L. P. Brockett, Women's work in the civil war: a record of heroism, patriotism and patience

“Poor hands! darkened and hardened by work, they never shirked any task, never turned from any drudgery, that could lighten the load of another. Dear hands! how many bloodstained faces they have washed, how many wounds they have bound up, how many eyes they have closed in dying, how many bodies they have sadly yielded to the darkness of death!”

She is full of a quaint humor, and in all her visits to hospitals her aim seemed to be to awake smiles, and arouse the cheerfulness of the patients; and she was generally successful in this, being everywhere a great favorite. One more quotation from the written testimony of a lady who knew her well and we have done.

“An electric temperament, a nervous organization, with a brain crowded with a variety of memories and incidents that could only come to one in a million-all combine to give her a pleasant abruptness of motion and of speech, which I have heard some very fine ladies term insanity. ‘Now don't you think she is crazy, to spend all her time in such ways?’ said one. When we remember how rare a thing utter unselfishness and self-forgetfulness is, we must conclude that she is crazy. If the listless and idle lives which we live ourselves are perfectly sane, then Almira Fales must be the maddest of mortals. But would it not be better for the world, and for us all, if we were each of us a little crazier in the same direction?”