the earth while woman was created from God's own image. It is our pride
in this land that woman's honor is her own best defense; that here
female virtue is not measured by the vigilance of detective nurses; that
here woman may walk throughout the length and the breadth of this land,
through its highways and byways, uninsulted, unmolested, clothed in the
invulnerable panoply of her own woman's virtue; that even in places
where crime lurks and vice prevails in the haunts of our great cities,
and in the rude mining gulches of the West, owing to the noble efforts
of our women, and the influence of their example, there are raised, even
there, girls who are good daughters, loyal wives, and faithful mothers.
They seem to rise in those rude surroundings as grows the pond lily,
which is entangled by every species of rank growth, environed by poison,
miasma and corruption, and yet which rises in the beauty of its purity
and lifts its fair face unblushing to the sun.

No one who has witnessed the heroism of America's daughters in the field
should fail to pay a passing tribute to their worth. I do not speak
alone of those trained Sisters of Charity, who in scenes of misery and
woe seem Heaven's chosen messengers on earth; but I would speak also of
those fair daughters who come forth from the comfortable firesides of
New England and other States, little trained to scenes of suffering,
little used to the rudeness of a life in camp, who gave their all, their
time, their health, and even life itself as a willing sacrifice in that
cause which then moved the nation's soul. As one of these, with her
graceful form, was seen moving silently through the darkened aisles of
an army hospital, as the motion of her passing dress wafted a breeze
across the face of the wounded, they felt that their parched brows had
been fanned by the wings of the angel of mercy.

Ah! Mr. President, woman is after all a mystery. It has been well said,