear, Though it woke for the moment a thrill of pain; For whenever I look at my stump of an arm here, I seem to be living that day again. The poem went on to relate the scenes of the battle, the desperate charge, the wound, the amputation, and now the necessity of earning a livelihood by the peddling of needles, pins, and other inexpensive household necessities. It was a poem with rather large dramatic possibilities, and the author utilized them according to the best of his then ability. Since that Friday afternoon in his early boyhood he has always thought of Cedar Mountain as a battle in which he had something of a share. If he had really been there and had lost an arm in the manner which the poem described, one of the things he would have been almost certain to remember would have been the presence there of Clara Barton. She afterward told of it in this simple fashion: When our armies fought on Cedar Mountain, I broke the shackles and went to the field. Five days and nights with three hours’ sleep--a narrow escape from capture--and some days of getting the wounded into hospitals at Washington brought Saturday, August 30. And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a _woman_--I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for _men_. But under all, lay the life of the Nation. I had inherited the rich blessing of health and strength of constitution--such as are seldom given to woman--and I felt that some return was due from me and that I ought to be there. The battle of Cedar Mountain, also called Cedar Run and Culpeper, was fought on Saturday, August 9, 1862. Stonewall Jackson, as directed by General Lee, moved to attack Pope before McClellan could reënforce him. The corps attack was under command of General Banks, and the Confederates were successful. The Federal losses were 314 killed, 1465 wounded, and 622 missing. News of the battle reached Washington on Monday. Clara Barton’s entry for that day contains no suggestion of the heroic; no appearance of consciousness that she was beginning for herself and her country, and the civilized world, a new epoch in the history of woman’s ministration to men wounded on the battle-field: