ADA
As we have said, at the age of twenty, Ada did not lack means with which to make a rich harvest of the benefits of a career won after a careful and solid prepartion. She must have possessed an enthusiasm that was well-founded, not only because of her adequate mental equipment but, also, because in her inmost soul, she felt the clarion call of an ideal of reform in the education of the women of her country, and which the deplorable situation then prevailing imperatively demanded. But to chan~e that condition of affairs, to transform that environment into something better was indeed an Herculean task necessitating the work of generations, eve~ if the number of teachers of the liberal temper of Librada Avelino were multiplied by the thousands. Education alone or its deficiencies was not the big problem of those years, however. The trouble was with the entire politico-social system then implanted in the country whose inhabitants groaned beneath the iron heel of an archaic colonial government incessantJly fomenting ignorance in the masses, spreading fanaticism far and wide, and mercilessly persecuting the few who 'dared to raise their voice demanding justice and reform. To crush this evil-this hydra-headed Monster which threatened to engulf the liberties of a people, the Revolution came. As Jesus Balmori poetically put it, the "lamp which exploded illuminating the soul of a people," contained in itself the tears of widows am! orphans, the sighs and sufferings of tortured prisoners, the blood of countless executed patriots, and, perhaps, also, and, above all, the irreparable insult to the dignity and self-respect of 72