but, because of greater facilities springing from greater command of money, the hospital organization of the North, both field and fixed, was far better than that of the South, which indeed could hardly be said to have a hospital organization at all. In these hospitals worked thousands of devoted women, and their ministrations to the wounded and dying of both sides must not be forgotten when we reckon up the sum of the work of American womanhood. On both sides, ladies of culture and refinement devoted themselves to this pious work, and this was the most worthy and lasting outlet that was found for Northern feminine enthusiasm in the cause of the Union, and the name of Dorothea Lynde Dix, the head of the organized force of Northern hospital nurses, will always be held in especial honor for devotion and ability in this noble cause, as well as in the amelioration of the condition of the indigent insane, to which latter cause her whole life was chiefly devoted. There were few especial heroines developed by the war; heroism was so general when there was call for it among the women that it attracted but little notice and won no lasting fame, even in its most remarkable displays. There has come down to us hardly a single female name as being especially singled out during this time for any noteworthy action. Indeed, there was such dearth of especial women heroines that one poet was driven, when he wished to stir the blood of his people with enthusiasm for feminine heroism, to invent one; but the present day wisely refuses to put any faith in the hoary legend of Barbara Frietchie, which indeed, as given by Whittier, is full of the most absurd improbabilities. To say nothing of the unlikelihood of "Stonewall" Jackson ordering a platoon--it could hardly have been a regiment--to fire at a flagstaff instead of directing someone to enter the house and remove the objectionable object,--though even this would have been uncharacteristic of the man who smiled and saluted when a pretty girl laughingly flourished an American flag in his face as he rode past her in the streets of Frederick,--the quickness of the old lady in catching that flag as it fell from the staff, to say nothing of her activity in getting to the window from the spot where she was presumably sheltered from "the rifle-blast," would put a professional juggler to shame. Then again, why Jackson should have been "riding ahead" does not seem clear, since that is not the place for a general while on the march, and every detail of the incident is sufficiently unmilitary to have been, as it was, the conception of one who had never in his life as much as smelt gunpowder. No; the legend of Barbara must be given up, even though it deprive us of one of the few heroines of its day.