country to fight just as we are doing now. When they reached that country many of them became sick because they had not the proper food and clothing. When they were injured while fighting, they had just to lie down on the damp or cold ground until they died, with no one to care for them. Many of them froze or starved.

It was hundreds of miles away from home and they could not see or hear from their friends. There were no women there at all.

Miss Nightingale was asked to go to this place and take some nurses with her who would help to care for these sick soldiers.

She taught the soldiers how to manage a hospital, so that the sick and injured soldiers might be cared for as they would have been at home.

She staid in the hospital a year and a half, doing everything in her power for the sick and dying.

The soldiers all loved her and came to think her the noblest and most wonderful woman in all the world. They wanted to have a statue of her raised in London and offered to give the money for it, but she would not let them do this.

She said they might take the money and found a training school for nurses, where girls might be taught to become nurses so as to be ready when there was another war, or need of them elsewhere. Thousands of dollars were given her by the government for her noble work, and this was all given to the Nurses' Training School in London.

You may visit this today and find the nurses still there, carrying on this work begun by Florence Nightingale.

f

CLARA BARTON AND "THE RED CROSS."

E. S. T.

Once upon a time, in a little town in the east, there lived a little girl named Clara Barton. This little girl used to count herself just the luckiest child in the whole town; for she had four already grown up brothers and sisters, and these four were glad to play with baby Clara.

When she was three years old, brother Stephen, who taught the village school, used to wrap little Clara in a big, warm shawl, perch her on his broad shoulders and trot away to school with her. This was great fun, and I am sure one could hardly say which felt the prouder-the good natured big brother or the tiny little sister,

At first Clara was only a visitor at Stephen's school; but it was only a few weeks before, little as she was, the child could read quite a little. Big brother Stephen bought a book for her, and I am sure he thought there never was a little sister so wonderful as his.

Clara had another brother-David. David did not teach school, but loved to spend his days hunting and fishing and riding. This brother too, loved baby Clara, and was never so happy as when he could take her with him. So brother David would go off with her into the fields, to gather flowers; down to the brooks to fish; and into the forests to gather nuts. But the best fun of all was when David would mount one horse, place her upon another,-holding her by the hand-and away they would canter up and down the roads, over hills and down dales, till the color would come into her cheeks and her eyes would shine like stars.

This little girl never had any dolls to play with. "I didn't need to have," she used to say; "for we had quite a large farm, and there were always sick chickens, or lame sheep, or hurt dogs to be taken care of; and I was always so busy with these, and I loved them so, and was so sorry for them, that a doll did

not please me. How could it? It had no life; the dear sick little birds and animals loved me and I loved them."

Once, when Clara Barton was only eleven or twelve years old, her big brother was very ill. The doctor was afraid he could not get well. "Nothing but the very best nursing can his life," said he. "He must be watched every minute night and day, and the medicine must be given with great care."

"Whom shall we get?" everybody asked. There was no one in the village they dared trust him with.

"Send for Clara," the sick boy begged.

And Clara, then away to school, was sent for. You may be sure she lost no time hurrying to her brother, and for many a long day and night the little girl sat by his bedside; and when, by and by, the sick boy began to grow well again, the doctor said, "You are a born nurse, little Clara. I believe you have saved your brother's life."

Clara's father had been a soldier; and nothing delighted him more, now that he was a simple farmer, than to take the little girl on his knee and tell her all about the wars he had been in and the battles he had fought. And the child, her eyes growing bigger and bigger and bigger as she listened to the wonderful stories, would beg for more stories, more and more. Then the father would say, "Let's play soldier!"

Then Clara would march and countermarch, wheel right and left, present arms, salute-her father always giving the commands.

The big brothers had made little Clara some wooden soldiers. They were rude little toys, but every one of them was beautiful to Clara. The biggest one she called Mad Anthony Wayne, because her father had fought under that brave man, and had told her hundreds of stories about him.

Clara and her father would set the soldiers up in lines, march them against each other, storm forts, and take prisoners, till Clara knew all about war and battles.

"You are a born soldier," her father would say. So you see this wonderful woman showed, even when she was a very little girl, that she was a "born nurse" and a "born soldier."

Is it any wonder, then, when Clara Barton came to be a woman, and a terrible war broke out in our land, that she took her place at once upon the battlefield?

All during the war, she went from battlefield to battlefield, and from hospital to hospital, taking care of the sick and wounded soldiers with that same care that had tended the little sick farm friends, and had saved her own brother's life when she was only a little girl.

After the war was over, and she had done all she could for the soldiers, she went away to Switzerland to rest. She was ill and very tired from the hard work; and the doctors told her she must keep very still there among the beautiful hills, and do no more work for long, long months.

But the kind lady had been there only a little time, when war was declared between France and Prussia. Then people began to come to her, begging her to come on to the battlegrounds and do for the sick and dying soldiers there, what she had done on the battlefields of her own country.

She was taken to the beautiful Princess-daughter of King William-and together these two women worked and worked for the soldiers.

It was here that Clara Barton heard first of the Red Cross Society.

Now this Red Cross Society seemed to Clara Barton a beautiful thing. She begged the Princess to tell her all about it and to allow her to join it too.

This is how the Red Cross Society came to be formed. Some kind people saw how cruel it was to leave the dead and dying soldiers uncared for on the battlefields. These kind people began to ask the government and the army officers if they would not promise to it that no suffering soldier should be left uncared for.