it would have been finished long ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord.  Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully short of the goal.  This ought ye to do, but there are other things which you ought not to leave undone.  The war cannot be finished by sheets and pillow-cases.  Sometimes I am tempted to believe that it cannot be finished till we have flung them all away.  When I read of the Rebels fighting bare-headed, bare-footed, haggard, and unshorn, in rags and filth,—­fighting bravely, heroically, successfully,—­I am ready to make a burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing.  I feel and fear that we must come down, as they have done, to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to the very gates of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win victories.  Yet it is not so, for the hardest fights the earth has ever known have been made by the delicate-handed and purple-robed.  So, in the ultimate analysis, it is neither gold-lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the ends of its passionate purpose.

This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women,—­burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in Church or State or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,—­extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of our desolation a highway for the Prince of Peace.

O my country-women, I long to see you stand under the time and bear it up in your strong hearts, and not need to be borne up through it.  I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants from others.  I wish you to be the consolers, the encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in perpetual need of consolation and encouragement.  When men’s brains are knotted and their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid.  And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart.  Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods.  Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and welcome.  The loss is but for a moment; the gain is for all time.  Go farther than this.  Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but life itself.  Father, husband, child,—–­I do not say, Give them up to toil, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur;—­that implies reluctance.  I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire;