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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42451 ***
+
+HEROINES OF SERVICE
+
+[Illustration: Mary Lyon]
+
+
+
+
+    HEROINES OF SERVICE
+
+    MARY LYON -- ALICE FREEMAN PALMER -- CLARA
+    BARTON -- FRANCES WILLARD -- JULIA WARD
+    HOWE -- ANNA SHAW -- MARY ANTIN
+    ALICE C. FLETCHER -- MARY SLESSOR
+    OF CALABAR -- MADAME CURIE
+    JANE ADDAMS
+
+    BY
+
+    MARY R. PARKMAN
+
+    Author of "Heroes of Today," etc.
+
+    ILLUSTRATED WITH
+    PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    NEW YORK
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+    1921
+
+
+
+
+    Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
+    THE CENTURY CO.
+
+    _Published September, 1917
+    Reprinted April, 1918;
+    Reprinted August, 1918._
+
+    PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    MY MOTHER
+
+    AND ALL WHO, LIKE HER, ARE
+    TRUE MOTHERS, AND SO, TRUE
+    "HEROINES OF SERVICE."
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+From time immemorial women have been content to be as those who serve.
+_Non ministrari sed ministrare_--not to be ministered unto but to
+minister--is not alone the motto of those who stand under the Wellesley
+banner, but of true women everywhere.
+
+For centuries a woman's own home had not only first claim, but full
+claim, on her fostering care. Her interests and sympathies--her mother
+love--belonged only to those of her own household. In the days when much
+of the labor of providing food and clothing was carried on under each
+roof-tree, her service was necessarily circumscribed by the home walls.
+Whether she was the lady of a baronial castle, or a hardy peasant who
+looked upon her work within doors as a rest from her heavier toil in the
+fields, the mother of the family was not only responsible for the care
+of her children and the prudent management of her housekeeping, but she
+had also entire charge of the manufacture of clothing, from the spinning
+of the flax or wool to the fashioning of the woven cloth into suitable
+garments.
+
+Changed days have come, however, with changed ways. The development
+of science and invention, which has led to industrial progress and
+specialization, has radically changed the woman's world of the home.
+The industries once carried on there are now more efficiently handled
+in large factories and packing-houses. The care of the house itself is
+undertaken by specialists in cleaning and repairing.
+
+Many women, whose energies would have been, under former conditions,
+inevitably monopolized by home-keeping duties, are to-day giving
+their strength and special gifts to social service. They are the true
+mothers--not only of their own little brood--but of the community and
+the world.
+
+The service of the true woman is always "womanly." She gives something
+of the fostering care of the mother, whether it be as nurse, like Clara
+Barton; as teacher, like Mary Lyon and Alice Freeman Palmer; or as
+social helper, like Jane Addams. So it is that the service of these
+"heroines" is that which only women could have given to the world.
+
+Many women who have never held children of their own in their arms have
+been mothers to many in their work. It was surely the mother heart of
+Frances E. Willard that made our "maiden crusader" a helper and healer,
+as well as a standard bearer. It was the mother heart of Alice C.
+Fletcher, that made that student of the past a champion of the Indians
+in their present-day problems and a true "campfire interpreter." It was
+the woman's tenderness that made Mary Slessor, that torch-bearer to
+Darkest Africa, the "white mother" of all the black people she taught
+and served.
+
+The Russian peasants have a proverb: "Labor is the house that Love lives
+in." The women, who, as mothers of their own families, or of other
+children whose needs cry out for their understanding care, are always
+homemakers. And the work of each of these--her labor of love--is truly
+"a house that love lives in."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                     PAGE
+
+       I  MARY LYON                                                3
+
+      II  ALICE FREEMAN PALMER                                    31
+
+     III  CLARA BARTON                                            61
+
+      IV  FRANCES E. WILLARD                                      89
+
+       V  JULIA WARD HOWE                                        119
+
+      VI  ANNA HOWARD SHAW                                       151
+
+     VII  MARY ANTIN                                             185
+
+    VIII  ALICE C. FLETCHER                                      211
+
+      IX  MARY SLESSOR                                           235
+
+       X  MARIE SKLODOWSKA CURIE                                 267
+
+      XI  JANE ADDAMS                                            297
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                PAGE
+
+    Mary Lyon                                         _Frontispiece_
+
+    Mary Lyon Chapel and Administration Hall                      17
+
+    Alice Freeman Palmer                                          36
+
+    College Hall, Destroyed by Fire in 1914                       53
+
+    Tower Court, which Stands on the Site of College Hall         53
+
+    Clara Barton                                                  79
+
+    Frances E. Willard                                            94
+
+    The Statue of Miss Willard in the Capitol at Washington      103
+
+    Mrs. Julia Ward Howe                                         133
+
+    Anna Howard Shaw                                             167
+
+    Mary Antin                                                   201
+
+    Alice C. Fletcher                                            227
+
+    Mary Slessor                                                 253
+
+    Marie Sklodowska Curie                                       280
+
+    Madame and Dr. Curie and Their Little Daughter Irene         289
+
+    Jane Addams                                                  299
+
+    Polk Street Façade of Hull-House Buildings                   309
+
+    A Corner of the Boys' Library at Hull House                  309
+
+
+
+
+PROPHET AND PIONEER: MARY LYON
+
+
+
+
+    Anything that ought to be done can be done.
+
+        IMMANUEL KANT.
+
+
+
+
+HEROINES OF SERVICE
+
+
+
+
+PROPHET AND PIONEER
+
+
+"What is my little Mistress Mary trying to do?" The whir of the
+spinning-wheel was stilled for a moment as Mrs. Lyon glanced in surprise
+at the child who had climbed up on a chair to look more closely at the
+hourglass on the chimneypiece.
+
+"I am just trying to see if I can find the way to make more time,"
+replied Mary.
+
+"That's not the way, daughter," laughed the busy mother, as she started
+her wheel again. "When you stop to watch time, you lose it. Let your
+work slip from your fingers faster than the sand slips--that's the way
+to make time!"
+
+If busy hands can indeed make time, we know why the days were so full
+of happy work in that little farm-house among the hills of western
+Massachusetts. It takes courage and ceaseless toil to run a farm that
+must provide food and clothing for seven growing children, but Mrs. Lyon
+was never too busy or too tired to help a neighbor or to speak a word of
+cheer.
+
+"How is it that the widow can do more for me than any one else?" asked
+a neighbor who had found her a friend in need. "She reminds me of what
+the Bible says, 'having nothing yet possessing all things.' There she is
+left without a husband to fend for her and the children, so that it's
+work, work, work for them all from morning till night, and yet they're
+always happy. You would think the children liked nothing better than
+doing chores."
+
+"How is it that the harder a thing is the more you seem to like it,
+Mary?" asked her seat-mate in the district school, looking wonderingly
+at the girl whose eyes always brightened and snapped when the arithmetic
+problems were long and hard.
+
+"Oh, it's lots more fun _climbing_ than just going along on the level,"
+replied Mary. "You feel so much more alive. I'll tell you what to do
+when a thing seems hard, like a steep, steep hill, you know. Say to
+yourself: 'Some people may call you Difficulty, old hill; but I know
+that your name is Opportunity. You're here just to prove that I can do
+something worth while.' Then the climbing is the best fun--really!"
+
+It is a happy thing to be born among the hills. Wherever one looks there
+is something to whisper: "There is no joy like climbing. Besides, the
+sun stays longer on the summit, and beyond the hill-tops is a larger,
+brighter world." Perhaps it was the fresh breath of the hills that gave
+Mary Lyon her glowing cheeks, as the joy of climbing brought the dancing
+lights into her clear blue eyes.
+
+The changing seasons march over the hills in a glorious pageant of
+color, from the tender veiling green of young April to the purple mists
+and red-and-gold splendor of Indian summer. Every day had the thrill of
+new adventure to Mary Lyon, but perhaps she loved the mellow October
+days best. "They have all the glowing memory of the past summer and the
+promise of the spring to come," she used to say.
+
+How could one who had, through the weeks of growing things, worked
+together with rain and sunshine and generous earth for the harvest but
+feel the happy possession of all the year at the time when she saw
+bins overflowing with brown potatoes, yellow corn, and other gifts of
+fields and orchard? She could never doubt that, given the waiting earth
+and faithful labor, the harvest was sure. Duties and difficulties were
+always opportunities for higher endeavor and happier achievement.
+
+There was no play in Mary Lyon's childhood except the play that a
+healthy, active child may find in varied, healthful work done with a
+light heart. There was joy in rising before the sun was up, to pick
+weeds in the dewy garden, to feed the patient creatures in the barn,
+and to make butter in the cool spring-house. Sometimes one could meet
+the sunrise on the hill-top, when it happened to be one's turn to bring
+wood to the dwindling pile by the kitchen door. Then there was the
+baking--golden-brown loaves of bread and tempting apple pies. When the
+morning mists had quite disappeared from the face of the hills, the blue
+smoke had ceased to rise from the chimney of the little farm-house.
+Then was the time to sit beside Mother and knit or weave, sew or mend,
+the garments that were homemade, beginning with the moment when the
+wool, sheared from their own sheep, was carded and spun into thread.
+For holidays, there were the exciting mornings when they made soap and
+candles, or the afternoons when they gathered together in the barn for a
+husking-bee.
+
+Beauty walked with Toil, however, about that farm in the hills. Mary had
+time to lift up her eyes to the glory of the changing sky and to tend
+the pinks and peonies that throve nowhere so happily as in her mother's
+old-fashioned garden.
+
+"May I plant this bush in the corner with your roses?" asked a neighbor
+one day. "It is a rare plant of rare virtue, and I know that in your
+garden it cannot die."
+
+As the labor of her hands prospered, as her garden posies blossomed, so
+the wings of Mary Lyon's spirit grew. No matter how shut in the present
+seemed, no hope nor dream for the future died in her heart as the days
+went by.
+
+Her plans only took deeper and deeper root as she worked and waited
+patiently for the time of flowers and fruit. There were few books to be
+had, but these yielded her of their best. There was opportunity for but
+few scattered terms in distant district schools, but she learned there
+more than the teachers taught.
+
+"Anything is interesting when you realize that it is important," she
+used to say. And to Mary everything was important that was real. She
+learned not only from books, but from work, from people, from Nature,
+and from every bit of stray circumstance that came her way. It is said
+that when the first brick house was built in the village she made a
+point of learning how to make bricks, turning them up, piling them on
+the wheelbarrow, and putting them in the kiln. She was always hungry to
+know and to do, and the harder a thing was the more she seemed to like
+it. Climbing was ever more fun than trudging along on the level.
+
+The years brought changes to the home farm. The older sisters married
+and went to homes of their own. When Mary was thirteen her mother
+married again and went away with the younger children, leaving her to
+keep house for the only brother, who had from early childhood been her
+best comrade. The dollar a week given her for her work was saved to pay
+for a term in the neighboring academy. She also taught in a district
+school for a while, receiving seventy-five cents a week and board.
+
+The nineteen-year-old girl who appeared one day at the Ashfield
+Academy somehow drew all eyes to her. Her blue homespun dress, with
+running-strings at neck and waist, was queer and shapeless, even judged
+by village standards in the New England of 1817. Her movements were
+impulsive and ungainly and her gait awkward. But it was not the crudity,
+but the power, of the new-comer that impressed people. Squire White's
+gentle daughter, the slender, graceful Amanda, gave the loyalty of her
+best friendship to this interesting and enthusiastic schoolmate from the
+hill farm.
+
+"She is more alive than any one I know, Father," said the girl, in
+explanation of her preference. "You never see her odd dress and sudden
+ways when once you have looked into her face and talked to her. Her face
+seems lighted from within--it isn't just her bright color and red-gold
+curls; it isn't even her merry laugh. I can't explain what I mean,
+but it seems as if her life touches mine--and it's such a big, warm,
+beautiful life!"
+
+The traditions of this New England village long kept the memory of
+her first recitation. On Friday she had been given the first lesson
+of Adams's Latin Grammar to commit to memory. When she was called up
+early Monday afternoon, she began to recite fluently declensions and
+conjugations without pause, until, as the daylight waned, the whole of
+the Latin grammar passed in review before the speechless teacher and
+dazzled, admiring pupils.
+
+"How did you ever do it? How could your head hold it all?" demanded
+Amanda, with a gasp, as they walked home together.
+
+"Well, really, I'll have to own up," said Mary, with some reluctance, "I
+studied all day Sunday! It wasn't so very hard, though. I soon saw where
+the changes in the conjugations came in, and the rules of syntax are
+very much like English grammar."
+
+Studying was never hard work to Mary, because she could at a moment's
+notice put all her attention on the thing at hand. Her busy childhood
+had taught her to attack a task at once, while others were frequently
+spending their time thinking and talking about doing it.
+
+"No one could study like Mary Lyon, and no one could clean the
+school-room with such despatch," said one of her classmates.
+
+It seemed as if she never knew what it was to be tired. She appeared to
+have a boundless store of strength and enthusiasm, as if, through all
+her growing years, she had made over into the very fiber of her being
+the energy of the life-giving sunshine and the patience of the enduring
+hills. Time must be used wisely when all one's little hoard of savings
+will only pay for the tuition of one precious term. Her board was paid
+with two coverlets, spun, dyed, and woven by her own hands.
+
+"They should prove satisfactory covers," she said merrily, "for they
+have covered all my needs."
+
+On the day when she thought she must bid farewell to Ashfield Academy
+the trustees voted her free tuition, a gift which, as pupil-teacher,
+she did her best to repay. The hospitable doors of Squire White's
+dignified residence were thrown open to his daughter's chosen friend,
+and in this second home she readily absorbed the ways of gracious
+living--the niceties and refinements of dress and manners for which
+there had been no time in the busy farm-house.
+
+When the course at the academy was completed, the power of her eager
+spirit and evident gifts led Squire White to offer her the means to go
+with his daughter to Byfield Seminary near Boston, the school conducted
+by Mr. Joseph Emerson, who believed that young women, no less than their
+brothers, should have an opportunity for higher instruction. In those
+days before colleges for women or normal schools, he dreamed of doing
+something towards giving worthy preparation to future teachers. It was
+through the teaching and inspiration of this cultured Harvard scholar
+and large-hearted man that Mary Lyon learned to know the meaning of
+life, and to understand aright the longings of her own soul. Years
+afterward she said: "In my youth I had much vigor--was always aspiring
+after something. I called it longing to study, but had few to direct me.
+One teacher I shall always remember. He taught me that education was to
+fit one to do good."
+
+On leaving Byfield Seminary, Miss Lyon began her life-work of teaching.
+But with all her preparation for doing and her intense desire to do, she
+did not at first succeed. The matter of control was not easy to one who
+would not stoop to rigid mechanical means and who said, "One has not
+governed a child until she makes the child smile under her government."
+Besides, her sense of humor--later one of her chief assets--seemed at
+first to get in the way of her gaining a steady hold on the reins.
+
+When she was tempted to give up in discouragement, she said to herself:
+"I know that good teachers are needed, and that I ought to teach. 'All
+that ought to be done can be done.'"
+
+To one who worked earnestly in that spirit, success was sure. Five years
+later, two towns were vying with each other to secure her as a teacher
+in their academies for young ladies. For some time she taught at Derry,
+New Hampshire, during the warm months, going to her beloved Ashfield for
+the winter term. Wherever she was she drew pupils from the surrounding
+towns and even from beyond the borders of the State. Teachers left their
+schools to gather about her. She had the power to communicate something
+of her own enthusiasm and vitality. Bright eyes and alert faces
+testified to her power to quicken thought and to create an appetite for
+knowledge.
+
+"Her memory has been to me continually an inspiration to overcome
+difficulties," said one of her pupils.
+
+"You were the first friend who ever pointed out to me defects of
+character with the expectation that they would be removed," another
+pupil wrote in a letter of heartfelt gratitude.
+
+At this time all the schools for girls, like the Ashfield Academy and
+Mr. Emerson's seminary at Byfield, were entirely dependent upon the
+enterprise and ideals of individuals. There were no colleges with
+buildings and equipment, such as furnished dormitories, libraries, and
+laboratories, belonging to the work and the future. In the case of the
+most successful schools there was no guarantee that they would endure
+beyond the lifetime of those whose interest had called them into being.
+
+Miss Lyon taught happily for several years, often buying books of
+reference and material for practical illustration out of her salary of
+five or six dollars a week. The chance for personal influence seemed the
+one essential. "Never mind the brick and mortar!" she cried. "Only let
+us have the living minds to work upon!"
+
+As experience came with the years, however, as she saw schools where a
+hundred young women were crowded into one room without black-boards,
+globes, maps, and other necessaries of instruction--she realized that
+something must be done to secure higher schools for girls, that would
+have the requisite material equipment for the present and security for
+the future. "We must provide a college for young women on the same
+conditions as those for men, with publicly owned buildings and fixed
+standards of work," she said.
+
+This idea could appeal to most people of that day only as a strange,
+extravagant, and dangerous notion. Harvard and Yale existed to prepare
+men to be ministers, doctors, and lawyers. Did women expect to thrust
+themselves into the professions? Why should they want the learning of
+men? It could do nothing but make them unfit for their proper life in
+the home. Who had ever heard of a college for girls! What is unheard of
+is to most people manifestly absurd.
+
+To Mary Lyon, however, difficulties were opportunities for truer effort
+and greater service. She had, besides, a faith in a higher power--in a
+Divine Builder of "houses not made with hands"--which led her to say
+with unshaken confidence, "'All that ought to be done can be done!'"
+
+[Illustration: Mary Lyon chapel and administration hall]
+
+It was as if she were able to look into the future and see the way time
+would sift the works of the present. Those who looked into her earnest
+blue eyes, bright with courage, deep with understanding, could not but
+feel that she had the prophet's vision. It was as if she had power to
+divine the difference between the difficult and the impossible, and,
+knowing that, her faith in the happy outcome of her work was founded on
+a rock.
+
+It took this faith and hope, together with an unfailing charity for
+the lack of vision in others and an ever-present sense of humor, to
+carry Mary Lyon through the task to which she now set herself. She was
+determined to open people's eyes to the need of giving girls a chance
+for a training that would fit them for more useful living by making them
+better teachers, wiser home-makers, and, in their own right, happier
+human beings. She must not only convince the conservative men and women
+of her day that education could do these things, but she must make
+that conviction so strong that they would be willing to give of their
+hard-earned substance to help along the good work.
+
+Those were not the days of large fortunes. Miss Lyon could not depend
+upon winning the interest of a few powerful benefactors. She must enlist
+the support of the many who would be willing to share their little. She
+must perforce have the hardihood of the pioneer, no less than the vision
+of the seer, to enable her to meet the problems, trials, and rebuffs of
+the next few years.
+
+"I learned twenty years ago not to get out of patience," she once said
+to some one who marveled at the unwearied good-humor with which she met
+the most exasperating circumstances.
+
+First enlisting the assistance of a few earnest men to serve as trustees
+and promoters of the cause, she, herself, traveled from town to town,
+from village to village, and from house to house, telling over and
+over again the story of the Mount Holyoke to be, and what it was to
+mean to the daughters of New England. For the site in South Hadley,
+Massachusetts, had been early selected, and the name of the neighboring
+height, overlooking the Connecticut River, chosen by the girl who was
+born in the hills and who believed that it was good to climb.
+
+"I wander about without a home," she wrote to her mother, "and scarcely
+know one week where I shall be the next."
+
+All of her journeying was by stage, for at that time the only railroad
+in New England was the one, not yet completed, connecting Boston with
+Worcester and Lowell. To those who feared that even her robust health
+and radiant spirit could not long endure the strain of such a life, she
+said: "Our personal comforts are delightful, but not essential. Mount
+Holyoke means more than meat and sleep. Had I a thousand lives, I would
+sacrifice them all in suffering and hardship for its sake."
+
+During these years Miss Lyon abundantly proved that the pioneer does
+not live by bread alone. Only by the vision of what his struggles will
+mean to those who come after to profit by his labors is his zeal fed.
+It seemed at the time when Mount Holyoke was only a dream of what might
+be, and in the anxious days of breaking ground which followed, that
+Miss Lyon's faith that difficulties are only opportunities in disguise
+was tried to the utmost. Just when her enthusiasm was arousing in the
+frugal, thrifty New Englanders a desire to give, out of their slender
+savings, a great financial panic swept over the country.
+
+Miss Lyon's friends shook their heads. "You will have to wait for better
+times," they said. "It is impossible to go on with the undertaking now."
+
+"When a thing ought to be done, it cannot be impossible," replied Miss
+Lyon. "_Now_ is the only word that belongs to us; with the afterwhile we
+have nothing to do."
+
+In that spirit she went on, and in that spirit girls who had been her
+pupils gave of their little stipends earned by teaching, and the mothers
+of girls gave of the money earned by selling eggs and braiding palm-leaf
+hats.
+
+"Don't think any gift too small," said Miss Lyon. "I want the twenties
+and the fifties, but the dollars and the half-dollars, with prayer, go a
+long way."
+
+So Mount Holyoke was built on faith and prayer and the gifts of the many
+who believed that the time cried out for a means of educating girls who
+longed for a better training. One hard-working farmer with five sons
+to educate gave a hundred dollars. "I have no daughters of my own," he
+said, "but I want to help give the daughters of America the chance they
+should have along with the boys." Two delicate gentlewomen who had lost
+their little property in the panic, earned with their own hands the
+money they had pledged to the college.
+
+Even Miss Lyon's splendid optimism had, however, some chill encounters
+with smallmindedness in people who were not seldom those of large
+opportunities. Once when she had journeyed a considerable distance to
+lay her plans before a family of wealth and influence in the community,
+she returned to her friends with a shade of thought on her cheerful
+brow. "Yes, it is all true, just as I was told," she said as if to
+herself. "They live in a costly house, it is full of costly things, they
+wear costly clothes--but oh, they're _little bits of folks_!"
+
+Miss Lyon, herself, gave to the work not only her entire capital of
+physical strength and her gifts of heart and mind, but also her small
+savings, which had been somewhat increased by Mr. White's prudent
+investments. And for the future she offered her services on the same
+conditions as those of the missionary--the means of simple livelihood
+and the joy of the work.
+
+"Mount Holyoke is designed to cultivate the missionary spirit among its
+pupils," declared an early circular, "that they may live for God _and do
+something_."
+
+Always Miss Lyon emphasized the ideal of an education that should be
+a training for service. To this end she decided upon the expedient
+of coöperative housework to reduce running expenses, to develop
+responsibility, and to provide healthful physical exercise. Long before
+the day of gymnasiums and active sports, this educator recognized the
+need of balanced development of physical as well as mental habits.
+
+"We need to introduce wise and healthy ideals not only into our minds,
+but into our muscles," she said. "Besides, there is no discipline so
+valuable as that which comes from fitting our labors into the work of
+others for a common good."
+
+One difficulty after another was met and vanquished. When the digging
+for the foundation of the first building was actually under way,
+quicksand was discovered and another location had to be chosen. Then
+it appeared that the bricks were faulty, which led to another delay.
+After the work was resumed and all was apparently going well, the walls
+suddenly collapsed. "Then," said the man in charge, "I did dread to see
+Miss Lyon. Now, thought I, she will be discouraged."
+
+As he hurried towards the ruins, however, whom should he meet but Miss
+Lyon herself, smiling radiantly! "How fortunate it is that it happened
+while the men were at breakfast!" she exclaimed. "I understand that no
+one has been injured!"
+
+The corner-stone was laid on a bright October day that seemed to have
+turned all the gray chill of the dying year into a golden promise of
+budding life after the time of frost.
+
+"The stones and brick and mortar speak a language which vibrates through
+my soul," said Miss Lyon. "I have indeed lived to see the time when a
+body of gentlemen have ventured to lay the corner-stone of an edifice
+which will cost about fifteen thousand dollars--and for an institution
+for women! Surely the Lord hath remembered our low estate. The work will
+not stop with this foundation. Our enterprise may have to struggle
+through embarrassments for years, but its influence will be felt."
+
+How lovingly she watched the work go on! When the interior was under
+way, how carefully she considered each detail of closets, shelves, and
+general arrangements for comfort and convenience! When the question
+of equipment became urgent, how she worked to create an interest that
+should express itself in gifts of bedroom furnishings, curtains,
+crockery, and kitchen-ware, as well as books, desks, chairs, and
+laboratory material! All sorts and conditions of contributions and
+donations were welcomed. One was reminded of the way pioneer Harvard was
+at first supported by gifts of "a cow or a sheep, corn or salt, a piece
+of cloth or of silver plate." Four months before the day set for the
+opening, not a third of the necessary furnishing had come in.
+
+"Everything that is done for us now," cried Miss Lyon, "seems like
+giving bread to the hungry and cold water to the thirsty!"
+
+On the eighth of November, 1837, the day that Mount Holyoke opened
+its door, all was excitement in South Hadley. Stages and private
+carriages had for two days been arriving with road-weary, but eager,
+young women. The sound of hammers greeted their ears. It appeared that
+all the men, young and old, of the countryside had been pressed into
+service. Some were tacking down carpet or matting, others were carrying
+trunks, unloading furniture, and putting up beds. Miss Lyon seemed to
+be everywhere, greeting each new-comer with a word that showed that she
+already knew her as an individual, putting the shy and homesick girls to
+work, taking a cup of tea to one who was overtired from her journey, and
+directing the placing of furniture and the unpacking of supplies.
+
+It might well have seemed to those first arrivals that they must
+live through a period of preparation before a reluctant beginning of
+regular work could be achieved, but in the midst of all the noise of
+house-settling and the fever of uncompleted entrance examinations
+the opening bell sounded on schedule time and classes began at once.
+What seemed, at first glance, hopeless confusion became ordered and
+stimulating activity through the generalship and inspiration of one
+woman whose watchword was: "Do the best you can _now_. Do not lose one
+golden opportunity for doing by merely getting ready to do something.
+Always remember that what ought to be done can be done."
+
+This spirit of assured power--the will to do--became the spirit of those
+who worked with her, and was in time recognized as "the Mount Holyoke
+spirit."
+
+"I can see Miss Lyon now as vividly as if it were only yesterday that I
+arrived, tired, hungry, and fearful, into the strange new world of the
+seminary," said a white-haired grandmother, her spectacles growing misty
+as she looked back across the sixty-odd years that separated her from
+the experiences that she was recalling.
+
+"Tell me what you remember most about her," urged her vivacious
+granddaughter, a Mount Holyoke freshman, home for her Christmas
+vacation. "Was she really such a wonder as they all say?"
+
+"Many pictures come to me of Miss Lyon that are much more vivid than
+those of people I saw yesterday," pondered the grandmother. "But it
+was, I think, in morning exercises in seminary hall that she impressed
+us most. Those who listened to her earnest words and looked into her
+face alight with feeling could not but remember. Her large blue eyes
+looked down upon us as if she held us all in her heart. What was the
+secret of her power! My dear, she _was power_. All that she taught, she
+was. And so while her words awakened, her example--the life-giving touch
+of her life--gave power to do and to endure."
+
+The young girl's bright face was turned thoughtfully towards the fire,
+but the light that shone in her eyes was more than the reflected glow
+from the cheerful logs. "It is good to think that a woman can live like
+that in her work," she ventured softly.
+
+The grandmother's face showed an answering glow. "There are some things
+that cannot grow old and die," she said. "One of them is a spirit like
+Mary Lyon's. When they told us that she had died, we knew that only her
+bodily presence had been removed. She still lived in our midst--we heard
+the ring of her voice in the words we read, in the words our hearts
+told us she would say; we even heard the ring of her laugh! And to-day
+you may be sure that the woman-pioneer who had the faith to plant the
+first college for women in America, lives by that faith, not only in her
+own Mount Holyoke, but in the larger lives of all the women who have
+profited by her labors."
+
+
+
+
+"THE PRINCESS" OF WELLESLEY: ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
+
+
+
+
+    Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
+    And grow forever and forever.
+
+        TENNYSON.
+
+
+
+
+"THE PRINCESS" OF WELLESLEY
+
+
+This is the story of a princess of our own time and our own America--a
+princess who, while little more than a girl herself, was chosen to
+rule a kingdom of girls. It is a little like the story of Tennyson's
+"Princess," with her woman's kingdom, and very much like the happy,
+old-fashioned fairy-tale.
+
+We have come to think it is only in fairy-tales that a golden destiny
+finds out the true, golden heart, and, even though she masquerades as
+a goose-girl, discovers the "kingly child" and brings her to a waiting
+throne. We are tempted to believe that the chance of birth and the gifts
+of wealth are the things that spell opportunity and success. But this
+princess was born in a little farm-house, to a daily round of hard work
+and plain living. That it was also a life of high thinking and rich
+enjoyment of what each day brought, proved her indeed a "kingly child."
+
+"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors
+ridiculous!" said the sage of Concord. So it was with little Alice
+Freeman. As she picked wild strawberries on the hills, and climbed the
+apple-tree to lie for a blissful minute in a nest of swaying blossoms
+under the blue sky, she was, as she said, "happy all over." The
+trappings of royalty can add nothing to one who knows how to be royally
+happy in gingham.
+
+But Alice was not always following the pasture path to her friendly
+brook, or running across the fields with the calling wind, or dancing
+with her shadow in the barn-yard, where even the prosy hens stopped
+pecking corn for a minute to watch. She had work to do for Mother.
+When she was only four, she could dry the dishes without dropping one;
+and when she was six, she could be trusted to keep the three toddlers
+younger than herself out of mischief.
+
+"My little daughter is learning to be a real little mother," said Mrs.
+Freeman, as she went about her work of churning and baking without an
+anxious thought.
+
+[Illustration: Alice Freeman Palmer]
+
+It was Sister Alice who pointed out the robin's nest, and found funny
+turtles and baby toads to play with. She took the little brood with her
+to hunt eggs in the barn and to see the ducks sail around like a fleet
+of boats on the pond. When Ella and Fred were wakened by a fearsome
+noise at night, they crept up close to their little mother, who told
+them a story about the funny screech-owl in its hollow-tree home.
+
+"It is the ogre of mice and bats, but not of little boys and girls," she
+said.
+
+"It sounds funny now, Alice," they whispered. "It's all right when we
+can touch you."
+
+When Alice was seven a change came in the home. The father and mother
+had some serious talks, and then it was decided that Father should go
+away for a time, for two years, to study to be a doctor.
+
+"It is hard to be chained to one kind of life when all the time you are
+sure that you have powers and possibilities that have never had a chance
+to come out in the open," she heard her father say one evening. "I have
+always wanted to be a doctor; I can never be more than a half-hearted
+farmer."
+
+"You must go to Albany now, James," said the dauntless wife. "I can
+manage the farm until you get through your course at the medical
+college; and then, when you are doing work into which you can put your
+whole heart, a better time must come for all of us."
+
+"How can you possibly get along?" he asked in amazement. "How can I
+leave you for two years to be a farmer, and father and mother, too?"
+
+"There is a little bank here," she said, taking down a jar from a high
+shelf in the cupboard and jingling its contents merrily. "I have been
+saving bit by bit for just this sort of thing. And Alice will help me,"
+she added, smiling at the child who had been standing near looking from
+father to mother in wide-eyed wonder. "You will be the little mother
+while I take father's place for a time, won't you, Alice?"
+
+"It will be cruelly hard on you all," said the father, soberly. "I
+cannot make it seem right."
+
+"Think how much good you can do afterward," urged his wife. "The time
+will go very quickly when we are all thinking of that. It is not hard
+to endure for a little for the sake of 'a gude time coming'--a better
+time not only for us, but for many besides. For I know you will be the
+true sort of doctor, James."
+
+Alice never quite knew how they did manage during those two years, but
+she was quite sure that work done for the sake of a good to come is all
+joy.
+
+"I owe much of what I am to my milkmaid days," she said.
+
+She was always sorry for children who do not grow up with the sights and
+sounds of the country. "One is very near to all the simple, real things
+of life on a farm," she used to say. "There is a dewy freshness about
+the early out-of-door experiences, and a warm wholesomeness about tasks
+that are a part of the common lot. A country child develops, too, a
+responsibility--a power to do and to contrive--that the city child, who
+sees everything come ready to hand from a near-by store, cannot possibly
+gain. However much some of my friends may deplore my own early struggle
+with poverty and hard work, I can heartily echo George Eliot's boast:
+
+    "But were another childhood-world my share,
+    I would be born a little sister there."
+
+When Alice was ten years old, the family moved from the farm to the
+village of Windsor, where Dr. Freeman entered upon his life as a doctor,
+and where Alice's real education began. From the time she was four she
+had, for varying periods, sat on a bench in the district school, but for
+the most part she had taught herself. At Windsor Academy she had the
+advantage of a school of more than average efficiency.
+
+"Words do not tell what this old school and place meant to me as a
+girl," she said years afterward. "Here we gathered abundant Greek,
+Latin, French, and mathematics; here we were taught truthfulness, to be
+upright and honorable; here we had our first loves, our first ambitions,
+our first dreams, and some of our first disappointments. We owe a large
+debt to Windsor Academy for the solid groundwork of education that it
+laid."
+
+More important than the excellent curriculum and wholesome associations,
+however, was the influence of a friendship with one of the teachers, a
+young Harvard graduate who was supporting himself while preparing for
+the ministry. He recognized the rare nature and latent powers of the
+girl of fourteen, and taught her the delights of friendship with Nature
+and with books, and the joy of a mind trained to see and appreciate. He
+gave her an understanding of herself, and aroused the ambition, which
+grew into a fixed resolve, to go to college. But more than all, he
+taught her the value of personal influence.
+
+"It is people that count," she used to say. "The truth and beauty that
+are locked up in books and in nature, to which only a few have the key,
+begin really to live when they are made over into human character.
+Disembodied ideas may mean little or nothing; it is when they are 'made
+flesh' that they can speak to our hearts and minds."
+
+As Alice drove about with her father when he went to see his patients
+and saw how this true "doctor of the old school" was a physician to the
+mind as well as the body of those who turned to him for help, she came
+to a further realization of the truth: It is people that count.
+
+"It must be very depressing to have to associate with bodies and their
+ills all the time," she ventured one day when her father seemed more
+than usually preoccupied. She never forgot the light that shone in his
+eyes as he turned and looked at her.
+
+"We can't begin to minister to the body until we understand that spirit
+is all," he said. "What we are pleased to call _body_ is but one
+expression--and a most marvelous expression--of the hidden life
+
+                        "that impels
+    All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+    And rolls through all things."
+
+It seemed to Alice that this might be a favorable time to broach the
+subject of college. He looked at her in utter amazement; few girls
+thought of wanting more than a secondary education in those days, and
+there were still fewer opportunities for them.
+
+"Why, daughter," he exclaimed, "a little more Latin and mathematics
+won't make you a better home-maker! Why should you set your heart on
+this thing?"
+
+"I must go, Father," she answered steadily. "It is not a sudden notion;
+I have realized for a long time that I cannot live my life--the life
+that I feel I have it within me to live--without this training. I want
+to be a teacher--the best kind of a teacher--just as you wanted to be a
+doctor."
+
+"But, my dear child," he protested, much troubled, "it will be as much
+as we can manage to see one of you through college, and that one should
+be Fred, who will have a family to look out for one of these days."
+
+"If you let me have this chance, Father," said Alice, earnestly, "I'll
+promise that you will never regret it. I'll help to give Fred his
+chance, and see that the girls have the thing they want as well."
+
+In the end Alice had her way. It seemed as if the strength of her
+single-hearted longing had power to compel a reluctant fate. In June,
+1872, when but a little over seventeen, she went to Ann Arbor to take
+the entrance examinations for the University of Michigan, a careful
+study of catalogues having convinced her that the standard of work was
+higher there than in any college then open to women.
+
+A disappointment met her at the outset. Her training at Windsor,
+good as it was, did not prepare her for the university requirements.
+"Conditions" loomed mountain high, and the examiners recommended that
+she spend another year in preparation. Her intelligence and character
+had won the interest of President Angell, however, and he asked that she
+be granted a six-weeks' trial. His confidence in her was justified; for
+she not only proved her ability to keep up with her class, but steadily
+persevered in her double task until all conditions were removed.
+
+The college years were "a glory instead of a grind," in spite of the
+ever-pressing necessity for strict economy in the use of time and
+money. Her sense of values--"the ability to see large things large
+and small things small," which has been called the best measure of
+education,--showed a wonderful harmony of powers. While the mind was
+being stored with knowledge and the intellect trained to clear, orderly
+thinking, there was never a "too-muchness" in this direction that
+meant a "not-enoughness" in the realm of human relationships. Always
+she realized that it is people that count, and her supreme test of
+education as of life was its "consecrated serviceableness." President
+Angell in writing of her said:
+
+    One of her most striking characteristics in college was her
+    warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circle of friends.
+    Her soul seemed bubbling over with joy, which she wished to
+    share with the other girls. While she was therefore in the most
+    friendly relations with all those girls then in college, she
+    was the radiant center of a considerable group whose tastes
+    were congenial with her own. Without assuming or striving for
+    leadership, she could not but be to a certain degree a leader
+    among these, some of whom have attained positions only less
+    conspicuous for usefulness than her own. Wherever she went, her
+    genial, outgoing spirit seemed to carry with her an atmosphere
+    of cheerfulness and joy.
+
+In the middle of her junior year, news came from her father of a more
+than usual financial stress, owing to a flood along the Susquehanna,
+which had swept away his hope of present gain from a promising stretch
+of woodland. It seemed clear to Alice that the time had come when she
+must make her way alone. Through the recommendation of President Angell
+she secured a position as teacher of Latin and Greek in the High School
+at Ottawa, Illinois, where she taught for five months, receiving enough
+money to carry her through the remainder of her college course. The
+omitted junior work was made up partly during the summer vacation and
+partly in connection with the studies of the senior year. An extract
+from a letter home will tell how the busy days went:
+
+    This is the first day of vacation. I have been so busy this
+    year that it seems good to get a change, even though I do keep
+    right on here at work. For some time I have been giving a young
+    man lessons in Greek every Saturday. I have had two junior
+    speeches already, and there are still more. Several girls from
+    Flint tried to have me go home with them for the vacation, but I
+    made up my mind to stay and do what I could for myself and the
+    other people here. A young Mr. M. is going to recite to me every
+    day in Virgil; so with teaching and all the rest I sha'n't have
+    time to be homesick, though it will seem rather lonely when the
+    other girls are gone and I don't hear the college bell for two
+    weeks.
+
+Miss Freeman's early teaching showed the vitalizing spirit that marked
+all of her relations with people.
+
+"She had a way of making you feel 'all dipped in sunshine,'" one of her
+girls said.
+
+"Everything she taught seemed a part of herself," another explained. "It
+wasn't just something in a book that she had to teach and you had to
+learn. She made every page of our history seem a part of present life
+and interests. We saw and felt the things we talked about."
+
+The fame of this young teacher's influence traveled all the way from
+Michigan, where she was principal of the Saginaw High School, to
+Massachusetts. Mr. Henry Durant, the founder of Wellesley, asked her
+to come to the new college as teacher of mathematics. She declined the
+call, however, and, a year later, a second and more urgent invitation.
+Her family had removed to Saginaw, where Dr. Freeman was slowly building
+up a practice, and it would mean leaving a home that needed her. The
+one brother was now in the university; Ella was soon to be married; and
+Stella, the youngest, who was most like Alice in temperament and tastes,
+was looking forward hopefully to college.
+
+But at the time when Dr. Freeman was becoming established and the
+financial outlook began to brighten, the darkest days that the family
+had ever known were upon them. Stella, the chief joy and hope of them
+all, fell seriously ill. The "little mother" loved this "starlike girl"
+as her own child, and looked up to her as one who would reach heights
+her feet could never climb. When she died it seemed to Alice that she
+had lost the one chance for a perfectly understanding and inspiring
+comradeship that life offered. At this time a third call came to
+Wellesley,--as head of the department of history,--and hoping that a new
+place with new problems would give her a fresh hold on joy, she accepted.
+
+Into her college work the young woman of twenty-four put all the power
+and richness of her radiant personality. She found peace and happiness
+in untiring effort, and her girls found in her the most inspiring
+teacher they had ever known. She went to the heart of the history she
+taught, and she went to the hearts of her pupils.
+
+"She seemed to care for each of us--to find each as interesting and
+worth while as if there were no other person in the world," one of her
+students said.
+
+Mr. Durant had longed to find just such a person to build on the
+foundation he had laid. It was in her first year that he pointed her out
+to one of the trustees.
+
+"Do you see that little dark-eyed girl? She will be the next president
+of Wellesley," he said.
+
+"Surely she is much too young and inexperienced for such a
+responsibility," protested the other, looking at him in amazement.
+
+"As for the first, it is a fault we easily outgrow," said Mr. Durant,
+dryly, "and as for her inexperience--well, I invite you to visit one of
+her classes."
+
+The next year, on the death of Mr. Durant, she was made acting president
+of the college, and the year following she inherited the title and
+honors, as well as the responsibilities and opportunities, of the
+office. The Princess had come into her kingdom.
+
+The election caused a great stir among the students, particularly the
+irrepressible seniors. It was wonderful and most inspiring that their
+splendid Miss Freeman, who was the youngest member of the faculty,
+should have won this honor. "Why, she was only a girl like themselves!
+The time of strict observances and tiresome regulations of every sort
+was at an end. Miss Freeman seemed to sense the prevailing mood, and,
+without waiting for a formal assembly, asked the seniors to meet her
+in her rooms. In they poured, overflowing chairs, tables, and ranging
+themselves about on the floor in animated, expectant groups. The new
+head of the college looked at them quietly for a minute before she began
+to speak.
+
+"I have sent for you seniors," she said at last seriously, "to ask your
+advice. You may have heard that I have been called to the position
+of acting president of your college. I am, of course, too young; and
+the duties are, as you know, too heavy for the strongest to carry
+alone. If I must manage alone, there is only one course--to decline.
+It has, however, occurred to me that my seniors might be willing to
+help by looking after the order of the college and leaving me free for
+administration. Shall I accept? Shall we work things out together?"
+
+The hearty response made it clear that the princess was to rule not
+only by "divine right," but also by the glad "consent of the governed."
+Perhaps it was her youth and charm and the romance of her brilliant
+success that won for her the affectionate title of "The Princess";
+perhaps it was her undisputed sway in her kingdom of girls. It was said
+that her radiant, "outgoing spirit" was felt in the atmosphere of the
+place and in all the graduates. Her spirit became the Wellesley spirit.
+
+"What did she do besides turning all of you into an adoring band of
+Freeman-followers?" a Wellesley woman was asked.
+
+The reply came without a moment's hesitation: "She had the life-giving
+power of a true creator, one who can entertain a vision of the ideal,
+and then work patiently bit by bit to 'carve it in the marble real.'
+She built the Wellesley we all know and love, making it practical,
+constructive, fine, generous, human, spiritual."
+
+For six years the Princess of Wellesley ruled her kingdom wisely. She
+raised the standard of work, enlisted the interest and support of those
+in a position to help, added to the buildings and equipment, and won the
+enthusiastic cooperation of students, faculty, and public. Then, one
+day, she voluntarily stepped down from her throne, leaving others to go
+on with the work she had begun. She married Professor George Herbert
+Palmer of Harvard, and, (quite in the manner of the fairy-tale) "lived
+happily ever after."
+
+"What a disappointment!" some of her friends said. "That a woman of such
+unusual powers and gifts should deliberately leave a place of large
+usefulness and influence to shut herself up in the concerns of a single
+home!"
+
+"There is nothing better than the making of a true home," said Alice
+Freeman Palmer. "I shall not be shut away from the concerns of others,
+but more truly a part of them. 'For love is fellow-service,' I believe."
+
+The home near Harvard Yard was soon felt to be the most free and perfect
+expression of her generous nature. Its happiness made all life seem
+happier. Shy undergraduates and absorbed students who had withdrawn
+overmuch within themselves and their pet problems found there a thaw
+after their "winter of discontent." Wellesley girls--even in those days
+before automobiles--did not feel fifteen miles too great a distance to
+go for a cup of tea and a half-hour by the fire.
+
+[Illustration: College Hall, destroyed by fire in 1914]
+
+[Illustration: Tower Court, which stands on the site of College Hall]
+
+Many were surprised that Mrs. Palmer never seemed worn by the
+unstinted giving of herself to the demands of others on her time and
+sympathy. The reason was that their interests were her interests. Her
+spirit was indeed "outgoing"; there was no wall hedging in a certain
+number of things and people as hers, with the rest of the world outside.
+As we have seen, people counted with her supremely; and the ideas which
+moved her were those which she found embodied in the joys and sorrows of
+human hearts.
+
+Mrs. Palmer wrote of her days at this time:
+
+    I don't know what will happen if life keeps on growing so
+    much better and brighter each year. How does your cup manage to
+    hold so much? Mine is running over, and I keep getting larger
+    cups; but I can't contain all my blessings and gladness. We are
+    both so well and busy that the days are never half long enough.
+
+Life held, indeed, a full measure of opportunities for service.
+Wellesley claimed her as a member of its executive committee, and other
+colleges sought her counsel. When Chicago University was founded, she
+was induced to serve as its Dean of Women until the opportunities for
+girls there were wisely established. She worked energetically raising
+funds for Radcliffe and her own Wellesley. Throughout the country her
+wisdom as an educational expert was recognized, and her advice sought
+in matters of organization and administration. For several years, as a
+member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, she worked early
+and late to improve the efficiency and influence of the normal schools.
+She was a public servant who brought into all her contact with groups
+and masses of people the simple directness and intimate charm that
+marked her touch with individuals.
+
+"How is it that you are able to do so much more than other people?"
+asked a tired, nervous woman, who stopped Mrs. Palmer for a word at the
+close of one of her lectures.
+
+"Because," she answered, with the sudden gleam of a smile, "I haven't
+any nerves nor any conscience, and my husband says I haven't any
+backbone."
+
+It was true that she never worried. She had early learned to live one
+day at a time, without "looking before and after." And nobody knew
+better than Mrs. Palmer the renewing power of joy. She could romp with
+some of her very small friends in the half-hour before an important
+meeting; go for a long walk or ride along country lanes when a vexing
+problem confronted her; or spend a quiet evening by the fire reading
+aloud from one of her favorite poets at the end of a busy day.
+
+For fifteen years Mrs. Palmer lived this life of joyful, untiring
+service. Then, at the time of her greatest power and usefulness, she
+died. The news came as a personal loss to thousands. Just as Wellesley
+had mourned her removal to Cambridge, so a larger world mourned her
+earthly passing. But her friends soon found that it was impossible to
+grieve or to feel for a moment that she was dead. The echoes of her life
+were living echoes in the world of those who knew her.
+
+There are many memorials speaking in different places of her work. In
+the chapel at Wellesley, where it seems to gather at every hour a golden
+glory of light, is the lovely transparent marble by Daniel Chester
+French, eternally bearing witness to the meaning of her influence with
+her girls. In the tower at Chicago the chimes "make music, joyfully to
+recall," her labors there. But more lasting than marble or bronze is the
+living memorial in the hearts and minds "made better by her presence."
+For it is, indeed, people that count, and in the richer lives of many
+the enkindling spirit of Alice Freeman Palmer still lives.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LADY OF THE RED CROSS: CLARA BARTON
+
+
+
+
+    Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,--
+    Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.
+
+        "The Vision of Sir Launfal."--LOWELL.
+
+
+
+
+OUR LADY OF THE RED CROSS
+
+
+"A Christmas baby! Now isn't that the best kind of a Christmas gift for
+us all?" cried Captain Stephen Barton, who took the interesting flannel
+bundle from the nurse's arms and held it out proudly to the assembled
+family.
+
+No longed-for heir to a waiting kingdom could have received a more royal
+welcome than did that little girl who appeared at the Barton home in
+Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821. Ten years had passed
+since a child had come to the comfortable farm-house, and the four big
+brothers and sisters were very sure that they could not have had a more
+precious gift than this Christmas baby. No one doubted that she deserved
+a distinguished name, but it was due to Sister Dorothy, who was a young
+lady of romantic seventeen and something of a reader, that she was
+called Clarissa Harlowe, after a well-known heroine of fiction. The name
+which this heroine of real life actually bore and made famous, however,
+was Clara Barton; for the Christmas baby proved to be a gift not only
+to a little group of loving friends, but also to a great nation and to
+humanity.
+
+The sisters and brothers were teachers rather than playmates for Clara,
+and her education began so early that she had no recollection of the way
+they led her toddling steps through the beginnings of book-learning. On
+her first day at school she announced to the amazed teacher who tried to
+put a primer into her hands that she could spell the "artichoke words."
+The teacher had other surprises besides the discovery that this mite of
+three was acquainted with three-syllabled lore.
+
+Brother Stephen, who was a wizard with figures, had made the sums with
+which he covered her slate seem a fascinating sort of play at a period
+when most infants are content with counting the fingers of one hand. All
+other interests, however, paled before the stories that her father told
+her of great men and their splendid deeds.
+
+Captain Barton was amused one day at the discovery that his precocious
+daughter, who always eagerly encored his tales of conquerors and
+leaders, thought of their greatness in images of quite literal and
+realistic bigness. A president must, for instance, be as large as a
+house, and a vice-president as spacious as a barn door at the very
+least. But these somewhat crude conceptions did not put a check on the
+epic recitals of the retired officer, who, in the intervals of active
+service in plowed fields or in pastures where his thoroughbreds grazed
+with their mettlesome colts, liked to live over the days when he served
+under "Mad Anthony" Wayne in the Revolutionary War, and had a share in
+the thrilling adventures of the Western frontier.
+
+Clara was only five years old when Brother David taught her to ride.
+"Learning to ride is just learning a horse," said this daring youth, who
+was the "Buffalo Bill" of the surrounding country.
+
+"How can I learn a horse, David?" quavered the child, as the
+high-spirited animals came whinnying to the pasture bars at her
+brother's call.
+
+"Catch hold of his mane, Clara, and just feel the horse a part of
+yourself--the big half for the time being," said David, as he put her on
+the back of a colt that was broken only to bit and halter, and, easily
+springing on his favorite, held the reins of both in one hand, while he
+steadied the small sister with the other by seizing hold of one excited
+foot.
+
+They went over the fields at a gallop that first day, and soon little
+Clara and her mount understood each other so well that her riding feats
+became almost as far-famed as those of her brother. The time came when
+her skill and confidence on horseback--her power to feel the animal she
+rode a part of herself and keep her place in any sort of saddle through
+night-long gallops--meant the saving of many lives.
+
+David taught her many other practical things that helped to make her
+steady and self-reliant in the face of emergencies. She learned, for
+instance, to drive a nail straight, and to tie a knot that would hold.
+Eye and hand were trained to work together with quick decision that made
+for readiness and efficiency in dealing with a situation, whether it
+meant the packing of a box, or first-aid measures after an accident on
+the skating-pond.
+
+She was always an outdoor child, with dogs, horses, and ducks for
+playfellows. The fuzzy ducklings were the best sort of dolls. Sometimes
+when wild ducks visited the pond and all her waddling favorites began to
+flap their wings excitedly, it seemed that her young heart felt, too,
+the call of large, free spaces.
+
+"The only real fun is to do things," she used to say.
+
+She rode after the cows, helped in the milking and churning, and
+followed her father about, dropping potatoes in their holes or helping
+weed the garden. Once, when the house was being painted, she begged to
+be allowed to assist in the work, even learning to grind the pigments
+and mix the colors. The family was at first amused and then amazed at
+the persistency of her application as day after day she donned her apron
+and fell to work.
+
+They were not less astonished when she wanted to learn the work of the
+weavers in her brothers' satinet mills. At first, her mother refused
+this extraordinary request; but Stephen, who understood the intensity
+of her craving to do things, took her part; and at the end of her first
+week at the flying shuttle Clara had the satisfaction of finding that
+her cloth was passed as first-quality goods. Her career as a weaver was
+of short duration, however, owing to a fire which destroyed the mills.
+
+The young girl was as enthusiastic in play as at work. Whether it was a
+canter over the fields on Billy while her dog, Button, dashed along at
+her side, his curly white tail bobbing ecstatically, or a coast down the
+rolling hills in winter, she entered into the sport of the moment with
+her whole heart.
+
+When there was no outlet for her superabundant energy, she was genuinely
+unhappy. Then it was that a self-consciousness and morbid sensitiveness
+became so evident that it was a source of real concern to her friends.
+
+"People say that I must have been born brave," said Clara Barton.
+"Why, I seem to remember nothing but terrors in my early days. I was a
+shrinking little bundle of fears--fears of thunder, fears of strange
+faces, fears of my strange self." It was only when thought and feeling
+were merged in the zest of some interesting activity that she lost her
+painful shyness and found herself.
+
+When she was eleven years old she had her first experience as a nurse.
+A fall which gave David a serious blow on the head, together with the
+bungling ministrations of doctors, who, when in doubt, had recourse only
+to the heroic treatment of bleeding and leeches, brought the vigorous
+young brother to a protracted invalidism. For two years Clara was his
+constant and devoted attendant. She schooled herself to remain calm,
+cheerful, and resourceful in the presence of suffering and exacting
+demands. When others gave way to fatigue or "nerves," her wonderful
+instinct for action kept her, child though she was, at her post. Her
+sympathy expressed itself in untiring service.
+
+In the years that followed her brother's recovery Clara became a real
+problem to herself and her friends. The old blighting sensitiveness made
+her school-days restless and unhappy in spite of her alert mind and many
+interests.
+
+At length her mother, at her wit's end because of this baffling,
+morbid strain in her remarkable daughter, was advised by a man of
+sane judgment and considerable understanding of child nature, to throw
+responsibility upon her and give her a school to teach.
+
+It happened, therefore, that when Clara Barton was fifteen she "put
+down her skirts, put up her hair," and entered upon her successful
+career as a teacher. She liked the children and believed in them,
+entering enthusiastically into their concerns, and opening the way
+to new interests. When asked how she managed the discipline of the
+troublesome ones, she said, "The children give no trouble; I never
+have to discipline at all," quite unconscious of the fact that her
+vital influence gave her a control that made assertion of authority
+unnecessary.
+
+"When the boys found that I was as strong as they were and could teach
+them something on the playground, they thought that perhaps we might
+discover together a few other worth-while things in school hours," she
+said.
+
+For eighteen years Clara Barton was a teacher. Always learning herself
+while teaching others, she decided in 1852 to enter Clinton Liberal
+Institute in New York as a pupil for graduation, for there was then
+no college whose doors were open to women. When she had all that the
+Institute could give her, she looked about for new fields for effort.
+
+In Bordentown, New Jersey, she found there was a peculiar need for some
+one who would bring to her task pioneer zeal as well as the passion for
+teaching. At that time there were no public schools in the town or,
+indeed, in the State.
+
+"The people who pose as respectable are too proud and too prejudiced to
+send their boys and girls to a free pauper school, and in the meantime
+all the children run wild," Miss Barton was told.
+
+"We have tried again and again," said a discouraged young pedagogue. "It
+is impossible to do anything in this place."
+
+"Give me three months, and I will teach free," said Clara Barton.
+
+This was just the sort of challenge she loved. There was something to
+be done. She began with six unpromising gamins in a dilapidated, empty
+building. In a month her quarters proved too narrow. Each youngster
+became an enthusiastic and effectual advertisement. As always, her
+success lay in an understanding of her pupils as individuals, and
+a quickening interest that brought out the latent possibilities of
+each. The school of six grew in a year to one of six hundred, and the
+thoroughly converted citizens built an eight-room school-house where
+Miss Barton remained as principal and teacher until a breakdown of her
+voice made a complete rest necessary.
+
+The weak throat soon made it evident that her teaching days were over;
+but she found at the same time in Washington, where she had gone for
+recuperation, a new work.
+
+"Living is doing," she said. "Even while we say there is nothing we can
+do, we stumble over the opportunities for service that we are passing by
+in our tear-blinded self-pity."
+
+The over-sensitive girl had learned her lesson well. Life offered moment
+by moment too many chances for action for a single worker to turn aside
+to bemoan his own particular condition.
+
+The retired teacher became a confidential secretary in the office of
+the Commissioner of Patents. Great confusion existed in the Patent
+Office at that time because some clerks had betrayed the secrets of
+certain inventions. Miss Barton was the first woman to be employed in a
+Government department; and while ably handling the critical situation
+that called for all her energy and resourcefulness, she had to cope
+not only with the scarcely veiled enmity of those fellow-workers who
+were guilty or jealous, but also with the open antagonism of the rank
+and file of the clerks, who were indignant because a woman had been
+placed in a position of responsibility and influence. She endured covert
+slander and deliberate disrespect, letting her character and the quality
+of her work speak for themselves. They spoke so eloquently that when
+a change in political control caused her removal, she was before long
+recalled to straighten out the tangle that had ensued.
+
+At the outbreak of the Civil War Miss Barton was, therefore, at the very
+storm-center.
+
+The early days of the conflict found her binding up the wounds of the
+Massachusetts boys who had been attacked by a mob while passing through
+Baltimore, and who for a time were quartered in the Capitol. Some of
+these recruits were boys from Miss Barton's own town who had been her
+pupils, and all were dear to her because they were offering their lives
+for the Union. We find her with other volunteer nurses caring for the
+injured, feeding groups who gathered about her in the Senate Chamber,
+and, from the desk of the President of the Senate, reading them the home
+news from the Worcester papers.
+
+Meeting the needs as they presented themselves in that time of general
+panic and distress, she sent to the Worcester "Spy" appeals for money
+and supplies. Other papers took up the work, and soon Miss Barton had to
+secure space in a large warehouse to hold the provisions that poured in.
+
+Not for many days, however, did she remain a steward of supplies. When
+she met the transports which brought the wounded into the city, her
+whole nature revolted at the sight of the untold suffering and countless
+deaths which were resulting from delay in caring for the injured. Her
+flaming ardor, her rare executive ability, and her tireless persistency
+won for her the confidence of those in command, and, though it was
+against all traditions, to say nothing of iron-clad army regulations,
+she obtained permission to go with her stores of food, bandages, and
+medicines to the firing-line, where relief might be given on the
+battle-field at the time of direst need. The girl who had been a "bundle
+of fears" had grown into the woman who braved every danger and any
+suffering to carry help to her fellow-countrymen.
+
+People who spoke of her rare initiative and practical judgment had
+little comprehension of the absolute simplicity and directness of her
+methods. She managed the sulky, rebellious drivers of her army-wagons,
+who had little respect for orders that placed a woman in control, in the
+same way that she had managed children in school. Without relaxing her
+firmness, she spoke to them courteously, and called them to share the
+warm dinner she had prepared and spread out in appetizing fashion. When,
+after clearing away the dishes, she was sitting alone by the fire, the
+men returned in an awkward, self-conscious group.
+
+"We didn't come to get warm," said their spokesman, as she kindly
+moved to make room for them at the flames, "we come to tell you we are
+ashamed. The truth is we didn't want to come. We know there is fighting
+ahead, and we've seen enough of that for men who don't carry muskets,
+only whips; and then we've never seen a train under charge of a woman
+before, and we couldn't understand it. We've been mean and contrary all
+day, and you've treated us as if we'd been the general and his staff,
+and given us the best meal we've had in two years. We want to ask your
+forgiveness, and we sha'n't trouble you again."
+
+She found that a comfortable bed had been arranged for her in her
+ambulance, a lantern was hanging from the roof, and when next morning
+she emerged from her shelter, a steaming breakfast awaited her and a
+devoted corps of assistants stood ready for orders.
+
+"I had cooked my last meal for my drivers," said Clara Barton. "These
+men remained with me six months through frost and snow and march and
+camp and battle; they nursed the sick, dressed the wounded, soothed the
+dying, and buried the dead; and, if possible, they grew kinder and
+gentler every day."
+
+An incident that occurred at Antietam is typical of her quiet
+efficiency. According to her directions, the wounded were being fed with
+bread and crackers moistened in wine, when one of her assistants came to
+report that the entire supply was exhausted, while many helpless ones
+lay on the field unfed. Miss Barton's quick eye had noted that the boxes
+from which the wine was taken had fine Indian meal as packing. Six large
+kettles were at once unearthed from the farm-house in which they had
+taken quarters, and soon her men were carrying buckets of hot gruel for
+miles over the fields where lay hundreds of wounded and dying. Suddenly,
+in the midst of her labors, Miss Barton came upon the surgeon in charge
+sitting alone, gazing at a small piece of tallow candle which flickered
+uncertainly in the middle of the table.
+
+"Tired, Doctor?" she asked sympathetically.
+
+"Tired indeed!" he replied bitterly; "tired of such heartless neglect
+and carelessness. What am I to do for my thousand wounded men with
+night here and that inch of candle all the light I have or can get?"
+
+Miss Barton took him by the arm and led him to the door, where he could
+see near the barn scores of lanterns gleaming like stars.
+
+"What is that!" he asked amazedly.
+
+"The barn is lighted," she replied, "and the house will be directly."
+
+"Where did you get them!" he gasped.
+
+"Brought them with me."
+
+"How many have you?"
+
+"All you want--four boxes."
+
+The surgeon looked at her for a moment as if he were waking from a
+dream; and then, as if it were the only answer he could make, fell to
+work. And so it was invariably that she won her complete command of
+people as she did of situations, by always proving herself equal to the
+emergency of the moment.
+
+Though, as she said in explaining the tardiness of a letter, "my hands
+complain a little of unaccustomed hardships," she never complained of
+any ill, nor allowed any danger or difficulty to interrupt her work.
+
+"What are my puny ailments beside the agony of our poor shattered
+boys lying helpless on the field?" she said. And so, while doctors and
+officers wondered at her unlimited capacity for prompt and effective
+action, the men who had felt her sympathetic touch and effectual aid
+loved and revered her as "The Angel of the Battlefield."
+
+One incident well illustrates the characteristic confidence with which
+she moved about amid scenes of terror and panic. At Fredericksburg,
+when "every street was a firing-line and every house a hospital," she
+was passing along when she had to step aside to allow a regiment of
+infantry to sweep by. At that moment General Patrick caught sight of
+her, and, thinking she was a bewildered resident of the city who had
+been left behind in the general exodus, leaned from his saddle and said
+reassuringly:
+
+"You are alone and in great danger, madam. Do you want protection?"
+
+Miss Barton thanked him with a smile, and said, looking about at the
+ranks, "I believe I am the best-protected woman in the United States."
+
+The soldiers near overheard and cried out, "That's so! that's so!" And
+the cheer that they gave was echoed by line after line until a mighty
+shout went up as for a victory.
+
+The courtly old general looked about comprehendingly, and, bowing low,
+said as he galloped away, "I believe you are right, madam."
+
+Clara Barton was present on sixteen battle-fields; she was eight months
+at the siege of Charleston, and served for a considerable period in the
+hospitals of Richmond.
+
+[Illustration: Clara Barton]
+
+When the war was ended and the survivors of the great armies were
+marching homeward, her heart was touched by the distress in many
+homes where sons and fathers and brothers were among those listed as
+"missing." In all, there were 80,000 men of whom no definite report
+could be given to their friends. She was assisting President Lincoln in
+answering the hundreds of heartbroken letters, imploring news, which
+poured in from all over the land when his tragic death left her alone
+with the task. Then, as no funds were available to finance a thorough
+investigation of every sort of record of States, hospitals, prisons,
+and battle-fields, she maintained out of her own means a bureau to
+prosecute the search.
+
+Four years were spent in this great labor, during which time Miss
+Barton made many public addresses, the proceeds of which were devoted
+to the cause. One evening in the winter of 1868, while in the midst
+of a lecture, her voice suddenly left her. This was the beginning of
+a complete nervous collapse. The hardships and prolonged strain had,
+in spite of her robust constitution and iron will, told at last on the
+endurance of that loyal worker.
+
+When able to travel, she went to Geneva, Switzerland, in the hope of
+winning back her health and strength. Soon after her arrival she was
+visited by the president and members of the "International Committee
+for the Relief of the Wounded in War," who came to learn why the United
+States had refused to sign the Treaty of Geneva, providing for the
+relief of sick and wounded soldiers. Of all the civilized nations, our
+great republic alone most unaccountably held aloof.
+
+Miss Barton at once set herself to learn all she could about the
+ideals and methods of the International Red Cross, and during the
+Franco-Prussian War she had abundant opportunity to see and experience
+its practical working on the battle-field.
+
+At the outbreak of the war in 1870 she was urged to go as a leader,
+taking the same part that she had borne in the Civil War.
+
+"I had not strength to trust for that," said Clara Barton, "and declined
+with thanks, promising to follow in my own time and way; and I did
+follow within a week. As I journeyed on," she continued, "I saw the
+work of these Red Cross societies in the field accomplishing in four
+months under their systematic organization what we failed to accomplish
+in four years without it--no mistakes, no needless suffering, no waste,
+no confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness, and comfort wherever
+that little flag made its way--a whole continent marshaled under the
+banner of the Red Cross. As I saw all this and joined and worked in it,
+you will not wonder that I said to myself 'if I live to return to my
+country, I will try to make my people understand the Red Cross and that
+treaty.'"
+
+Months of service in caring for the wounded and the helpless victims
+of siege and famine were followed by a period of nervous exhaustion
+from which she but slowly crept back to her former hold on health. At
+last she was able to return to America to devote herself to bringing
+her country into line with the Red Cross movement. She found that
+traditionary prejudice against "entangling alliances with other powers,"
+together with a singular failure to comprehend the vital importance of
+the matter, militated against the great cause.
+
+"Why should we make provision for the wounded?" it was said. "We shall
+never have another war; we have learned our lesson."
+
+It came to Miss Barton then that the work of the Red Cross should
+be extended to disasters, such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and
+epidemics--"great public calamities which require, like war, prompt and
+well-organized help."
+
+Years of devoted missionary work with preoccupied officials and a
+heedless, short-sighted public at length bore fruit. After the Geneva
+Treaty received the signature of President Arthur on March 1, 1882, it
+was promptly ratified by the Senate, and the American National Red
+Cross came into being, with Clara Barton as its first president. Through
+her influence, too, the International Congress of Berne adopted the
+"American Amendment," which dealt with the extension of the Red Cross to
+relief measures in great calamities occurring in times of peace.
+
+The story of her life from this time on is one with the story of the
+work of the Red Cross during the stress of such disasters as the
+Mississippi River floods, the Texas famine in 1885, the Charleston
+earthquake in 1886, the Johnstown flood in 1899, the Russian famine
+in 1892, and the Spanish-American War. The prompt, efficient methods
+followed in the relief of the flood sufferers along the Mississippi in
+1884 may serve to illustrate the sane, constructive character of her
+work.
+
+Supply centers were established, and a steamer chartered to ply back
+and forth carrying help and hope to the distracted human creatures who
+stood "wringing their hands on a frozen, fireless shore--with every
+coal-pit filled with water." For three weeks she patrolled the river,
+distributing food, clothing, and fuel, caring for the sick, and, in
+order to establish at once normal conditions of life, providing the
+people with many thousands of dollars' worth of building material,
+seeds, and farm implements, thus making it possible for them to help
+themselves and in work find a cure for their benumbing distress.
+
+"Our Lady of the Red Cross" lived past her ninetieth birthday, but her
+real life is measured by deeds, not days. It was truly a long one, rich
+in the joy of service. She abundantly proved the truth of the words: "We
+gain in so far as we give. If we would find our life, we must be willing
+to lose it."
+
+
+
+
+A MAIDEN CRUSADER: FRANCES E. WILLARD
+
+
+
+
+    Instead of peace, I was to participate in war; instead of
+    the sweetness of home, I was to become a wanderer on the face
+    of the earth; but I have felt that a great promotion came to
+    me when I was counted worthy to be a worker in the organized
+    crusade for "God and Home and Native Land."... If I were asked
+    the mission of the ideal woman, I would say it is to make the
+    whole world homelike. The true woman will make every place she
+    enters homelike--and she will enter every place in this wide
+    world.
+
+        FRANCES E. WILLARD.
+
+
+
+
+A MAIDEN CRUSADER
+
+
+There is no place like a young college town in a young country for
+untroubled optimism. Hope blossoms there as nowhere else; the ideal ever
+beckons at the next turn in the road. When Josiah Willard brought his
+little family to Oberlin, it seemed to them all that a new golden age of
+opportunity was theirs. Even Frances, who was little more than a baby,
+drank in the spirit of the place with the air she breathed.
+
+It was not hard to believe in a golden age when one happened to see
+little Frances, or "Frank," Willard dancing like a sunbeam about the
+campus. She liked to play about the big buildings, where father went
+every day with his big books, and watch for him to come out. Sometimes
+one of the students would stop to speak to her; sometimes a group would
+gather about while, with fair hair flying and small arms waving, in a
+voice incredibly clear and bird-like, she "said a piece" that mother had
+taught her.
+
+"Is that a little professorling?" asked a new-comer one day, attracted
+by the child's cherub face and darting, fairylike ways.
+
+"Guess again!" returned a dignified senior. "Her father is one of the
+students. Haven't you noticed that fine-looking Willard? The mother,
+too, knows how to appreciate a college, I understand--used to be a
+teacher back in New York where they came from."
+
+"You don't mean to say that this happy little goldfinch is the child of
+two such solemn owls!" exclaimed the other.
+
+"Nothing of the sort. They are very wide-awake, alive sort of people, I
+assure you,--the kind who'd make a success of anything. The father wants
+to be a preacher, they say--wait, there he comes now!"
+
+It was plain to be seen that Mr. Willard was an alert, capable man and a
+good father. The little girl ran to him with a joyful cry, and a sturdy
+lad who had been trying to climb a tree bounded forward at the same
+time.
+
+"I trust that my small fry haven't been making trouble," said the man,
+giving his free hand to Frances and graciously allowing Oliver to carry
+two of his armful of books.
+
+"Only making friends," the senior responded genially, "and one can see
+that they can't very well help that."
+
+The Oberlin years were a happy, friendly time for all the family. While
+both father and mother were working hard to make the most of their
+long-delayed opportunity for a liberal education, they delighted above
+all in the companionship of neighbors with tastes like their own. After
+five years, however, it became clear that the future was not to be after
+their planning. Mr. Willard's health failed, and a wise doctor said that
+he must leave his book-world, and take up a free, active life in the
+open. So the little family joined the army of westward-moving pioneers.
+
+Can you picture the three prairie-schooners that carried them and all
+their goods to the new home? The father drove the first, Oliver geehawed
+proudly from the high perch of the next, and mother sat in the third,
+with Frances and little sister Mary on a cushioned throne made out of
+father's topsyturvy desk. For nearly thirty days the little caravan made
+its way--now through forests, now across great sweeping prairies, now
+over bumping corduroy roads that crossed stretches of swampy ground.
+They cooked their bacon and potatoes, gypsy-fashion, on the ground, and
+slept under the white hoods of their long wagons, when they were not
+kept awake by the howling of wolves.
+
+When Sunday came, they rested wherever the day found them--sometimes on
+the rolling prairie, where their only shelter from rain and sun was the
+homely schooner, but where at night they could look up at the great tent
+of the starry heavens; sometimes in the cathedral of the forest, where
+they found Jack-in-the-pulpit preaching to the other wild-flowers and
+birds and breezes singing an anthem of praise.
+
+[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
+
+Frances E. Willard]
+
+It was truly a new world through which they made their way--beginnings
+all about--the roughest, crudest sort of beginnings, glorified by the
+brightest hopes. Tiny cabins were planted on the edge of the prairies;
+rough huts of logs were dropped down in clearings in the forest.
+Everywhere people were working with an energy that could not be
+daunted--felling trees, sowing, harvesting, building. As they passed by
+the end of Lake Michigan they caught a glimpse of a small, struggling
+village in the midst of a dark, hopeless-looking morass, from which they
+turned aside on seeing the warning sign _No bottom here_. That little
+settlement in the swamp was Chicago.
+
+Northward they journeyed to Wisconsin, where on the bluffs above Rock
+River, not far from Janesville, they found a spot with fertile prairie
+on one side and sheltering, wooded hills on the other. It seemed as if
+the place fairly called to them: "This is home. You are my people. My
+fields and hills and river have been waiting many a year just for you!"
+
+Here Mr. Willard planted the roof-tree, using timber that his own ax
+had wrested from the forest. Year by year it grew with their life.
+"Forest Home," as they lovingly called it, was a low, rambling dwelling,
+covered with trailing vines and all but hidden away in a grove of oaks
+and evergreens. It seemed as if Nature had taken over the work of their
+hands--house, barns, fields, and orchards--and made them her dearest
+care. Here were people after her own heart, people who went out eagerly
+to meet and use the things that each day brought. They found real zest
+in plowing fields, laying fences, raising cattle, and learning the ways
+of soil and weather. They learned how to keep rats and gophers from
+devouring their crops, how to bank up the house as a protection from
+hurricanes, and how to fight the prairie fires with fire.
+
+Frank Willard grew as the trees grew, quite naturally, gathering
+strength from the life about her. She had her share in the daily tasks;
+she had, too, a chance for free, happy, good times. There was but one
+other family of children near enough to share their plays, but the
+fun was never dependent on numbers or novelty. If there were only two
+members of the "Rustic Club" present, the birds and chipmunks and other
+wood-creatures supplied every lack. Sometimes when they found themselves
+longing to "pick up and move back among folks," they played that the
+farm was a city.
+
+"'My mind to me a kingdom is,'" quoted Frank, optimistically; "and I
+think if we all put our minds to it, we can manage to people this spot
+on the map very sociably."
+
+Their city had a model government, and ideal regulations for community
+health and enjoyment. It had also an enterprising newspaper of which
+Frank was editor.
+
+Frank was the leader in all of the fun. She was the commanding general
+in that famous "Indian fight" when, with Mary and Mother, she held the
+fort against the attack of two dreadful, make-believe savages and a dog.
+It was due to her strategy that the dog was brought over to their side
+by an enticing sparerib and the day won. Frank, too, was the captain of
+their good ship _Enterprise_.
+
+"If we do live inland, we don't have to _think inland_, Mary," she said.
+"What's the use of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing because we've
+never seen the ocean. Let's take this hen-coop and go a-sailing. Who
+knows what magic shores we'll touch beyond our Sea of Fancy!"
+
+A plank was put across the pointed top of the hen-coop, and the children
+stood at opposite ends steering, slowly when the sea was calm and
+more energetically when a storm was brewing. The hens clucked and the
+chickens ran about in a panic, but the captain calmly charted the waters
+and laid down rules of navigation.
+
+Perhaps, though, the best times of all were those that Frank spent in
+her retreat at the top of a black oak tree, where she could sit weaving
+stories of bright romance to her heart's content. On the tree she nailed
+a sign with this painted warning: "The Eagle's Nest. Beware!" to secure
+her against intruders. Here she wrote a wonderful novel of adventure,
+some four hundred pages long.
+
+But this eagle found that the wings of her imagination could not make
+her entirely free and happy. She had to return from the heights and the
+high adventures of her favorite heroes to the dull routine of farm life.
+She was not even allowed to ride, as Oliver was.
+
+"Well, if I can't be trusted to manage a horse, I'll see what can be
+done with a cow and a saddle. I simply must ride _something_," Frank
+declared, with a determined toss of her head.
+
+It took not only determination, but also grim endurance and a sense of
+fun to help her through this novel experiment, which certainly had in it
+more excitement than pleasure. However, when her father saw her ride by
+on her long-horned steed, he said with a laugh:
+
+"You have fairly earned a better mount, Frank. And I suppose there is
+really no more risk of your breaking your neck with a horse."
+
+That night Frank wrote in her journal:
+
+"Hurrah! rejoice! A new era has this moment been ushered in. Rode a
+horse through the corn--the acme of my hopes realized."
+
+In the saddle, with the keen breath of a brisk morning in her face, she
+felt almost free--almost a part of the larger life for which she longed.
+"I think I'm fonder of anything out of my sphere than anything in it,"
+she said to her mother, whose understanding and sympathy never failed
+her.
+
+Perhaps she loved especially to pore over a book of astronomy and try to
+puzzle out the starry paths on the vast prairie of the heavens, because
+it carried her up and away from her every-day world. Sometimes, however,
+she was brought back to earth with a rude bump.
+
+"When I had to get dinner one Sunday, I fairly cried," she said. "To
+come back to frying onions, when I've been among the rings of Saturn, is
+terrible."
+
+She didn't at all know what it was for which she longed. Only she knew
+that she didn't want to grow up--to twist up her free curls with spiky
+hair-pins and to wear long skirts which seemed to make it plain that a
+weary round of shut-in tasks was all her lot and that the happy days of
+roaming woods and fields were over.
+
+Through all the girlhood days at "Forest Home" Frank longed for the
+chance to go to a real school as much as she longed to be free. Oliver
+went to the Janesville Academy, and later to Beloit College, but she
+could get only fleeting glimpses of his more satisfying life through
+the books he brought home and his talks of lectures and professors. She
+remembered those far-off days at Oberlin as a golden time indeed. There
+even a girl might have the chance to learn the things that would set her
+mind and soul free.
+
+It was a great day for Frances and Mary Willard when Mr. Hodge, a
+Yale man who was, like her father, exiled to a life in a new country,
+decided to open a school for the children of the neighboring farms. On
+the never-to-be-forgotten first day the girls got up long before light,
+put their tin pails of dinner and their satchels of books with their
+coats, hoods, and mufflers, and then stood watching the clock, whose
+provokingly measured ticks seemed entirely indifferent to the eager
+beating of their hearts. At last the hired man yoked the oxen to the
+long "bob-sled," and Oliver drove them over a new white road to the new
+school. The doors were not yet open.
+
+"I told you it was much too early," said Oliver. "The idea of being so
+crazy over the opening of a little two-by-four school like this!"
+
+"It does look like a sort of big ground-nut," said Frank, with a laugh,
+"but it's ours to crack. Besides, we have a Yale graduate to teach us,
+and Beloit can't beat that!"
+
+"Let's go over to Mr. Hodge's for the key, and make the fire for him,"
+suggested Mary.
+
+There was an unusually long entry in Frank's diary that night:
+
+    At last Professor Hodge appeared, in his long-tailed blue
+    coat with brass buttons, carrying an armful of school-books and
+    a dinner-bell in his hand. He stood on the steps and rang the
+    bell, long, loud, and merrily. My heart bounded, and I said
+    inside of it, so that nobody heard: "At last we are going to
+    school all by ourselves, Mary and I, and we are going to have
+    advantages like other folks, just as Mother said we should." O!
+    goody-goody-goody! I feel satisfied with the world, myself, and
+    the rest of mankind.
+
+This enthusiasm for school and study did not wane as the days went
+by. "I want to know everything--_everything_," Frank would declare
+vehemently. "It is only _knowing_ that can make one free."
+
+The time came when she was to go away to college. Wistfully she went
+about saying good-by to all the pleasant haunts about "Forest Home." For
+a long time she sat on her old perch in the "Eagle's nest," looking off
+towards the river and the hills.
+
+"I think that as I know more, I live more," said Frank to her mother
+that night. "I am alive to so many things now that I never thought of
+six months ago; and everything is dearer--is more a part of myself."
+
+[Illustration: The Statue of Miss Willard in the Capitol of Washington]
+
+The North-West Female College, at Evanston, Illinois, was Frank's
+alma mater. Here her love of learning made her a leader in all her
+classes; and her originality, daring, and personal charm made her
+a leader in the social life of the students. She was editor of the
+college paper, and first fun-maker of a lively clan whose chief delight
+it was to shock some of their meek classmates out of their unthinking
+"goody-goodness." She was known, for instance, to have climbed into
+the steeple and to have remained on her giddy perch during an entire
+recitation period in the higher mathematics.
+
+In her days of teaching, Frank was the same alert, free, eager-minded,
+fun-loving girl. First in a country school near Chicago, and afterward
+in a seminary in Pittsburg, she was a successful teacher because she
+never ceased to be a learner.
+
+"Frank, you have the _hungriest_ soul I ever saw in a human being. It
+will never be satisfied!" said one of her friends.
+
+"I shall never be satisfied until I have entered every open door, and I
+shall not go in alone," said Frank.
+
+In all of her pursuit of knowledge and culture she was intensely
+social. She was always learning with others and for others. A bit from
+her diary in 1866 reveals the spirit in which she worked:
+
+    I read a good deal and learn ever so many new things every
+    day. I get so hungry to know things. I'll teach these girls
+    as well as possible.... Girls, girls, girls! Questions upon
+    questions. Dear me, it is no small undertaking to be elder
+    sister to the whole 180 of them. They treat me beautifully, and
+    I think I reciprocate.
+
+"Miss Willard seems to see us not as we are, but as we hope we are
+becoming," one of her girls said. "And so we simply _have_ to do what
+she believes we can do."
+
+No one was a stranger or indifferent to her. When her clear blue eyes
+looked into the eyes of another, they always saw a friend.
+
+Through these early years of teaching Frances Willard was learning not
+only from constant study and work with others, but also from sorrow. Her
+sister Mary was taken from her. The story of what her gentle life and
+loving comradeship meant to Frank is told in the first and best of Miss
+Willard's books, "Nineteen Beautiful Years," which gives many delightful
+glimpses of their childhood on the Wisconsin farm and the school-girl
+years together. Soon after Mary's death "Forest Home" was sold and the
+family separated. Frank wrote in her journal at this time:
+
+    I am to lose sight of the old familiar landmarks; old things
+    are passing from me, whose love is for old things. I am pushing
+    out all by myself into the wide, wide sea.
+
+The writing of the story of Mary's life, together with essays and
+articles of general interest for the papers and magazines, "took the
+harm out of life for a while." In all her writing, as in her teaching
+and later in her public speaking, her instinctive faith in people was
+the secret of her power and influence as a leader.
+
+"For myself, I liked the world, believed it friendly, and could see no
+reason why I might not confide in it," she said.
+
+When another sorrow, the loss of her father, threatened to darken her
+life for a time, a friend came to the rescue and "opened a new door" for
+her--the door of travel and study abroad. They lived for two and a half
+years in Europe, and made a journey to Syria and Egypt. During much of
+this time Miss Willard spent nine hours a day in study. She longed to
+make her own the impressions of beauty and the haunting charm of the
+past.
+
+"I must really enter into the life of each place," she said, "if it is
+only for a few weeks or months. I want to feel that I have a right to
+the landscape--that I'm not just an intruding tourist, caring only for
+random sight-seeing."
+
+But Miss Willard brought back much more than a general culture gained
+through a study of art, history, and literature, and a contact with
+civilization. She gained, above all, a vital interest in conditions of
+life, particularly those that concern women and their opportunities for
+education, self-expression, and service. The Frances E. Willard that the
+world knows, the organizer and leader in social reform, was born at this
+time. On her thirtieth birthday she wrote:
+
+    I can _do_ so much more when I go home. I shall have a hold
+    on life, and a fitness for it so much more assured. Perhaps--who
+    knows?--there may be noble, wide-reaching work for me in the
+    years ahead.
+
+It seemed to Miss Willard, when she returned to her own country, that
+there was, after all, no land like America, and no spot anywhere so
+truly satisfying as Rest Cottage in Evanston, where her mother awaited
+her home-coming. A signal honor awaited her as well. She was called to
+be president of her alma mater; and when the college became a part of
+the North-Western University, she remained as Dean of Women.
+
+At this time many towns and cities of the Middle West were the scene of
+a strange, pathetic, and heart-stirring movement known as the Temperance
+Crusade. Gentle, home-loving women, white-haired mothers bent with toil
+and grief, marched through the streets, singing hymns, praying, and
+making direct appeals to keepers of saloons "for the sake of humanity
+and their own souls' sake to quit their soul-destroying business." Their
+very weakness was their strength. Their simple faith and the things they
+had suffered through the drink evil pleaded for them. A great religious
+revival was under way.
+
+In Chicago a band of women who were marching to the City Council to
+ask that the law for Sunday closing of saloons be enforced were rudely
+jostled and insulted by a mob. Miss Willard, who had before been
+deeply stirred by the movement, was now thoroughly aroused. She made
+several eloquent speeches in behalf of the cause, which was, she said,
+"everybody's war." Her first instinct was to leave her college and give
+her all to the work. Then it seemed to her that she ought to help just
+where she was--that everybody ought. So, just where she was, the young
+dean devoted her power of eloquent speech and her influence with people
+to the cause. Day by day her interest in reform became more absorbing.
+She realized that the early fervor and enthusiasm of the movement needed
+to be strengthened by "sober second thought" and sound organization.
+
+"If I only had more time--if I were more free!" she exclaimed.
+
+Then the turn of events did indeed free her from her responsibility
+to her college. A change of policy so altered the conditions of her
+work that she decided to resign her charge and go east to study the
+temperance movement. The time came when she had to make a final choice.
+Two letters reached her on the same day: One asked her to assume the
+principal-ship of an important school in New York at a large salary;
+the other begged her to take charge of the Chicago branch of the
+Woman's Christian Temperance Union at no salary at all. The girl who
+had worshiped culture and lived in books decided to accept the second
+call; and turning her back on a brilliant career and worldly success,
+she threw in her lot with the most unpopular reform of the day. Frances
+Willard, the distinguished teacher, writer, and lecturer, became a
+crusader.
+
+"How can you think it right to give up your interest in literature and
+art!" wailed one of her friends and admirers.
+
+"What greater art than to try to restore the image of God to faces that
+have lost it?" replied Miss Willard.
+
+Those early days in Chicago were a brave, splendid time. Often walking
+miles, because she had no money for car-fare, the inspired crusader
+"followed the gleam" of her vision of what this woman's movement might
+accomplish. Where others saw only an uncertain group of overwrought
+fanatics, she saw an organized army of earnest workers possessed of
+that "loftiest chivalry which comes as a sequel of their service to the
+weakest."
+
+"I seemed to see the end from the beginning," she said; "and when one
+has done that, nothing can discourage or daunt."
+
+Miss Willard often said that she was never happier than during this
+time, when her spirit was entirely free, because she neither longed for
+what the world could give nor feared what it might take away. She felt
+very near to the poor people among whom she worked.
+
+"I am a better friend than you dream," she would say in her heart, while
+her eyes spoke her sympathy and understanding. "I know more about you
+than you think, for I am hungry, too."
+
+Of course, in time, the women discovered that their valued leader did
+not have an independent income as they had imagined (since she had
+never seemed to give a thought to ways and means for herself), and a
+sufficient salary was provided for her. But always she spent her income
+as she spent herself--to the utmost for the work.
+
+The secret of Miss Willard's success as a speaker lay in this entire
+giving of herself. The intensity of life, the irrepressible humor, the
+never-failing sympathy, the spirit that hungered after all that was
+beautiful shone in her clear eyes, and, in the pure, vibrant tones of
+her wonderful voice, went straight to the hearts of all who listened.
+She did not enter into her life as a crusader halt and maimed; all of
+the woman's varied interests and capacities were felt in the work of the
+reformer.
+
+"She is a great orator because in her words the clear seeing of a
+perfectly poised mind and the warm feeling of an intensely sympathetic
+heart are wonderfully blended," said Henry Ward Beecher.
+
+Miss Willard was not only a gifted speaker, whose pure, flame-like
+spirit enkindled faith and enthusiasm in others; she was also a rare
+organizer and indefatigable worker. As president of the National Union,
+she visited nearly every city and town in the United States, and, during
+a dozen years, averaged one meeting a day. The hours spent on trains
+were devoted to making plans and preparing addresses. On a trip up the
+Hudson, while everybody was on deck enjoying the scenery, Miss Willard
+remained in the cabin busy with pad and pencil.
+
+"I know myself too well to venture out," she said to a friend who
+remonstrated with her. "There is work that must be done."
+
+Under Miss Willard's leadership the work became a power in the life and
+progress of the nation and of humanity. There were those who objected
+the very breadth and inclusiveness of her sympathies and interests, and
+who protested against the "scatteration" policies, that would, they
+said, lead to no definite goal.
+
+"I cannot see why any society should impose limitations on any
+good work," said this broad-minded leader. "Everything is not in
+the temperance movement, but the temperance movement should be in
+everything."
+
+In 1898 the loyal crusader was called to lay down her arms and leave the
+battle to others. She had given so unstintedly to every good work all
+that she was, that at fifty-eight her powers of endurance were spent. "I
+am so tired--so tired," she said again and again; and at the last, with
+a serene smile, "How beautiful it is to be with God!"
+
+In the great hall of the Capitol, where each State has been permitted
+to place statues of two of its most cherished leaders, Illinois has put
+the marble figure of Frances E. Willard, the only woman in a company
+of soldiers and statesmen. In presenting the statue to the nation, Mr.
+Foss, who represented Miss Willard's own district in Illinois, closed
+his address with these words:
+
+    Frances E. Willard once said: "If I were asked what was the
+    true mission of the ideal woman, I would say, 'It is to make
+    the whole world home-like.'" Illinois, therefore, presents this
+    statue not only as a tribute to her whom it represents,--one of
+    the foremost women of America,--but as a tribute to woman and
+    her mighty influence upon our national life; to woman in the
+    home; to woman wherever she is toiling for the good of humanity;
+    to woman everywhere who has ever stood "For God, for home, for
+    native land."
+
+
+
+
+JULIA WARD HOWE: THE SINGER OF A NATION'S SONG
+
+
+
+
+    We have told the story of our mother's life, possibly at too
+    great length; but she herself told it in eight words.
+
+    "Tell me," Maud asked her once, "what is the ideal aim of
+    life?"
+
+    She paused a moment, and replied, dwelling thoughtfully on
+    each word:
+
+    "To learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy!"
+
+        _Life of Julia Ward Howe._
+
+
+
+
+THE SINGER OF A NATION'S SONG
+
+
+Two little girls were rolling hoops along the street when they suddenly
+caught them over their little bare arms and drew up close to the
+railings of a house on the corner.
+
+"There is the wonderful coach and the little girl I told you about,
+Eliza," whispered Marietta, pushing back the straw bonnet that shaded
+her face from the sun and pointing with her stick.
+
+It was truly a magnificent yellow coach, pulled by two proud gray
+horses. Even Cinderella's golden equipage could not have been more
+splendid. Moreover, the little girl who sat perched upon the bright-blue
+cushioned seat wore an elegant blue pelisse, that just matched the
+heavenly color of the lining, and a yellow-satin bonnet that was clearly
+inspired by the straw-colored outer shell of the chariot itself. The
+fair chubby face under the satin halo was turned toward the children,
+and a pair of clear gray eyes regarded them with eager interest.
+
+"She looked as if she wanted to speak!" said Marietta, breathlessly.
+"Oh, Eliza, did you ever see any one so beautiful? Just like a doll or a
+fairy-tale princess!"
+
+"Huh!" cried Eliza, the scornful; "didn't you see that she has red hair?
+Who ever heard of a doll or a princess with red hair?"
+
+"Maybe a witch or a bad fairy turned her spun-gold locks red for spite,"
+suggested Marietta. "Anyway, I wouldn't mind red hair if I was in her
+place--so rich and all. Wouldn't it be grand to ride in a fine coach and
+have everything you want even before you stop to wish for it!"
+
+How astonished Marietta would have been if she could have known that the
+little lady in the chariot was wishing that she were a little girl with
+a hoop! For even when she was very small Julia Ward had other trials
+besides the red hair. Nowadays, people realize that red-gold hair is a
+true "crowning glory," but it wasn't the style to like it in 1825, at
+the time this story begins. So little Julia's mother tried her best to
+tone down the bright color with sobering washes and leaden combs. One
+day, however, the child heard a visitor say, "Your little girl is very
+beautiful; her hair is pretty, too, with that lovely complexion."
+
+Eagerly Julia climbed upon a chair and then on the high, old-fashioned
+dressing-table, so that she could gaze in the mirror to her heart's
+content. "Is that all?" she cried after a moment, and scrambled down,
+greatly disappointed.
+
+Eliza and Marietta would have been truly amazed if they had known that
+the little queen of the splendid coach had very little chance for the
+good times that a child loves. In these days I really believe that
+people would pity her and say, "Poor little rich girl!" She was brought
+up with the greatest strictness. There were many lessons,--French,
+Latin, music, and dancing--for she must have an education that would
+fit her to shine in her high station. When she went out for an airing,
+it was always in the big coach, "like a little lady." There was never a
+chance for a hop-skip-and-jump play-hour. Her delicate cambric dresses
+and kid slippers were only suited to sedate indoor ways, and even when
+she was taken to the sea-shore for a holiday, her face was covered with
+a thick green veil to keep her fair skin from all spot and blemish.
+Dignity and Duty were the guardian geniuses of Julia Ward's childhood.
+
+Her father, Samuel Ward, was a rich New York banker, with a fine
+American sense of _noblesse oblige_. He believed that a man's wealth and
+influence spell strict accountability to his country and to God, and he
+lived according to that belief. He believed that as a banker his most
+vital concern was not to make himself richer and richer, but to manage
+money matters in such a way as to serve his city and the nation as a
+whole. In those times of financial stress which came to America in the
+early part of the nineteenth century, his heroic efforts more than once
+enabled his bank to weather a financial storm and uphold the credit of
+the State. On one occasion his loyalty and unflagging zeal secured a
+loan of five million dollars from the Bank of England in the nick of
+time to avert disaster.
+
+"Julia," cried her brother, who had just come in from Wall Street, "men
+have been going up and down the office stairs all day long, carrying
+little wooden kegs of gold on their backs, marked 'Prime, Ward & King'
+and filled with English gold!"
+
+Mr. Ward, however, did not see the triumphal procession of the kegs;
+he was prostrated by a severe illness, due, it was said, to his too
+exacting labors. Years afterward, Mr. Ward's daughter said that her best
+inheritance from the old firm was the fact that her father had procured
+this loan which saved the honor of the Empire State.
+
+"From the time I was a tiny child," said Julia Ward, "I had heard
+stories of my ancestors--colonial governors and officers in the
+Revolution, among whom were numbered General Nathanael Greene and
+General Marion, the 'Swamp Fox' whose 'fortress was the good green
+wood,' whose 'tent the cypress-tree.' When I thought of the brave and
+honorable men and the fair and prudent wives and daughters of the line,
+they seemed to pass before my unworthy self 'terrible as an army with
+banners'--but there was, too, the trumpet-call of inspiration in the
+thought that they were truly mine own people."
+
+If a sense of duty and the trumpet-call of her forebears urged little
+Julia on to application in her early years, she soon learned to love
+study for its own sake. When, at nine years of age, she began to attend
+school, she listened to such purpose to the recitations of a class in
+Italian that she presently handed to the astonished principal a letter
+correctly written in that language, begging to be admitted to the study
+of the tongue whose soft musical vowels had charmed her ear. She had
+not only aptitude, but genuine fondness, for languages, and early tried
+various experiments in the use of her own. When a child of ten she
+began to write verse, and thereafter the expression of her thoughts and
+feelings in poetic form was as natural as breathing.
+
+If you could have seen some of the solemn verses entitled, "All things
+shall pass," and, "We return no more," written by the child not yet in
+her teens, you might have said, "What an extraordinary little girl! Has
+she always been ill, or has she never had a chance for a good time?"
+
+It was certainly true that life seemed a very serious thing to the
+child. Her eyes were continually turned inward, for they had not
+been taught to discover and enjoy the things of interest and delight
+in the real world. New York was in that interesting stage of its
+growth that followed upon the opening of the Erie Canal. Not yet a
+city of foreigners,--the melting-pot of all nations,--the commercial
+opportunities which better communication with the Great Lakes section
+gave caused unparalleled prosperity. In 1835 the metropolis had a
+population of 200,000; but Broadway was still in large part a street of
+dignified brick residences with bright green blinds and brass knockers,
+along which little girls could roll their hoops. Canal Street was a
+popular boulevard, with a canal bordered by trees running through the
+center and a driveway on either side; and the district neighboring on
+the Battery and Castle Garden was still a place of wealth and fashion.
+
+It is to be doubted, however, if Julia Ward ever saw anything on her
+drives to call her out of her day-dreaming self. Nor had she eyes for
+the marvels of nature. The larkspurs and laburnums in the garden had no
+language that she could understand. "I grew up," she said, "with the
+city measure of the universe--my own house, somebody else's, the trees
+in the park, a strip of blue sky overhead, and a great deal about nature
+read from the best authors, most of which meant nothing at all. Years
+later I learned to enjoy the drowsy murmur of green fields in midsummer,
+the song of birds and the ways of shy wood-flowers, when my own children
+opened the door into that 'mighty world of eye and ear.'"
+
+When Julia was sixteen, the return of her brother from Germany opened
+a new door of existence to her. She had just left school and had begun
+to study in real earnest. So serious was she in her devotion to her
+self-imposed tasks that she sometimes bade a maid tie her in a chair
+for a certain period. Thus, in bonds, with a mind set free from all
+temptation to roam, she wrestled with the difficulties of German grammar
+and came off victorious. But Brother Sam led her to an appreciation of
+something besides the poetry of Schiller and Goethe. He had a keen and
+wholesome enjoyment of the world of people, and in the end succeeded in
+giving his young sister a taste of natural youthful gaiety.
+
+"Sir," said Samuel, Junior, to his father one evening, "you do not keep
+in view the importance of the social tie."
+
+"The social what?" asked the amazed Puritan.
+
+"The social tie, sir."
+
+"I make small account of that," rejoined the father, coldly.
+
+"I will die in defense of it!" retorted the son, hotly.
+
+The young man found, however, that it was more agreeable to live for
+the social tie than to die for it. And Julia, beginning to long for
+something besides family evenings with books and music varied by
+an occasional lecture or a visit to the house of an uncle, seemed
+to herself "like a young damsel of olden times, shut up within an
+enchanted castle." When she was nineteen she decided upon a declaration
+of independence. If she could only muster the courage to meet her
+affectionate jailer face to face, she thought that the bars of his
+prejudice against fashionable society must surely fall.
+
+"I am going to give a party--_a party of my very own_," she announced to
+her brothers; "and you must help me with the list of guests."
+
+Having obtained her father's permission to invite a few friends "to
+spend the evening," she set about her preparations. This first party of
+her young life should, she resolved, be correct in every detail. The
+best caterer in New York was engaged, and a popular group of musicians.
+She even introduced a splendid cut-glass chandelier to supplement the
+conservative lighting of the drawing-room. "My first party must be a
+brilliant success," she said, with a smile and a determined tilt of her
+chin.
+
+A brilliant company was gathered to do the débutante honor on the
+occasion of her audacious entrance into society. Mr. Ward showed no
+surprise, however, when he descended the stairs and appeared upon
+the festive scene. He greeted the guests courteously and watched the
+dancing without apparent displeasure. Julia, herself, betrayed no
+more excitement than seemed natural to the acknowledged belle of the
+evening, but her heart was beating in a fashion not quite in tune with
+the music of the fiddles. When the last guest had departed she went,
+according to custom, to bid her father good night. And now came the
+greatest surprise of all! Mr. Ward took the young girl's hand in his.
+"My daughter," he said with tender gravity, "I was surprised to see
+that your idea of 'a few friends' differed widely from mine. After this
+you need not hesitate to consult me freely and frankly about what you
+want to do." Then, kissing her good night with his usual affection, he
+dismissed the subject forever.
+
+Julia's brief skirmish for independence proved not a rebellion, but a
+revolution. Her brother's marriage to Miss Emily Astor introduced an era
+of gaiety at this time; and when the young girl had once fairly taken
+her place in society, there was no such thing as going back to the old
+life. "Jolie Julie," as she was lovingly called in the home-circle,
+became a reigning favorite. Even rumors of her amazing blue-stocking
+tendencies could not spoil her success. It was whispered that she was
+given to quoting German philosophy and French poetry. "I believe she
+dreams in Italian," vowed one greatly awed damsel.
+
+However that might be, "Jolie Julie" certainly had a place in the dreams
+of many. Her beauty and charm won all hearts. The bright hair was now
+an acknowledged glory above the apple-blossom fairness of her youthful
+bloom. But it was not alone the loveliness of the delicately molded
+features and the tender brightness of the clear gray eyes that made
+her a success. Notwithstanding the early neglect of "the social tie,"
+it was soon plain that she had the unfailing tact, the ready wit, and
+native good humor that are the chief assets of the social leader who is
+"born to the purple." Besides, Miss Ward's unusual acquirements could be
+turned so as to masquerade, in their rosy linings, as accomplishments.
+Her musical gifts were not reserved for hours of solitary musing, but
+were freely devoted to the pleasure of her friends; and even the lofty
+poetic Muse could on occasion indulge in a comic gambol to the great
+delight of her intimates.
+
+Miss Ward soon tried her wings in other spheres beyond New York. She
+found a ready welcome in Boston's select inner circle, where she made
+the acquaintance of Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes, and other
+leading figures in the literary world. Charles Sumner, the brilliant
+statesman and reformer, was an intimate friend of her brother, and
+through him she met Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who not long after became
+her husband.
+
+From both Longfellow and Sumner Miss Ward had heard glowing accounts of
+their friend Howe, who was, they declared, the truest hero that America
+and the nineteenth century had produced and the best of good comrades.
+He had earned the name of "Chevalier" among his friends because he was
+"a true Bayard, without fear and without reproach," and because he
+had, moreover, been made a Knight of St. George by the King of Greece
+for distinguished services during the Greek war for independence. For
+six years he had fought with the patriots, both in the field and as
+surgeon-in-chief. While in hiding with his wounded among the bare rocks
+of the heights, he had sometimes nothing to eat but roasted wasps and
+mountain snails. When the people were without food, he had returned
+to America, related far and wide the story of Greece's struggles and
+dire need, and brought back a shipload of food and clothing. Having
+relieved the distress of the people, he had helped them to get in touch
+with normal existence once more by putting them to work. A hospital was
+built, and a mole to enclose the harbor at Ægina. Then, after seeing
+the hitherto distracted peasants begin a new life as self-respecting
+farmers, he had returned to America.
+
+[Illustration: Julia Ward Howe]
+
+At this time he was doing pioneer work in the education of the blind. As
+director of the Perkins Institution, in Boston, he was not only laboring
+to make more efficient this first school for the blind in America,
+but he was also going about through the country with his pupils to
+show something of what might be done in the way of practical training,
+in order to induce the legislatures of the several States to provide
+similar institutions for those deprived of sight. In particular, Dr.
+Howe's success in teaching Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf-mute, was the
+marvel of the civilized world.
+
+One day, when Longfellow and Sumner were calling upon Miss Ward, they
+suggested driving over to the Perkins Institution. When they arrived
+the hero of the hour--and the place--was absent. Before they left,
+however, Mr. Sumner, who had been looking out of the window, suddenly
+exclaimed, "There is Howe now on his black horse!" Miss Ward looked with
+considerable eagerness in her curiosity, and saw, as she afterward said,
+"a noble rider on a noble steed."
+
+In this way the Chevalier rode into the life of the fair lady. As the
+knight of the ballad swung the maiden of his choice to the croup of his
+charger and galloped off with her in the face of her helpless kinsmen,
+so this serious philanthropist and reformer carried off the lovely
+society favorite, in spite of the fact that he cared not at all for her
+gay, care-free world, and was, moreover, twenty years her senior. The
+following portion of a letter which Miss Ward wrote to her brother Sam
+shows how completely she was won:
+
+    The Chevalier says truly--I am the captive of his bow and
+    spear. His true devotion has won me from the world and from
+    myself. The past is already fading from my sight; already I
+    begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly
+    bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to
+    sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day-dreams of my youth.
+
+Dr. Howe and his bride went to Europe on their wedding-trip--on the same
+steamer with Horace Mann and his newly made wife, Mary Peabody, the
+sister of Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne. The teacher of Laura Bridgman was
+well known in England through Dickens's "American Notes," and people
+were anxious to do him honor. Dickens not only invited the interesting
+Americans to dinner, but he offered to pilot Dr. Howe and his brother
+reformer, Horace Mann, about darkest London and show them the haunts of
+misery and crime which no one knew better than the author of "Oliver
+Twist," "Little Dorrit," and "Bleak House." The following note, written
+in Dickens's characteristic hand, shows the zest with which the great
+novelist undertook these expeditions and his boyish love of fun:
+
+    My dear Howe,--Drive to-night to St. Giles's Church. Be
+    there at half past 11--and wait. Somebody will put his head
+    into the coach after a Venetian and mysterious fashion, and
+    breathe your name. Follow that man. Trust him to the death.
+
+    So no more at present from
+
+    Ninth June, 1843.         THE MASK.
+
+It had been the plan to go from England to Berlin; but Dr. Howe, who
+had once incurred the displeasure of the king of Prussia by giving aid
+to certain Polish refugees, and had, indeed, been held for five weeks
+in a German prison, was now excluded from the country as a "dangerous
+person." This greatly amused Horace Mann, who remarked, "When we
+consider that His Majesty has 200,000 men constantly under arms, and can
+in need increase the number to two million, we begin to appreciate the
+estimation in which he holds your single self." When, some years later,
+the king sent Dr. Howe a medal in recognition of his work for the blind,
+the Chevalier declared laughingly: "It is worth just what I was obliged
+to pay for board and lodging while in the Berlin prison. His Majesty is
+magnanimous!"
+
+After traveling through Switzerland, Italy, and France, the Howes
+stopped for a second visit to England, where they were entertained for
+a time by the parents of Florence Nightingale. A warm attachment sprang
+up between them and the earnest young woman of twenty-four.
+
+"I want to ask your advice, Dr. Howe," said Miss Nightingale, one day.
+"Would it be unsuitable for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to
+works of charity in hospitals and wherever needed, just as the Catholic
+sisters do?"
+
+The doctor replied gravely, "My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual,
+and in England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought unsuitable;
+but I say to you, go forward, if you have a vocation for that way of
+life; act up to your inspiration, and you will find that there is never
+anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of
+others."
+
+After the Howes had returned to Boston and settled down to the
+work-a-day order in the Institution the young wife's loyalty to the
+new life was often sorely tried. She loved the sunshine of the bright,
+gracious world of leisurely, happy people, and she felt herself chilled
+in this bleak gray place of sober duties. If only she could warm
+herself at the fire of friendship oftener! But all the pleasant people
+lived in pleasant places too far from the South Boston institution for
+the give and take of easy intercourse. Dr. Howe, moreover, was much of
+the time so absorbed in the causes of which he was champion-in-chief
+that few hours were saved for quiet fireside enjoyment.
+
+"I hardly know what I should have done in those days," said Mrs. Howe,
+"without the companionship of my babies and Miss Catherine Beecher's
+cook-book."
+
+The Chevalier loved to invite for a weekly dinner his especial group
+of intimates--five choice spirits, among whom Longfellow and Sumner
+were numbered, who styled themselves "The Five of Clubs." These dinners
+brought many new problems to the young hostess, who now wished that some
+portion of her girlhood days lavished on Italian and music had been
+devoted to the more intimate side of menus. However, she was before long
+able to take pride in her puddings without renouncing poetry; and to
+keep an eye on the economy of the kitchen and her sense of humor at the
+same time, as the following extract from a breezy letter to her sister
+Louisa can testify:
+
+    Our house has been enlivened of late by two delightful
+    visits. The first was from the soap-fat merchant, who gave me
+    thirty-four pounds of good soap for my grease. I was quite
+    beside myself with joy, capered about in the most enthusiastic
+    manner, and was going to hug in turn the soap, the grease,
+    and the man, when I reflected that it would not sound well in
+    history. This morning came the rag man, who takes rags and gives
+    nice tin vessels in exchange.... Both of these were clever
+    transactions. Oh, if you had seen me stand by the soap-fat man,
+    and scrutinize his weights and measures, telling him again and
+    again that it was beautiful grease, and that he must allow me a
+    good price for it--truly, I am a mother in Israel.
+
+The hours spent with her wee daughters were happy times. Sometimes
+she improvised jingles to amuse Baby Flossy (Florence, after Florence
+Nightingale) and tease the absorbed father-reformer at the same time:
+
+    Rero, rero, riddlety rad,
+    This morning my baby caught sight of her dad,
+    Quoth she, "Oh, Daddy, where have you been?"
+    "With Mann and Sumner a-putting down sin!"
+
+Sometimes she sang little bedtime rhymes about lambs and baby birds,
+sheep and sleep; and, when the small auditors demanded that their
+particular pets have a part in the song, readily added:
+
+    The little donkey in the stable
+    Sleeps as sound as he is able;
+    All things now their rest pursue,
+    You are sleepy too.
+
+As soon as Dr. Howe could find a suitable place near the Institution he
+moved his little family into a home of their own. On the bright summer
+day when Mrs. Howe drove under the bower formed by the fine old trees
+that guarded the house, she exclaimed, "Oh, this is green peace!" And
+"Green Peace" their home was called from that day. The children enjoyed
+here healthful outdoor times and happy indoor frolics--plays given at
+their dolls' theater, when father and mother worked the puppets to a
+dialogue of squeaks and grunts; and really-truly plays, such as "The
+Three Bears" (when Father distinguished himself as the Great Big Huge
+Bear), "The Rose and the Ring," and "Bluebeard."
+
+In the midst of the joys and cares of such a rich home-life, how was it
+that the busy mother still found time for study and writing? For she
+was always a student, keeping her mind in training as an athlete keeps
+his muscles; and the need of finding expression in words for her inner
+life became more insistent as time went on. One of her daughters once
+said:
+
+    "It was a matter of course to us children that 'Papa and
+    Mamma' should play with us, sing to us, tell us stories, bathe
+    our bumps, and accompany us to the dentist; these were the
+    things that papas and mammas did! Looking back now with some
+    realization of all the other things they did, we wonder how they
+    managed it. For one thing, both were rapid workers; for another,
+    both had the power of leading and inspiring others to work; for
+    a third, so far as we can see, neither wasted a moment; for a
+    fourth, neither ever reached a point where there was not some
+    other task ahead, to be begun as soon as might be."
+
+Life with the beloved reformer was often far from easy, but there were
+never any regrets for the old care-free days. "I shipped as captain's
+mate for the voyage!" she said on one occasion, with a merry laugh that
+was like a heartening cheer; and then she added seriously, "I cannot
+imagine a more useful motto for married life." Always she realized that
+she owed all that was deepest and most steadfast in herself to this
+union. "But for the Chevalier, I should have been merely a woman of the
+world and a literary dabbler!" she said.
+
+A volume of verse, "Passion Flowers," was praised by Longfellow and
+Whittier and won a wide popularity. A later collection, "Words for the
+Hour," was, on the whole, better, but not so much read. Still, the woman
+felt that she had not yet really found herself in her work. She longed
+to give something that was vital--something that would fill a need and
+make a difference to people in the real world of action.
+
+The days of the Civil War made every earnest spirit long to be of some
+service to the nation and to humanity. Dr. Howe and his friend were
+among the leaders of the Abolitionists at the time when they were a
+despised "party of cranks and martyrs." It was small wonder that,
+when the struggle came, Mrs. Howe's soul was fired with the desire to
+help. There seemed nothing that she could do but scrape lint for the
+hospitals--which any other woman could do equally well. If only her
+poetic gift were not such a slender reed--if she could but command an
+instrument of trumpet strength to voice the spirit of the hour!
+
+In this mood she had gone to Washington to see a review of the troops.
+On returning, while her carriage was delayed by the marching regiments,
+her companions tried to relieve the tensity and tedium of the wait by
+singing war songs, among others:
+
+    "John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave;
+      His soul is marching on!"
+
+The passing soldiers caught at this with a "Good for you!" and joined in
+the chorus. "Mrs. Howe," said her minister, James Freeman Clarke, who
+was one of the company, "why do you not write some really worthy words
+for that stirring tune?"
+
+"I have often wished to do so," she replied.
+
+Let us tell the story of the writing of the "nation's song" as her
+daughters have told it in the biography of their mother:
+
+    Waking in the gray of the next morning, as she lay waiting
+    for the dawn the word came to her.
+
+    "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord--"
+
+    She lay perfectly still. Line by line, stanza by stanza,
+    the words came sweeping on with the rhythm of marching feet,
+    pauseless, resistless. She saw the long lines swinging into
+    place before her eyes, heard the voice of the nation speaking
+    through her lips. She waited till the voice was silent, till the
+    last line was ended; then sprang from bed, and, groping for pen
+    and paper, scrawled in the gray twilight the "Battle Hymn of the
+    Republic."
+
+And so the "nation's song" was born. How did it come to pass that the
+people knew it as their own? When it appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly"
+it called forth little comment; the days gave small chance for the
+poetry of words. But some poets in the real world of deeds had seen
+it--the people who were fighting on the nation's battle-fields. And
+again and again it was sung and chanted as a prayer before battle and a
+trumpet-call to action. A certain fighting chaplain, who had committed
+it to memory, sang it one memorable night in Libby Prison, when the
+joyful tidings of the victory of Gettysburg had penetrated even those
+gloomy walls. "Like a flame the word flashed through the prison. Men
+leaped to their feet, shouted, embraced one another in a frenzy of joy
+and triumph; and Chaplain McCabe, standing in the middle of the room,
+lifted up his great voice and sang aloud:
+
+    "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"
+
+Every voice took up the chorus, and Libby Prison rang with the shout of
+'Glory, glory, hallelujah!'"
+
+Later, when Chaplain McCabe related to a great audience in Washington
+the story of that night and ended by singing the "Battle Hymn of the
+Republic," as only one who has lived it can sing it, the voice of
+Abraham Lincoln was heard above the wild applause, calling, as the tears
+rolled down his cheeks, "Sing it again!"
+
+It has been said that what a person does in some great moment of his
+life--in a moment of fiery trial or of high exaltation--is the result of
+all the thoughts and deeds of all the slow-changing days. So the habits
+of a lifetime cry out at last. Is it not true that this "nation's song,"
+which seemed to write itself in a wonderful moment of inspiration,
+was really the expression of years of brave, faithful living? All the
+earnestness of the child, all the dreams and warm friendliness of the
+girl, all the tenderness and loyal devotion of the wife and mother,
+speak in those words. Nor is it the voice of her life alone. The
+trumpet-call of her forebears was in those stirring lines. Only a tried
+and true American, whose people had fought and suffered for freedom's
+sake, could have written that nation's song.
+
+Julia Ward Howe's long life of ninety-one years was throughout one of
+service and inspiration. Many people were better and happier because
+of her life. It was a great moment when, on the occasion of any public
+gathering, the word went around that Mrs. Howe was present. With one
+accord those assembled would rise to their feet, and hall or theater
+would ring with the inspiring lines of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
+
+The man who said, "I care not who shall make the laws of the nation, if
+I may be permitted to make its songs," spoke wisely. A true song comes
+from the heart and goes to the heart. A nation's song is the voice of
+the heart and life of a whole people. In it the hearts of many beat
+together as one.
+
+
+
+
+A CHAMPION OF "THE CAUSE":
+
+ANNA HOWARD SHAW
+
+
+
+
+    Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a
+    great Cause more than life itself, and to have the privilege
+    throughout life of working for that Cause.
+
+        ANNA HOWARD SHAW.
+
+
+
+
+A CHAMPION OF "THE CAUSE"
+
+
+A young girl was standing on a stump in the woods, waving her arms and
+talking very earnestly. There was no one there to listen except a robin
+a-tilt on a branch where the afternoon sun could turn his rusty brown
+breast to red, and a chattering, inquisitive bluejay. All the other
+little wood folk were in hiding. That strange creature was in the woods
+but not of them. She belonged to the world of people.
+
+The girl knew that she belonged to a different world. She was not trying
+to play that she was a little American Saint Francis preaching to the
+birds in the forests of northern Michigan. She was looking past the
+great trees and all the busy life that lurked there to the far-away
+haunts of men. Somehow she felt that she would have something to say to
+them some day.
+
+She raised her clasped hands high above her head and lifted her face
+to the patch of sky that gleamed deep blue between the golden-green
+branches of the trees. "There is much that I can say," she declared
+fervently. "I am only a girl, but I feel in my heart that some day
+people will listen to me."
+
+A gray squirrel scampered noisily across the dry brown leaves and
+frisked up a tree trunk, where he clung for a moment regarding the girl
+on the stump with shining, curious eyes.
+
+"Saucy nutcracker!" cried the child, tossing an acorn at the alert
+little creature. "Do you too think it strange for a girl to want to do
+things? What would you say if I should tell you that a young girl once
+led a great army to victory?--a poor girl who had to work hard all day
+just as I do? She did not know how to read or write, but she knew how
+to answer all the puzzling questions that the learned and powerful men
+of the day (who tried with all their might to trip her up) could think
+to ask. They called her a witch then. 'Of a truth this girl Joan must
+be possessed of an evil spirit,' they said. 'Who ever heard of a maid
+speaking as she speaks?' Years afterward they called her a saint. She
+was the leader of her people even though she was a girl--Now I don't
+mean, fellow birds and squirrels, that I expect to be another Joan of
+Arc, but I know that I shall be something!"
+
+Anna Shaw's bright dark eyes glowed with intense feeling. Like the maid
+of whom she had been reading, she had her vision--a vision of a large,
+happy life waiting for her--little, untaught backwoods girl though
+she was. Her book led the way down a charmed path into the world of
+dreams. For the time she forgot the drudgery of the days--the plowing
+and planting and hoeing about the stumps of their little clearing, the
+cutting of wood, the carrying of water. She walked back to the cabin
+that was home, with her head held high and her lips parted in a smile.
+But all at once she was brought back to real things with a rude bump.
+
+"What have you been doing, Anna?" demanded her father, who stood waiting
+for her in the doorway.
+
+"Reading, sir," the girl faltered.
+
+"So you have been _idling_ away precious hours at a time your mother
+has needed your help?" the stern voice went on accusingly. "What do you
+suppose the future will bring to one who has not proved 'faithful in
+little'?"
+
+The girl looked at her father without speaking. She knew that her share
+in the work of the household was not "little." Her young hands hardened
+from rough toil twitched nervously; the injustice cut her to the quick.
+Couldn't her father imagine what holding down that claim in the woods
+had meant for the little family during the eighteen months that he
+and the two older boys had remained behind in the East? In his joy at
+securing the grant of land from the Government, he already pictured the
+well-conditioned farm that would one day be his and his children's. "The
+acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young oaks."
+
+In a flash she saw as if it were yesterday the afternoon when their
+pathetic little caravan had at last reached the home that awaited
+them. She saw the frail, tired mother give one glance at the rude log
+hut in the stump-filled clearing, and then sink in a despairing heap
+on the dirt floor. It was but the hollow shell of a cabin--walls and
+roof, with square holes for door and windows gaping forlornly at the
+home-seekers. She heard the wolves and wildcats as she had on that first
+night when they had huddled together--helpless creatures from another
+world--not knowing if their watch-fires would keep the hungry beasts
+at bay. She saw parties of Indians stalk by in war-paint and feathers.
+She saw herself, a child of twelve, trudging wearily to the distant
+creek for water until the time when, with her brother's help, she dug a
+well. There was, too, the work of laying a floor and putting in doors
+and windows. Like Robinson Crusoe, she had served a turn at every
+trade; to-day that of carpenter or builder, to-morrow that of farmer,
+fisherman, or woodcutter.
+
+As these pictures flashed before the eye of memory she looked at her
+father quietly, without a word of defense or self-pity. All she said
+was, "Father, some day I am going to college."
+
+The little smile that curled his lips as he looked his astonishment
+drove her to another boast. The dreams of the free calm woods and the
+heroic Maid of Orleans had faded away. Somehow she longed to put forth
+her claim in a way to impress any one, even a man who felt that a girl
+ought not to want anything but drudging. "And before I die I shall be
+worth $10,000," she prophesied boldly.
+
+However, the months that succeeded gave no sign of any change of
+fortune. A sudden storm turned a day of toil now and then into a
+red-letter day when one had chance to read the books that father had
+brought with him into the wilderness. Sometimes one could stretch at
+ease on the floor and dreamily scan the pages of the "Weekly" that
+papered the walls. There was always abundant opportunity in the busy
+hours that followed to reflect on what one had read--to compare, to
+contrast, and to apply, and so to annex for good and all the ideas that
+the books had to give.
+
+It was clear, too, that there were many interesting things to be seen
+and enjoyed even in the most humdrum work-a-day round, if one were able
+to read real life as well as print. Could anything be more delightful
+than the way father would drop his hoe and run into the house to work
+out a problem concerning the yield of a certain number of kernels
+of corn? The days would go by while he calculated and speculated
+energetically over this problem and that, leaving such trivial tasks as
+planting and plowing to others. Then there were the weekend visitors.
+Often as many as ten or a dozen of the neighboring settlers--big
+lumbermen and farmers--would come on Saturday, to spend the night and
+Sunday listening to her father read. When it was delicately hinted that
+this was a tax on the family store of tallow dips, each man dutifully
+brought a candle to light the way to learning. It never seemed to occur,
+either to them or to the impractical father, who liked nothing better
+than reading and expounding, that the entertainment of so many guests
+was a severe tax on the strength and patience of the working members of
+the household.
+
+But life was not all labor. There was now and then a wonderful ball at
+Big Rapids, then a booming lumber town. When it was impossible to get
+any sort of a team to make the journey, they went down the river on a
+raft, taking their party dresses in trunks. As balls, like other good
+things in pioneer experience, were all too rare, it was the custom to
+make the most of each occasion by changing one's costume at midnight,
+and thus starting off with fresh enthusiasm to dance the "money musk"
+and the "Virginia reel" in the small hours.
+
+"Our costumes in those days had at least the spice of originality," said
+Miss Shaw with a reminiscent smile. "I well remember a certain gay ball
+gown of my own, made of bedroom chintz; and the home-tailored trousers
+of my gallant swain, whose economical mother had employed flour sacks,
+on which the local firm-name and the guarantee, '96 pounds,' appeared
+indelibly imprinted. A blue flannel shirt and a festive yellow sash
+completed his interesting outfit."
+
+When Anna Shaw was fifteen she began to teach in the little log
+schoolhouse of the settlement for two dollars a week and "board round."
+The day's work often meant a walk of from three to six miles, a trip to
+the woods for fuel, the making of the wood fire and the partial drying
+of rain-soaked clothes, before instruction began. Then imagine the child
+of fifteen teaching fifteen children of assorted ages and dispositions
+out of fifteen different "reading books," most of which she had herself
+supplied. "I remember that one little girl read from a hymn-book, while
+another had an almanac," she said.
+
+As there was no money for such luxuries as education until the dog-tax
+had been collected, the young teacher received one bright spring day
+the dazzling sum of twenty-six dollars for the entire term of thirteen
+weeks. In the spending of this wealth, spring and youth carried the day.
+Joan of Arc and the preaching in the woods were for the time forgotten;
+she longed above everything else to have some of the pretty things that
+all girls love. Making a pilgrimage to a real shop, she bought her first
+real party dress--a splendid creation of rich magenta color, elaborately
+decorated with black braid.
+
+Perhaps she regretted all too soon the rashness of this expenditure, for
+the next year brought hard times. War had been declared, and Lincoln's
+call for troops had taken all the able-bodied men of the community.
+"When news came that Fort Sumter had been fired on," said Miss Shaw,
+"our men were threshing. I remember seeing a man ride up on horseback,
+shouting out Lincoln's demand for troops and explaining that a regiment
+was being formed at Big Rapids. Before he had finished speaking the men
+on the machine had leaped to the ground and rushed off to enlist, my
+brother Jack, who had recently joined us, among them."
+
+Anna Shaw was now the chief support of the little home in the
+wilderness, and the pitiful sum earned by teaching had to be eked out
+by boarding the workers from the lumber-camps and taking in sewing,
+in order to pay the taxes and meet the bare necessities of life. With
+calico selling for fifty cents a yard, coffee for a dollar a pound,
+and everything else in proportion, one cannot but marvel how the women
+and children managed to exist. They struggled along, with hearts heavy
+with anxiety for loved ones on the battle-fields, to do as best they
+could the work of the men--gathering in the crops, grinding the corn,
+and caring for the cattle--in addition to the homekeeping tasks of
+the daily round. It takes, perhaps, more courage and endurance to be a
+faithful member of the home army than it does to march into battle with
+bands playing and colors flying.
+
+When, at the end of the war, the return of the father and brothers
+freed her from the responsibility for the upkeep of the home, Anna Shaw
+determined upon a bold step. Realizing that years must pass before she
+could save enough from her earnings as country school-teacher to go
+to college, she went to live with a married sister in Big Rapids and
+entered as a pupil in the high school there. The preceptress, Miss Lucy
+Foot, who was a college graduate and a woman of unusual strength of
+character, took a lively interest in the new student and encouraged her
+ambition to preach by putting her in the classes in public speaking and
+debating.
+
+"I vividly remember my first recitation in public," said Miss Shaw. "I
+was so overcome by the impressiveness of the audience and the occasion,
+and so appalled at my own boldness in standing there, that I sank in
+a faint on the platform. Sympathetic classmates carried me out and
+revived me, after which they naturally assumed that the entertainment I
+furnished was over for the evening. I, however, felt that if I let that
+failure stand against me I could never afterward speak in public; and
+within ten minutes, notwithstanding the protests of my friends, I was
+back in the hall and beginning my recitation a second time. The audience
+gave me its eager attention. Possibly it hoped to see me topple off the
+platform again, but nothing of the sort occurred. I went through the
+recitation with self-possession and received some friendly applause at
+the end."
+
+After this maiden speech, the young girl appeared frequently in public,
+now in school debates, now in amateur theatricals. It was as if the
+Fates had her case particularly in hand at this time, for everything
+seemed to further the secret longing that had possessed her ever since
+the days when she had preached to the trees in the forest.
+
+There was a growing sentiment in favor of licensing women to preach in
+the Methodist Church, and Dr. Peck, the presiding elder of the Big
+Rapids district, who was chief among the advocates of the movement, was
+anxious to present the first woman candidate for the ministry. Meeting
+the alert, ardent young student at the home of her teacher, Dr. Peck
+took pains to draw her into conversation. Soon she was talking freely,
+with eager animation, and her questioner was listening with interest,
+nodding approval now and then. Then an amazing thing happened. Dr. Peck
+looked at her smilingly and asked in an off-hand manner:
+
+"Would you like to preach the quarterly sermon at Ashton?"
+
+The young woman gasped; she stared at the good man in astonishment. Then
+she realized that he was speaking in entire seriousness.
+
+"Why," she stammered, "I can't preach a sermon!"
+
+"Have you ever tried?" he asked.
+
+"Never!" she began, and then as the picture of her childish self
+standing on the stump in the sunlit woods flashed upon her, "Never to
+human beings!" she amended.
+
+Dr. Peck was smiling again. "Well," he said, "the door is open. Enter
+or not, as you wish."
+
+After much serious counsel with Miss Foot and with her own soul, Anna
+Shaw determined to go in at the open door. For six weeks the preparation
+of the first sermon engaged most of her waking thoughts, and even in her
+dreams the text she had chosen sounded in her ears. It was, moreover, a
+time of no little anguish of spirit because of the consternation with
+which her family regarded her unusual "call." One might as well be
+guilty of crime, it appeared, as to be so forward and unwomanly. Finding
+it impossible to bring her to reason in any other way, they tried a
+bribe. After a solemn gathering of the clans, it was agreed that if she
+would give up this insane ambition to preach, they would send her to
+college--to Ann Arbor--and defray all her expenses. The thought of Ann
+Arbor was a sore temptation; but she realized that she could no more be
+faithless to the vision that had been with her from childhood than she
+could cease being herself.
+
+The momentous first sermon was the forerunner of many others in
+different places, and when at the conference the members were asked to
+vote whether she should be licensed as a local preacher, the majority of
+the ministers raised both hands!
+
+She was, however, still regarded as the black sheep of the family, and
+it was with a heavy spirit that she plodded on day by day with her
+studies. Surely nobody was ever more in need of a friendly word than
+was Anna Shaw at the time that Mary A. Livermore came to lecture in Big
+Rapids. At the close of the meeting she was among those gathered in a
+circle about the distinguished speaker, when some one pointed her out,
+remarking that "there was a young person who wanted to preach in spite
+of the opposition and entreaties of all her friends."
+
+Mrs. Livermore looked into Anna Shaw's glowing eyes with sudden
+interest; then she put her arm about her and said quietly, "My dear, if
+you want to preach, go on and preach. No matter what people say, don't
+let them stop you!"
+
+Before Miss Shaw could choke back her emotion sufficiently to reply,
+one of her good friends exclaimed: "Oh, Mrs. Livermore, don't say that
+to her! We're all trying to stop her. Her people are wretched over the
+whole thing. And don't you see how ill she is? She has one foot in the
+grave and the other almost there!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Livermore, looking thoughtfully at the white face that
+was turned appealingly toward her, "I see she has. But it is better that
+she should die doing the thing she wants to do than that she should die
+because she can't do it."
+
+"So they think I'm going to die!" cried Miss Shaw. "Well, I'm not! I'm
+going to live and preach!"
+
+[Illustration: _Photo by Brown Bros._
+
+Anna Howard Shaw]
+
+With renewed zeal and courage she turned again to her books, and, in the
+autumn of 1873, entered Albion College. "With only eighteen dollars as
+my entire capital," she said, "and not the least idea how I might add to
+it, I was approaching the campus when I picked up a copper cent bearing
+the date of my birth, 1848. It seemed to me a good omen, and I was sure
+of it when within the week I found two more pennies exactly like it.
+Though I have more than once been tempted to spend those pennies, I have
+them still--to my great comfort!"
+
+At college she was distinguished for her independence of thought and
+for her alert, vigorous mind. When, on being invited to join the
+literary society that boasted both men and women members instead of
+the exclusively feminine group, she was assured that "women need to be
+associated with men because they don't know how to manage meetings," she
+replied with spirit:
+
+"If they don't, it's high time they learned. I shall join the women, and
+we'll master the art."
+
+Her gift as a public speaker not only earned her a place of prominence
+in her class through her able debates and orations, but it also
+helped pay her way through college, since she received now and then
+five dollars for a temperance talk in one of the near-by country
+schoolhouses. But such sums came at uncertain intervals, and her board
+bills came due with discouraging regularity. A gift of ninety-two
+dollars, sent at Christmas by her friends in Big Rapids, alone made it
+possible for her to get through the term.
+
+Though the second year at Albion was comparatively smooth sailing
+because her reputation had brought enough "calls" to preach and lecture
+to defray her modest expenses, she decided to go to Boston University
+for her theological course. She was able to make her way in the West;
+why was it not possible to do the same in the place where she could get
+the needed equipment for her life work?
+
+But she soon found what it means to be alone and penniless in a large
+city. Opportunities were few and hungry students were many. For the
+first time in her life she was tempted to give up and own herself
+beaten, when a sudden rift came in the clouds of discouragement. She
+was invited to assist in holding a "revival week" in one of the Boston
+churches.
+
+It was soon evident that one could live on milk and crackers if only
+hope were added. The week's campaign was a great success. If she herself
+had not been able to feel the fervor and enthusiasm that the meetings
+had aroused, she could have no doubt when the minister assured her that
+her help had proved invaluable--that he greatly wished he were able
+to give her the fifty dollars, which at the very lowest estimate she
+deserved--but alas! he had nothing to offer but his heartfelt thanks!
+
+When Miss Shaw passed out of the church her heart was indeed heavy. She
+had failed! "I was friendless, penniless, and starving," she said, "but
+it was not of these conditions that I thought then. The one overwhelming
+fact was that I had been weighed and found wanting. I was not worthy."
+
+All at once she felt a touch on her arm. An old woman who had evidently
+been waiting for her to come out put a five-dollar bill in her hand. "I
+am a poor woman, Miss Shaw," she said, "but I have all I need, and I
+want to make you a little present, for I know how hard life must be for
+you young students. I'm the happiest woman in the world to-night, and I
+owe my happiness to you. You have converted my grandson, who is all I
+have left, and he is going to lead a different life."
+
+"This is the biggest gift I have ever had," cried Miss Shaw. "This
+little bill is big enough to carry my future on its back!"
+
+This was indeed the turning point. Here was enough for food and shoes,
+but it was much more than that. It was a sign that she had her place in
+the great world. There was need of what she could do, and there could be
+no more doubt that _her_ needs would be met. Even though she could not
+see the path ahead she would never lose heart again.
+
+The succeeding months brought not only the means to live but also the
+spirit to make the most of each day's living. "I graduated in a new
+black silk gown," she said, "with five dollars in my pocket, which I
+kept there during the graduation exercises. I felt special satisfaction
+in the possession of that money, for, notwithstanding the handicap of
+being a woman, I was said to be the only member of my class who had
+worked during the entire course, graduated free from debt, and had a new
+outfit as well as a few dollars in cash."
+
+Miss Shaw's influence as a preacher may be illustrated by a single
+anecdote. In the months following her graduation she went on a trip to
+Europe, a friend having left her a bequest for that express purpose.
+While in Genoa she was asked to preach to the sailors in a gospel-ship
+in the harbor; but when she appeared it was evident that the missionary
+in charge had not understood that the minister he had invited was a
+woman. He was unhappy and apologetic in his introduction, and the
+weather-beaten tars, in their turn, looked both resentful and mocking.
+It was certainly a trying moment when Miss Shaw began to speak. She had
+never in her life felt more forlorn or more homesick, when all at once
+the thought flashed through her that back of those unfriendly faces that
+confronted her there were lonely souls just as hungry for home as she
+was. Impulsively stepping down from the pulpit so that she stood on a
+level with her hearers, she said:
+
+"My friends, I hope you will forget everything that Dr. Blank has just
+said. It is true that I am a minister and that I came here to preach.
+But now I do not intend to preach--only to have a friendly talk, on a
+text that is not in the Bible. I am very far from home, and I feel
+as homesick as some of you men look. So my text is, 'Blessed are the
+homesick, for they shall go home.'"
+
+Then out of the knowledge of sea-faring people which she had gained
+during summer vacations when she had "filled in" for the absent pastor
+of a little church on Cape Cod, she talked in a way that went straight
+to the hearts of the rough men gathered there. When she saw that the
+unpleasant grin had vanished from the face of the hardest old pirate
+of them all, she said: "When I came here I intended to preach a sermon
+on 'The Heavenly Vision.' Now I want to give you a glimpse of that in
+addition to the vision we have had of home."
+
+After her return to America, Miss Shaw was called as pastor to a church
+at East Dennis, Cape Cod, and a few months later she was asked to hold
+services at another church about three miles distant. These two charges
+she held for seven happy years, rich in the opportunity for real service.
+
+Feeling the need of knowing how to minister to the bodily needs of
+those she labored among, Miss Shaw took a course at the Boston Medical
+School, going to the city for a part of each week and graduating with
+the degree of M.D. in 1885. When some one who knew about her untiring
+work as leader and helper of the people to whom she preached, asked
+her how it had been possible for her to endure so great a strain, she
+replied cheerfully, "Congenial work, no matter how much there is of it,
+has never yet killed any one."
+
+During the time of her medical studies when Miss Shaw was serving as
+volunteer doctor and nurse to the poor in the Boston slums, she became
+interested in the cause of woman suffrage--"The Cause" it was to her
+always in the years that succeeded. A new day had come with new needs.
+She saw that everywhere there were changed conditions and grave problems
+brought about by the entrance of women into the world of wage-earners;
+and she became convinced that only through an understanding and sharing
+of the responsibilities of citizenship by both men and women could the
+best interests of each community be served. She, therefore, gave up her
+church work on Cape Cod to become a lecturer in a larger field. For a
+while she devoted part of her time to the temperance crusade until that
+great leader of the woman's movement, Susan B. Anthony--"Aunt Susan," as
+she was affectionately called--persuaded her to give all her strength to
+the Cause.
+
+Without an iron constitution and steady nerves, as well as an unfailing
+sense of humor, she could never have met the hardships and strange
+chances that were her portion in the years that succeeded. In order
+to meet the appointments of her lecture tours she was constantly
+traveling, often under the most untoward circumstances--now finding
+herself snow-bound in a small prairie town; now compelled to cross a
+swollen river on an uncertain trestle; now stricken with an attack of
+ptomaine poisoning while "on the road," with no one within call except a
+switchman in his signal-tower.
+
+Perhaps more appalling than any or all of these tests was the occasion
+when she arrived in a town to find that the lecture committee had
+advertised her as "the lady who whistled before Queen Victoria," and
+announced that she would speak on "The Missing link." When she ventured
+to protest, the manager remarked amiably that they had "mixed her up
+with a Shaw lady that whistles."
+
+"But I don't know anything about the 'missing link'!" continued Miss
+Shaw.
+
+"Well, you see we chose that subject because they have been talking
+about it in the Debating Society, and we knew it would arouse interest,"
+she was assured. "Just bring in a reference to it every now and then,
+and it'll be all right."
+
+"Open the meeting with a song so that I can think for a minute and then
+I'll see what can be done," said Miss Shaw pluckily. As the expectant
+audience, led by the chairman, sang with patriotic fervor "The Star
+Spangled Banner" and "America," the shipwrecked lecturer managed to
+seize a straw of inspiration that turned in her grasp magically into a
+veritable life-preserver. "It is easy," she said to herself. "Woman is
+the missing link in our government. I'll give them a suffrage speech
+along that line."
+
+Miss Shaw has labored many years for the Cause. She worked with courage,
+dignity, and unfailing common sense and good humor, in the day of small
+things when the suffrage pioneers were ridiculed by both men and women
+as a band of unwomanly "freaks" and fanatics. She has lived to see the
+Cause steadily grow in following and influence, and State after State
+(particularly those of the growing, progressive West) call upon women
+to share equally with men many of the duties of citizenship and social
+service. She has seen that in such States there is no disposition to
+go back to the old order of things, and that open-minded people freely
+admit that it is only a question of time until the more conservative
+parts of the country will fall into line and equal suffrage become
+nation wide.
+
+Her days have been rich in happy work, large usefulness, and inspiring
+friendships. Many honors have been showered upon her both in her
+own country and abroad; but she has always looked upon the work
+which she has been privileged to do as making the best--and the most
+honorable--part of her life.
+
+Once, while attending a general conference of women in Berlin, she won
+the interest and real friendship of a certain Italian princess, who
+invited her to visit at her castle in Italy and also to go with her to
+her mother's castle in Austria. As Miss Shaw was firm in declining these
+distinguished honors, the princess begged an explanation.
+
+"Because, my dear princess," Miss Shaw explained, "I am a working-woman."
+
+"Nobody need _know_ that," murmured the princess, calmly.
+
+"On the contrary, it is the first thing I should explain," was the reply.
+
+"But why?" demanded the princess.
+
+"You are proud of your family, are you not?" asked Miss Shaw. "You are
+proud of your great line?"
+
+"Assuredly," replied the princess.
+
+"Very well," continued Miss Shaw. "I am proud, too. What I have done I
+have done unaided, and, to be frank with you, I rather approve of it. My
+work is my patent of nobility, and I am not willing to associate with
+those from whom it would have to be concealed or with those who would
+look down upon it."
+
+Anna Howard Shaw's autobiography, which she calls "The Story of a
+Pioneer," is an absorbingly interesting and inspiring narrative. It
+gives with refreshing directness and wholesome appreciation the story
+of her struggles and her work, together with revealing glimpses of some
+of her comrades in the Cause; it is at once her own story and the story
+of the pioneer days of the movement to which she gave her rich gifts of
+mind and character. In conclusion she quotes a speech of a certain small
+niece, who was overheard trying to rouse her still smaller sister to
+noble indifference in the face of the ridicule of their playmates, who
+had laughed when they had bravely announced that they were suffragettes.
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself," she demanded, "to stop just because
+you are laughed at once? Look at Aunt Anna! _She_ has been laughed at
+for hundreds of years!"
+
+"I sometimes feel," added the Champion of the Cause, "that it has indeed
+been hundreds of years since my work began; and then again it seems so
+brief a time that, by listening for a moment, I fancy I can hear the
+echo of my childish voice preaching to the trees in the Michigan woods.
+But, long or short, the one sure thing is that, taking it all in all,
+the fight has been worth while. Nothing bigger can come to a human
+being than to love a great Cause more than life itself, and to have the
+privilege throughout life of working for that Cause."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A PATRIOT:
+
+MARY ANTIN
+
+
+
+
+    Where is the true man's fatherland?
+      Is it where he by chance is born?
+      Doth not the yearning spirit scorn
+    In such scant borders to be spanned?
+    O yes! his fatherland must be
+    As the blue heaven wide and free!
+
+        JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A PATRIOT
+
+
+You know the story of "The Man without a Country"--the man who lost his
+country through his own fault. Can you imagine what it would mean to be
+a child without a country--to have no flag, no heroes, no true native
+land to which you belong as you belong to your family, and which in turn
+belongs to you? How would it seem to grow up without the feeling that
+you have a big country, a true fatherland to protect your home and your
+friends; to build schools for you; to give you parks and playgrounds,
+and clean, beautiful streets; to fight disease and many dangers on land
+and water for you?--This is the story of a little girl who was born in
+a land where she had no chance for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness." Far from being a true fatherland, her country was like the
+cruel stepmother of the old tales.
+
+It was strange that one could be born in a country and yet have no
+right to live there! Little Maryashe (or Mashke, as she was called,
+because she was too tiny a girl for a big-sounding name) soon learned
+that the Russia where she was born was not her own country. It seemed
+that the Russians did not love her people, or want them to live in their
+big land. And yet there they were! Truly it was a strange world.
+
+"Why is Father afraid of the police?" asked little Mashke. "He has done
+nothing wrong."
+
+"My child, the trouble is that we can do nothing right!" cried her
+mother, wringing her hands. "Everything is wrong with us. We have no
+rights, nothing that we dare to call our own."
+
+It seemed that Mashke's people had to live in a special part of the
+country called the "Pale of Settlement." It was against the law to go
+outside the Pale no matter how hard it was to make a living where many
+people of the same manner of life were herded together, no matter how
+much you longed to try your fortune in a new place. It was not a free
+land, this Polotzk where she had been born. It was a prison with iron
+laws that shut people away from any chance for happy living.
+
+It is hard to live in a cage, be it large or small. Like a wild bird,
+the free human spirit beats its wings against any bars.
+
+"Why, Mother, why is it that we must not go outside the Pale?" asked
+Mashke.
+
+"Because the Czar and those others who have the power to make the laws
+do not love our people; they hate us and all our ways," was the reply.
+
+"But why do they hate us, Mother?" persisted the child with big, earnest
+eyes.
+
+"Because we are different; because we can never think like them and be
+like them. Their big Russia is not yet big enough to give people of
+another sort a chance to live and be happy in their own way."
+
+Even in crowded Polotzk, though, with police spying on every side,
+there were happy days. There were the beautiful Friday afternoons when
+Mashke's father and mother came home early from the store to put off
+every sign of the work-a-day world and make ready for the Sabbath. The
+children were allowed to wear their holiday clothes and new shoes. They
+stepped about happily while their mother hid the great store keys and
+the money bag under her featherbed, and the grandmother sealed the oven
+and cleared every trace of work from the kitchen.
+
+How Mashke loved the time of candle prayer! As she looked at the pure
+flame of her candle the light shone in her face and in her heart. Then
+she looked at the work-worn faces of her mother and grandmother. All the
+lines of care and trouble were smoothed away in the soft light. They had
+escaped from the prison of this unfriendly land with its hard laws and
+its hateful Pale. They were living in the dim but glorious Past, when
+their father's fathers had been a free nation in a land of their own.
+
+But Mashke could not escape from the prison in that way. She was young
+and glad to be alive. Her candle shone for light and life to-day and
+to-morrow and to-morrow! There were no bars that could shut away her
+free spirit from the light.
+
+How glad she was for life and sunlight on the peaceful Sabbath
+afternoons when, holding to her father's hand, she walked beyond the
+city streets along the riverside to the place where in blossoming
+orchards birds sang of the joyful life of the air, and where in newly
+plowed fields peasants sang the song of planting-time and the fruitful
+earth. Her heart leaped as she felt herself a part of the life that
+flowed through all things--river, air, earth, trees, birds, and happy,
+toiling people.
+
+It seemed to Mashke that most of her days were passed in
+wondering--wondering about the strange world in which she found herself,
+and its strange ways. Of course she played as the children about her
+did, with her rag doll and her "jacks" made of the knuckle bones of
+sheep; and she learned to dance to the most spirited tune that could be
+coaxed from the teeth of a comb covered with a bit of paper. In winter
+she loved to climb in the bare sledge, which when not actively engaged
+in hauling wood could give a wonderful joy-ride to a party of happy
+youngsters, who cared nothing that their sleigh boasted only straw and
+burlap in place of cushions and fur robes, and a knotted rope in place
+of reins with jingling bells.
+
+But always, winter and summer, in season and out of season, Mashke
+found herself wondering about the meaning of all the things that she
+saw and heard. She wondered about her hens who gave her eggs and broth,
+and feathers for her bed, all in exchange for her careless largess of
+grain. Did they ever feel that the barnyard was a prison? She wondered
+about the treadmill horse who went round and round to pump water for the
+public baths. Did he know that he was cheated out of the true life of a
+horse--work-time in cheerful partnership with man and play-time in the
+pasture with the fresh turf under his road-weary hoofs? Did the women,
+who toiled over the selfsame tasks in such a weary round that they
+looked forward to the change of wash-day at the river where they stood
+knee-deep in the water to rub and scrub their poor rags, know that they,
+too, were in a treadmill?--Sometimes she could not sleep for wondering,
+and would steal from her bed before daybreak to walk through the dewy
+grass of the yard and watch the blackness turn to soft, dreamy gray.
+Then the houses seemed like breathing creatures, and all the world was
+hushed and very sweet. Was there ever such a wonder as the coming of a
+new day?--As she watched it seemed that her spirit flew beyond the town,
+beyond the river and the glowing sky itself--touching, knowing, and
+loving all things. Her spirit was free!
+
+Sometimes it seemed that the wings of her spirit could all but carry
+her little body up and away. She was indeed such a wee mite that they
+sometimes called her Mouse and Crumb and Poppy Seed. All of her eager,
+flaming life was in her questioning eyes and her dark, wayward curls.
+Because she was small and frail she was spared the hard work that early
+fell to the lot of her older, stronger sister. So it happened that she
+had time for her wonderings--time for her spirit to grow and try its
+wings.
+
+Mashke was still a very little child when she learned a very big
+truth. She discovered that there were many prisons besides those
+made by Russian laws; she saw that her people often shut themselves
+up in prisons of their own making. There were hundreds of laws and
+observances--ways to wash, to eat, to dress, to work--which seemed to
+many as sacred as their faith in God. Doubtless the rules which were
+now only empty forms had once had meaning, such as the law forbidding
+her people to touch fire on the Sabbath, which came down from a time
+before matches or tinder-boxes when making a fire was hard work. But all
+good people observed the letter of the law, and, no matter what the need
+of mending a fire or a light, would wait for a Gentile helper to come to
+the rescue.
+
+One memorable evening, however, Mashke saw her father, when he thought
+himself unobserved, quietly steal over to the table and turn down a
+troublesome lamp. The gleam of a new light came to the mind of the
+watching, wondering child at that moment. She began to understand that
+even her father, who was the wisest man in Polotzk, did many things
+because he feared to offend the prejudices of their people, just as he
+did many other things because of fear of the Russian police. There was
+more than one kind of a prison.
+
+When Mashke was about ten years old a great change came to her life.
+Her father decided to go on a long journey to a place far from Polotzk
+and its rules of life, far from Russia and its laws of persecution and
+death, to a true Promised Land where all people, it was said, no matter
+what their nation and belief, were free to live and be happy in their
+own way. The name of this Promised Land was America. Some friendly
+people--the "emigration society," her father called them--made it
+possible for him to go try his fortune in the new country. Soon he would
+make a home there for them all.
+
+At last the wonderful letter came--a long letter, and yet it could
+not tell the half of his joy in the Promised Land. He had not found
+riches--no, he had been obliged to borrow the money for the third-class
+tickets he was sending them--but he had found freedom. Best of all, his
+children might have the chance to go to school and learn the things that
+make a free life possible and worth while.
+
+Mashke found that they had suddenly become the most important people in
+Polotzk. All the neighbors gathered about to see the marvelous tickets
+that could take a family across the sea. Cousins who had not thought of
+them for months came with gifts and pleadings for letters from the new
+world. "Do not forget us when you are so happy and grand," they said.
+
+"You will see my boy, my Möshele," cried a poor mother again and again.
+"Ask him why he does not write to us these many months. If you do not
+find him in Boston maybe he will be in Balti-moreh. It is all America."
+
+The day came at last when every stool and feather-bed was sold, and
+their clothes and all the poor treasures they could carry were wrapped
+in queer-looking bundles ready to be taken in their arms to the new
+home. All of Polotzk went to the station to wave gay handkerchiefs and
+bits of calico and wish them well. They soon found, however, that the
+way of the emigrant is hard. In order to reach the sea they had to go
+through Germany to Hamburg, and a fearful journey it proved to be. It
+was soon evident that the Russians were not the only cruel people in the
+world; the Germans were just as cruel in strange and unusual ways, and
+in a strange language.
+
+They put the travelers in prison, for which they had a queer name, of
+course--"Quarantine," they called it. They drove them like cattle into
+a most unpleasant place, where their clothes were snatched off, their
+bodies rubbed with an evil, slippery substance, and their breath taken
+away by an unexpected shower that suddenly descended on their helpless
+heads. Their precious bundles, too, were tossed about rudely and steamed
+and smoked. As the poor victims sat wrapped in clouds of steam waiting
+for the final agony, their clothes were brought back, steaming like
+everything else, and somebody cried, "Quick! Quick! or you will lose
+your train!" It seemed that they were not to be murdered after all, but
+that this was just the German way of treating people whom they thought
+capable of carrying diseases about with them.
+
+Then came the sixteen days on the big ship, when Mashke was too ill part
+of the time even to think about America. But there were better days,
+when the coming of morning found her near the rail gazing at the path of
+light that led across the shimmering waves into the heart of the golden
+sky. That way seemed like her own road ahead into the new life that
+awaited her.
+
+The golden path really began at a Boston public school. Here Mashke
+stood in her new American dress of stiff calico and gave a new American
+name to the friendly teacher of the primer class. Mary Antin she was
+called from that day, all superfluous foreign letters being dropped off
+forever. As her father tried in his broken English to tell the teacher
+something of his hopes for his children, Mary knew by the look in his
+eyes that he, too, had a vision of the path of light. The teacher
+also saw that glowing, consecrated look and in a flash of insight
+comprehended something of his starved past and the future for which
+he longed. In his effort to make himself understood he talked with
+his hands, with his shoulders, with his eyes; beads of perspiration
+stood out on his earnest brow, and now he dropped back helplessly into
+Yiddish, now into Russian. "I cannot now learn what the world knows;
+I must work. But I bring my children--they go to school for me. I am
+American citizen; I want my children be American citizens."
+
+The first thing was, of course, to make a beginning with the new
+language. Afterward when Mary Antin was asked to describe the way the
+teacher had worked with her foreign class she replied with a smile, "I
+can't vouch for the method, but the six children in my own particular
+group (ranging in age from six to fifteen--I was then twelve) attacked
+the see-the-cat and look-at-the-hen pages of our primers with the
+keenest zest, eager to find how the common world looked, smelled, and
+tasted in the strange speech, and we learned!" There was a dreadful
+time over learning to say _the_ without making a buzzing sound; even
+mastering the v's and w's was not so hard as that. It was indeed a proud
+day for Mary Antin when she could say "We went to the village after
+water," to her teacher's satisfaction.
+
+How Mary Antin loved the American speech! She had a native gift for
+language, and gathered the phrases eagerly, lovingly, as one gathers
+flowers, ever reaching for more and still more. She said the words over
+and over to herself with shining eyes as the miser counts his gold. Soon
+she found that she was thinking in the beautiful English way. When she
+had been only four months at school she wrote a composition on _Snow_
+that her teacher had printed in a school journal to show this foreign
+child's wonderful progress in the use of the new tongue. Here is a bit
+of that composition:
+
+    Now the trees are bare, and no flowers are to see in the
+    fields and gardens (we all know why), and the whole world seems
+    like a-sleep without the happy bird songs which left us till
+    spring. But the snow which drove away all these pretty and
+    happy things, try (as I think) not to make us at all unhappy;
+    they covered up the branches of the trees, the fields, the
+    gardens and houses, and the whole world looks like dressed in a
+    beautiful white--instead of green--dress, with the sky looking
+    down on it with a pale face....
+
+At the middle of the year the child who had entered the primer class in
+September without a word of English was promoted to the fifth grade. She
+was indeed a proud girl when she went home with her big geography book
+making a broad foundation for all the rest of the pile, which she loved
+to carry back and forth just because it made her happy and proud to be
+seen in company with books.
+
+"Look at that pale, hollow-chested girl with that load of books," said a
+kindly passer-by one day. "It is a shame the way children are overworked
+in school these days."
+
+The child in question, however, would have had no basis for
+understanding the chance sympathy had she overheard the words. Her
+books were her dearest joy. They were indeed in a very real sense her
+only tangible possessions. All else was as yet "the stuff that dreams
+are made of." As she walked through the dingy, sordid streets her
+glorified eyes looked past the glimpses of unlovely life about her into
+a beautiful world of her own. If she felt any weight from the books she
+carried it was just a comfortable reminder that this new Mary Antin and
+the new life of glorious opportunity were real.
+
+When she climbed the two flights of stairs to her wretched tenement her
+soul was not soiled by the dirt and squalor through which she passed. As
+she eagerly read, not only her school history but also every book she
+could find in the public library about the heroes of America, she did
+not see the moldy paper hanging in shreds from the walls or the grimy
+bricks of the neighboring factory that shut out the sunlight. Her look
+was for the things beyond the moment--the things that really mattered.
+How could the child feel poor and deprived when she knew that the city
+of Boston was hers!
+
+As she walked every afternoon past the fine, dignified buildings and
+churches that flanked Copley Square to the imposing granite structure
+that held all her hero books, she walked as a princess into her palace.
+Could she not read for herself the inscription at the entrance: Public
+Library--Built by the People--Free to All--? Now she stood and looked
+about her and said, "This is real. This all belongs to these wide-awake
+children, these fine women, these learned men--and to _me_."
+
+Every nook of the library that was open to the public became familiar
+to her; her eyes studied lovingly every painting and bit of mosaic. She
+spent hours pondering the vivid pictures by Abbey that tell in color
+the mystic story of Sir Galahad and the quest of the Holy Grail, and it
+seemed as if the spirit of all romance was hers. She lingered in the
+gallery before Sargent's pictures of the "Prophets," and it seemed as if
+the spirit of all the beautiful Sabbaths of her childhood stirred within
+her, as echoes of the Hebrew psalms awoke in her memory.
+
+[Illustration: © _Falk_
+
+Mary Antin]
+
+When she went into the vast reading-room she always chose a place at
+the end where, looking up from her books, she could get the effect of
+the whole vista of splendid arches and earnest readers. It was in the
+courtyard, however, that she felt the keenest joy. Here the child born
+in the prison of the Pale realized to the full the glorious freedom that
+was hers.
+
+"The courtyard was my sky-roofed chamber of dreams," she said. "Slowly
+strolling past the endless pillars of the colonnade, the fountain
+murmured in my ear of all the beautiful things in all the beautiful
+world. Here I liked to remind myself of Polotzk, the better to bring
+out the wonder of my life. That I who was brought up to my teens almost
+without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that
+ever were written was a miracle as great as any on record. That an
+outcast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar should dwell
+in a palace--this was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung.
+Surely I was rocked in an enchanted cradle."
+
+As Mary Antin's afternoons were made glorious by these visits to the
+public library, so her nights were lightened by rare half-hours on the
+South Boston Bridge where it crosses the Old Colony Railroad. As she
+looked down at the maze of tracks and the winking red and green signal
+lights, her soul leaped at the thought of the complex world in which
+she lived and the wonderful way in which it was ordered and controlled
+by the mind of man. Years afterward in telling about her dreams on the
+bridge she said:
+
+"Then the blackness below me was split by the fiery eye of a monster
+engine, his breath enveloped me in blinding clouds, his long body shot
+by, rattling a hundred claws of steel, and he was gone. So would I be,
+swift on my rightful business, picking out my proper track from the
+million that cross it, pausing for no obstacles, sure of my goal."
+
+Can you imagine how the child from Polotzk loved the land that had
+taken her to itself? As she stood up in school with the other children
+and saluted the Stars and Stripes, the words she said seemed to come
+from the depths of her soul: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the
+Republic for which it stands--one nation indivisible, with liberty and
+justice for all." Those were not words, they were heart throbs. The red
+of the flag was not just a bright color, it was the courage of heroes;
+the white was the symbol of truth clear as the sunlight; the blue was
+the symbol of the wide, free heavens--her spirit's fatherland. The child
+who had been born in prison, who had repeated at every Passover, "Next
+year, may we be in Jerusalem," had found all at once her true country,
+her flag, and her heroes. When the children rose to sing "America," she
+sang with all the pent-up feeling of starved years of exile:
+
+    I love thy rocks and rills,
+    Thy woods and templed hills.
+
+As the teacher looked into the glorified face of this little
+alien-citizen she said to herself, "There is the truest patriot of them
+all!"
+
+Only once as they were singing "Land where my fathers died," the child's
+voice had faltered and died away. Her cheek paled when at the close of
+school she came to her teacher with her trouble.
+
+"Oh, teacher," she mourned, "our country's song can't to mean me--_my_
+fathers didn't die here!"
+
+The friendly teacher, whose understanding and sympathy were never
+failing, understood now:
+
+"Mary Antin," she said earnestly, looking through the child's great,
+dark eyes into the depths of her troubled soul, "you have as much right
+to those words as I or anybody else in America. The Pilgrim Fathers
+didn't all come here before the Revolution. Isn't your father just like
+them? Think of it, dear, how he left his home and came to a strange land
+where he couldn't even speak the language. And didn't he come looking
+for the same things? He wanted freedom for himself and his family, and
+a chance for his children to grow up wise and brave. It's the same
+story over again. Every ship that brings people from Russia and other
+countries where they are ill-treated is a _Mayflower_!"
+
+These words took root in Mary Antin's heart and grew with her growth.
+The consciousness that she was in very truth an American glorified her
+days; it meant freedom from every prison. Seven years after her first
+appearance in the Boston primer class she entered Barnard College.
+After two years there and two more at Teachers College, she entered
+the school of life as a homemaker; her name is now Mary Antin Grabau.
+Besides caring for her home and her little daughter, she has devoted her
+gifts as a writer and a lecturer to the service of her country.
+
+In her book, "The Promised Land," she has told the story of her life
+from the earliest memories of her childhood in Russia to the time when
+she entered college. It is an absorbing human story, but it is much
+more than that. It is the story of one who looks upon her American
+citizenship as a great "spiritual adventure," and who strives to quicken
+in others a sense of their opportunities and responsibilities as heirs
+of the new freedom. She pleads for a generous treatment of all those
+whom oppression and privation send to make their homes in our land. It
+is only by being faithful to the ideal of human brotherhood expressed
+in the Declaration of Independence that our nation can realize its true
+destiny, she warns us.
+
+Mary Antin was recently urged to write a history of the United States
+for children, that would give the inner meaning of the facts as well as
+a clear account of the really significant events.
+
+    "I have long had such a work in mind," she wrote, "and I
+    suppose I shall have to do it some day. In the meantime I _talk_
+    history to my children--my little daughter of eight and the
+    Russian cousin who goes to school in the kitchen. Only yesterday
+    at luncheon I told them about our system of representative
+    government, and our potatoes grew cold on our plates, we were
+    all so absorbed."
+
+
+In all that Mary Antin writes and in all that she says her faith in her
+country and her zeal for its honor shine out above all else. To the new
+pilgrims who lived and suffered in other lands before they sought refuge
+in America, as well as to those who can say quite literally, "Land where
+my fathers died," she brings this message:
+
+"We must strive to be worthy of our great heritage as American citizens
+so that we may use wisely and well its wonderful privileges. To be alive
+in America is to ride on the central current of the river of modern
+life; and to have a conscious purpose is to hold the rudder that steers
+the ship of fate."
+
+
+
+
+A CAMPFIRE INTERPRETER:
+
+ALICE C. FLETCHER
+
+
+
+
+    Ho! All ye heavens, all ye of the earth,
+        I bid ye hear me!
+    Into your midst has come a new life;
+    Consent ye! Consent ye all, I implore!
+    Make its path smooth, then shall it travel
+        beyond the four hills.
+
+            _Omaha Tribal Rite._
+
+        Translated by Alice C. Fletcher.
+
+
+
+
+A CAMPFIRE INTERPRETER
+
+
+A great poet once tried to look into the future and picture the kind of
+people who might some day live upon the earth--people wiser and happier
+than we are because they shall have learned through our mistakes and
+carried to success our beginnings, and so have come to understand fully
+many things that we see dimly as through a mist. These people Tennyson
+calls the "crowning race":
+
+    Of those that eye to eye shall look
+    On knowledge; under whose command
+    Is Earth and Earth's, and in their hand
+    Is Nature like an open book.
+
+You see he believed that the way to gain command of Earth is through
+learning to read the open book of Nature. That book is closed to most
+of us to-day, but we are just beginning to spell out something of its
+message, and as we begin to understand we feel that it is not a strange
+speech but our own true mother tongue, which ears, deafened by the noise
+of the busy world, have almost ceased to hear and understand. There
+comes a time, however, when we feel "the call of the wild." We long to
+get away from the hoarse cries of engines, and the grinding roar of
+turning wheels, to a quiet that is unbroken even by a passing motor horn.
+
+Have you ever found yourself for a happy half-hour alone among the great
+trees of the friendly woods? You must have felt that in getting near to
+Nature you were finding yourself. Did not the life of the trees, of the
+winged creatures of the branches, of the cool mossy ground itself, seem
+a part of your life?
+
+Have you ever climbed a hill when it seemed that the wind was blowing
+something of its own strength and freshness into your soul? Did you not
+feel as if you were mounting higher and higher into the air and lifting
+the sky with you? Have you ever found yourself at evening in a great
+clear open place where the tent of the starry heavens over your head
+seemed nearer than the shadowy earth and all the things of the day?
+
+This is the story of a girl who loved to listen to the deep chant of
+the ocean, to the whisper of the wind in the trees, and to the silence
+in the heart of the hills. She came to feel that there was a joy and a
+power in the open--in the big, free, unspoiled haunts of furtive beasts
+and darting birds--that all the man-made wonders of the world could not
+give.
+
+"If I am so much happier and more alive," she said to herself, "in the
+days that I spend under the open sky, what must it be like _always_
+to live this freer life? Did not the people who lived as Nature's own
+children in these very woods that I come to as the guest of an hour or a
+summer, have a wisdom and a strength that our life to-day cannot win?"
+
+Again and again the thought came knocking at her heart: "The men whom we
+call savages, whom we have crowded out of the land they once roamed over
+freely, must have learned very much in all the hundreds of years that
+they lived close to Nature. They could teach us a great deal that cannot
+be found in books."
+
+Alice C. Fletcher grew up in a cultured New England home. She had the
+freedom of a generous library and early learned to feel that great
+books and wise men were familiar friends. They talked to her kindly and
+never frightened her by their big words and learned looks. She looked
+through the veil of words to the living meaning.
+
+She was, too, very fond of music. Playing the piano was more than
+practising an elegant accomplishment--just as reading her books was more
+than learning lessons. As the books stirred her mind to thinking and
+wondering, so the music stirred her heart to feeling and dreaming.
+
+It often seemed, however, that much that her books and music struggled
+in vain to bring to her within walls was quite clear when she found
+herself in the large freedom of Nature's house. The sunshine, the blue
+sky, and the good, wholesome smell of the brown earth seemed to give a
+taste of the
+
+    Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
+    Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
+
+Once in her reading she came upon the story of the scholar who left
+Oxford and the paths of learning to follow the ways of the wandering
+gypsies in order that he might learn the natural wisdom they had won.
+"Ah," she said to herself, "some day when I am free to live my life in
+my own way I shall leave my books and go out among the Indians. Our
+country should know what its first children saw and thought and felt. I
+shall try to see with their eyes and hear with their ears for a while
+and I shall discover, in that way, perhaps, a new world--one that will
+be lost forever when the Red Men are made to adopt all the tricks and
+manners of civilized life."
+
+The time came when she found herself free to realize this dream.
+
+"You don't mean to say you are really going to live with the Indians?"
+her friends exclaimed.
+
+"How else can I know them?" she replied quietly.
+
+"But to give up every necessary comfort!"
+
+"There is something perhaps better than just making sure that we are
+always quite comfortable," said Miss Fletcher. "Of course, I shall miss
+easy chairs and cozy chats, and all the lectures, concerts, latest
+books, and daily papers, but I'm glad to find out that all these nice
+things are not really so _necessary_ that they can keep me from doing a
+bit of work that is really worth while, and which, perhaps, needs just
+what I can bring to it."
+
+At this time Miss Fletcher's earnest, thoughtful studies of what books
+and museums could teach about the early history of America and the
+interesting time before history, had given her a recognized place among
+the foremost scholars of archeology--the science that reads the story of
+the forgotten past through the relics that time has spared.
+
+"Many people can be found to study the things about the Indians which
+can be collected and put in museums," said Miss Fletcher, "but there is
+need of a patient, sympathetic study of the people themselves."
+
+In order to make this study, she spent not only months but years among
+the Dakota and Omaha Indians. From a wigwam made of buffalo skins she
+watched the play of the children and the life of the people and listened
+to their songs and stories.
+
+"The Indian is not the stern, unbending wooden Indian that shows
+neither interest nor feeling of any sort, as many people have come
+to think of him," said Miss Fletcher. "Those who picture him so have
+never really known him. They have only seen the side he turns toward
+strangers. In the home and among their friends the Indians show fun,
+happy give-and-take, and warm, alert interest in the life about them."
+
+The cultivated New England woman and distinguished scholar won their
+confidence because of her sincerity, tact, and warm human sympathy.
+She not only learned their speech and manners but also the language of
+their hearts. Her love of Nature helped her to a ready understanding of
+these children of Nature or Wakonda--as they called the spirit of life
+that breathes through earth and sky, rocks, streams, plants, all living
+creatures, and the tribes of men. The beautiful ceremony by which,
+soon after his birth, each Omaha child was presented to the powers of
+Nature showed this sense of kinship between the people and their world.
+A priest of the tribe stood outside the wigwam to which the new life
+had been sent, and with right hand outstretched to the heavens chanted
+these words in a loud voice:
+
+    Ho, ye Sun, Moon, Stars, all ye that move in the heavens,
+        I bid ye hear me!
+    Into your midst has come a new life;
+        Consent ye, I implore!
+    Make its path smooth, that it may reach
+        The brow of the first hill.
+
+Next the forces of the air--winds, clouds, mist, and rain--were called
+upon to receive the young child and smooth the path to the second hill.
+Then hills, valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, and all growing things were
+invoked, after which the spirits of birds, animals, and all moving
+creatures were summoned to make the path smooth to the third and fourth
+hills. As the priest intoned the noble appeal to all the powers of the
+earth and air and bending heavens, even those who could not understand
+the words would know that the four hills meant childhood, youth,
+manhood, and age, and that a new life was being presented to the forces
+of the universe of which it was a part. So it was that each child was
+thought of as belonging to Wakonda--to the spirit of all life--before he
+belonged to the tribe. For it was not until he was four or five years
+old that he gave up his "baby name," such as Bright Eyes, Little Bird,
+or Baby Squirrel, and was given a real name and received into the life
+of the people.
+
+Miss Fletcher soon became interested in the music of the Indians. Her
+trained ear told her that here was something new. The haunting bits
+of melody and strange turns of rhythm were quite different from any
+old-world tunes.
+
+"At first it was very hard to hear them," said Miss Fletcher. "The
+Indians never sang to be heard by others. Their singing was a
+spontaneous expression of their feeling--for the most part, religious
+feeling. In their religious ceremonies the noise of the dancing and of
+the drums and rattles often made it very hard to really catch the sound
+of the voice."
+
+Day after day she strove to hear and write down bits of the music, but
+it was almost like trying to imprison the sound of the wind in the
+tree-tops.
+
+"Do you remember," said Miss Fletcher, "how the old Saxon poet tried to
+explain the mystery of life by saying it was like a bird flying through
+the windows of a lighted hall out of the darkness to darkness again?
+An Indian melody is like that. It has no preparations, no beginning. It
+flashes upon you and is gone, leaving only a teasing memory behind."
+
+While this lover of music was vainly trying to catch these strangely
+beautiful strains of melody, the unaccustomed hardships of her life
+brought upon her a long illness. There was compensation, however, for
+when she could no longer go after the thing she sought it came to her.
+Her Indian friends who had found out that she was interested in their
+songs gathered about her couch to sing them for her.
+
+"So my illness was after all like many of our so-called trials, a
+blessing in disguise," said Miss Fletcher. "I was left with this
+lameness, but I had the music. The sigh had become a song!"
+
+You have, perhaps, heard of the great interest that many learned people
+have in the songs and stories of simple folk--the folk-songs and
+folk-tales of different lands. Did you know that Sir Walter Scott's
+first work in literature was the gathering of the simple ballads of the
+Scottish peasants which they had long repeated just as you repeat the
+words of "ring games" learned from other children?
+
+Did you know that most of the fairy stories and hero tales that you
+love were told by people who had never held a book in their hands, and
+were repeated ages and ages ago before the time of books? Just as it
+is true that broad, flowing rivers have their source in streams that
+well up out of the ground, so it is true that the literature of every
+nation has its source in the fancies that have welled up out of the
+hearts and imaginations of the simple people. The same thing is true of
+music. Great composers like Brahms and Liszt took the wild airs of the
+Hungarian gypsies and made them into splendid compositions that all the
+world applauds. Chopin has done this with the songs of the simple Polish
+folk. Dvorák, the great Bohemian composer, has made his "New World
+Symphony" of negro melodies, and Cadman and others are using the native
+Indian music in the same way.
+
+Just as the Grimm brothers went about among the German peasants to learn
+their interesting stories, just as Sir George Dasent worked to get the
+tales of the Norse, so Alice Cunningham Fletcher worked to preserve the
+songs and stories of the Indians. Others have come after her and have
+gone on with the work she began, following the trail she blazed. All
+musicians agree that this native song with its fascinating and original
+rhythms may prove the source of inspiration for American composers of
+genius and give rise to our truest new-world music.
+
+Much of Miss Fletcher's work is preserved in great learned volumes, such
+as "The Omaha Tribe," published by the National Government, for she
+wrote as a scientist for those who will carry on the torch of science
+into the future. But realizing that the music would mean much to many
+who cannot enter upon the problems with which the wise men concern
+themselves, she has presented many of the songs in a little book called
+"Indian Story and Song." We find there, for instance, the "Song of the
+Laugh" sung when the brave young warrior recounts the story of the way
+he has slain his enemy with his own club and so helped to fill with fear
+the foes of his tribe.
+
+We find, too, the story of the youth who begins his life as a man by a
+lonely vigil when by fasting he proves his powers of endurance.
+
+The Omaha tribal prayer is the solemn melody that sounded through the
+forests of America long before the white man came to this country--a cry
+of the yearning human spirit to Wakonda, the spirit of all life.
+
+Try to picture Miss Fletcher surrounded by her Indian friends,
+explaining to them carefully all about the strange machine before
+which she wants them to sing. For the graphophone was a field worker
+with her--for a time her chief assistant in catching the elusive
+Indian songs. Perhaps there could have been no greater proof of their
+entire confidence in her than their willingness to sing for her again
+and again, and even to give into the keeping of her queer little
+black cylinders the strains that voiced their deepest and most sacred
+feelings. For Indian music is, for the most part, an expression of the
+bond between the human spirit and the unseen powers of Nature. It must
+have been that they felt from the first that here was some one who
+understood them because she, too, loved the Nature they knew and loved.
+
+While Miss Fletcher was thus happily at work she became aware, however,
+that there was keen distress among these friends to whom she had
+become warmly attached. Some of their neighbors, the Ponca Indians,
+had been removed from their lands to the dreaded "hot country"--Indian
+Territory--and the Omaha people feared that the same thing might
+happen to them, for it was very easy for unprincipled white men to
+take advantage of the Indians who held their lands as a tribe, not as
+individuals.
+
+Always on the frontier of settlement there were bold adventurers who
+coveted any promising tracts of land that the Indians possessed. They
+said to themselves, "We could use this country to much better advantage
+than these savages, therefore it should be ours." They then would
+encroach more and more on the holdings of the Indians, defying them
+by every act which said plainly, "A Redskin has no rights!" Sometimes
+when endurance could go no further the Indians would rise up in active
+revolt. Then what more easy than to cry out, "An Indian uprising! There
+will be a massacre! Send troops to protect us from the mad fury of the
+savages!" The Government would then send a detachment of cavalry to
+quell the outbreak, after which it would seem wiser to move the Indians
+a little farther away from contact with the white men, who now had just
+what they had been working toward from the first--the possession of the
+good land.
+
+Miss Fletcher realized that the only remedy for this condition was for
+each Indian to secure from the Government a legal title to a portion
+of the tribal grant which he might hold as an individual. She left her
+happy work with the music and went to Washington to explain to the
+President and to Congress the situation as she knew it. The cause was,
+at this time, greatly furthered by the appearance of a book by Helen
+Hunt Jackson, called "A Century of Dishonor," an eloquent presentation
+of the Indians' wrongs and a burning plea for justice.
+
+There was need, however, of some practical worker, who knew the Indians
+and Indian affairs intimately, to point to a solution of the problem.
+The conscience of the people was aroused, but they did not know how it
+was possible to prevent in the future the same sort of wrongs that had
+made the past hundred years indeed "a century of dishonor." Then the
+resolute figure of Miss Alice Fletcher appeared on the scene. She was
+well known to the government authorities for her valuable scientific
+work. Here was some one they knew, who really could explain the exact
+state of affairs and who could also interpret fairly the mind of the
+Indian. She could be depended on as one who would not be swayed by mere
+sentimental considerations. She would know the practical course to
+pursue.
+
+"Let the Indians hold their land as the white men hold theirs," she
+said. "That is the only way to protect them from wrong and to protect
+the Government from being a helpless partner to the injustice that is
+done them."
+
+[Illustration: Alice C. Fletcher]
+
+Now, it is one thing to influence people who are informed and interested
+and quite another to awaken the interest of those who are vitally
+concerned with totally different things. Miss Fletcher realized that
+if anything was to be actually accomplished she must leave no stone
+unturned to bring the matter to the attention of those who had not
+heretofore given a thought to the Indian question and the responsibility
+of the Government. She presented a petition to Congress and worked early
+and late to drive home to the people the urgent need of legislation
+in behalf of the Indians. She spoke in clubs, in churches, in private
+houses, and before committees in Congress. And actually the busy
+congressmen who always feel that there is not half time enough to
+consider measures by which their own States and districts will profit,
+gave right of way to the Indian Land Act, and in 1882 it became a law.
+
+There was the need of the services of some disinterested person to
+manage the difficult matter of dividing the tribal tracts and allotting
+to each Indian his own acres, and Miss Fletcher was asked by the
+President to undertake this work.
+
+"Why do you trust Miss Fletcher above any one else?" asked President
+Cleveland on one occasion when he was receiving a delegation of Omahas
+at the White House.
+
+"We have seen her in our homes; we have seen her in her home. We find
+her always the same," was the reply.
+
+The work which Miss Fletcher did in allotting the land to the Omahas
+was so successfully handled that she was appealed to by the Government
+to serve in the same capacity for the Winnebago and Nez Percé Indians.
+The law whose passage was secured by her zeal was the forerunner the
+Severalty Act of 1885 which marked a change in policy of the Government
+and ushered in a better era for all the Indian tribes.
+
+"What led you to undertake this important work?" Miss Fletcher was asked.
+
+"The most natural desire in the world--the impulse to help my friends
+where I saw the need," she replied. "I did not set out resolved to have
+a career--to form and to reform. There is no story in my life. It has
+always been just one step at a time--one thing which I have tried to do
+as well as I could and which has led on to something else. It has all
+been in the day's work."
+
+Miss Fletcher has been much interested in the work of the Boy and Girl
+Scouts and in the Campfire Societies, because she feels that in this way
+many children are brought to an appreciation of the great out-of-doors
+and win health, power, and joy which the life of cities cannot give. For
+them she has made a collection of Indian games and dances.
+
+"Just as the spirit of Sir Walter Scott guides us through the Scottish
+lake country and as Dickens leads us about old London, so the spirit of
+the Indians should make us more at home in the forests of America," said
+Miss Fletcher. "In sharing the happy fancies of these first children of
+America we may win a new freedom in our possession of the playground of
+the great out-of-doors."
+
+
+
+
+THE "WHITE MOTHER" OF DARKEST AFRICA:
+
+MARY SLESSOR
+
+
+
+
+    I am ready to go anywhere, provided it be forward.
+
+        DAVID LIVINGSTONE.
+
+
+    God can't give His best till we have given ours!
+
+        MARY SLESSOR.
+
+
+
+
+THE "WHITE MOTHER" OF DARKEST AFRICA
+
+
+Among all the weavers in the great factory at Dundee there was no girl
+more deft and skilful than Mary Slessor. She was only eleven when she
+had to help shoulder the cares of the household and share with the frail
+mother the task of earning bread for the hungry children. For the little
+family was worse than fatherless. The man who had once been a thrifty,
+self-respecting shoemaker had become a slave to drink; and his life was
+a burden to himself and to those who were nearest and dearest to him.
+
+"Dinna cry, mither dear," Mary had said. "I can go to the mills in the
+morning and to school in the afternoon. It will be a glad day, earning
+and learning at the same time!"
+
+So Mary became a "half-timer" in the mills. At six o'clock every morning
+she was at work among the big whirling wheels. Even the walls and
+windows seemed to turn sometimes as the hot wind came in her face from
+the whizzing belts, and the roar of the giant wheels filled all her day
+with din and clamor.
+
+But as Mary worked week after week, she learned more than the trick
+of handling the shuttle at the moving loom. She learned how to send
+her thoughts far away from the noisy factory to a still place of
+breeze-stirred trees and golden sunshine. Sometimes a book, which she
+had placed on the loom to peep in at free moments, helped her to slip
+away in fancy from the grinding toil. What magic one could find in the
+wonderful world of books! The wheels whirled off into nothingness, the
+walls melted away like mist, and her spirit was free to wander through
+all the many ways of the wide world. And so it was that she went from
+the hours of work and earning to the hours of study and learning with a
+blithe, morning face, her brave soul shining through bright eager eyes.
+
+"When we're all dragged out, and feel like grumbling at everything and
+nothing seems of any use at all, Mary Slessor is still up and coming, as
+happy as a cricket," said one of the girls who worked by her side. "She
+makes you take heart in spite of yourself, and think it's something to
+be glad over just to be living and working."
+
+"It's wonderful the way your hand can go on with the shuttle and do the
+turn even better than you could if you stopped to take thought," Mary
+would explain. "That leaves your mind free to go another way. Now this
+morning I was not in the weaving shed at all; I was far away in Africa,
+seeing all the strange sights the missionary from Calabar told us about
+last night at meeting."
+
+Heaven was very near to Mary Slessor, and the stars seemed more real
+than the street lamps of the town. She had come to feel that the
+troubles and trials of her days were just steps on the path that she
+would travel. Always she looked past the rough road to the end of the
+journey where there was welcome in the Father's house for all His tired
+children. There was, moreover, one bit of real romance in that gray
+Scotch world of hers. The thrill of beauty and mystery and splendid
+heroism was in the stories that the missionaries told of Africa, the
+land of tropical wonders--pathless forests, winding rivers under
+bending trees, bright birds, and brighter flowers--and people, hundreds
+of black people, with black lives because the light of truth had never
+shone in their world. She knew that white people who called themselves
+Christians had gone there to carry them away for slaves; and to get
+their palm-oil and rubber and give them rum in exchange--rum that was
+making them worse than the wild beasts of the jungle. How Mary Slessor
+longed to be one to carry the good news of a God of Love to those people
+who lived and died in darkness! "Somebody must help those who can't help
+themselves!" she said to herself.
+
+"The fields are ripe for the harvest but the laborers are few," one of
+the missionaries had said. "We fear the fever and other ills that hide
+in the bush more than we fear to fail in God's service. Men have gone to
+these people to make money from the products of their land; they have
+bought and sold the gifts of their trees; they have bought and sold the
+people themselves; they are selling them death to-day in the strong
+drink they send there. Is there no one who is willing to go to take life
+to these ignorant children who have suffered so many wrongs?"
+
+These words sank deep into Mary Slessor's heart. But it was plain that
+her mission was to the little home in Dundee. She was working now among
+the turning wheels all day from six until six, and going to school in
+the evening; but she found time to share with others the secret of the
+joy that she had found, the light that had made the days of toil bright.
+The boys that came to her class in the mission school were "toughs" from
+the slums of the town, but she put many of them on the road to useful,
+happy living. Her brave spirit won them from their fierce lawlessness;
+her patience and understanding helped to bring out and fortify the best
+that was in them.
+
+Once a much-dreaded "gang" tried to break up the mission with a battery
+of mud and jeers. When Mary Slessor faced them quietly, the leader,
+boldly confronting her, swung a leaden weight which hung suspended
+from a cord, about her head threateningly. It came nearer and nearer
+until it grazed her temple, but the mission teacher never flinched. Her
+eyes still looked into those of the boy's--bright, untroubled, and
+searching. His own dropped, and the missile fell forgotten to the ground.
+
+"She's game, boys!" he cried, surprised out of himself.
+
+And the unruly mob filed into the mission to hear what the "game" lady
+had to say. Mary Slessor had never heard of the poet, Horace; but she
+had put to the proof the truth of the well-known lines, which declare
+that "the man whose life is blameless and free from evil has no need of
+Moorish javelins, nor bow, nor quiver full of poisoned arrows."
+
+As in her work with the wild boys of the streets, so in her visits
+to the hopeless people of the dark tenements, Mary Slessor was a
+powerful influence because she entered their world as one of them,
+with a faith in the better self of each that called into new life his
+all-but-extinguished longing for better things.
+
+"As she sat by the fire holding the baby and talking cheerily about her
+days at the mills and the Sabbath morning at chapel, it seemed as if
+I were a girl again, happy and hopeful and ready to meet whatever the
+morrow might bring," said a discouraged mother to whom Mary had been a
+friend in need.
+
+"It is like hearing the kirk-bells on a Sunday morning at the old home,
+hearing your voice, Mary Slessor," said a poor blind woman to whom Mary
+had brought the light of restored faith.
+
+For fourteen years this happy Scotch girl worked in the factory for ten
+hours each day, and shared her evenings and Sundays with her neighbors
+of the mission. Besides, she seized moments by the way for study and
+reading. Her mind was hungry to understand the meaning of life and the
+truths of religion. One day, in order to find out the sort of mental
+food she craved, a friend lent her Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus."
+
+"How are you and Carlyle getting on together?" he asked quizzically when
+they next met.
+
+"It is grand!" she replied with earnest enthusiasm. "I sat up reading
+it, and was so interested that I did not know what the time was until I
+heard the factory bells calling me to work in the morning."
+
+Thus her mind was growing and expanding, while her spirit grew through
+faithful work and loyal service. Her simple, direct speech had an
+eloquent appeal that went straight to the heart. In spite of an
+unconquerable timidity that made her shrink from platform appearances,
+her informal addresses had wide influence. Once she rose in her place at
+a public meeting and gave a quiet talk on the words: _The common people
+heard him gladly._ "And," it was said, "the common people heard _her_
+gladly, and crowded around, pleading with her to come again."
+
+In 1874, when every one was stirred by the death of David Livingstone,
+Mary Slessor's life was transfigured by a great resolve. The years had
+brought changes. Her father was dead, and her sisters were old enough to
+share the burden of supporting the family.
+
+"The time has come for me to join the band of light-bearers to the Dark
+Continent," said Mary, with a conviction that overcame every obstacle.
+"It is my duty to go where the laborers are few. Besides, there must be
+a way to work there and send help to mother at home."
+
+She knew that the missionaries were given a stipend to support them
+in the manner of the country from which they came. "I shall as far as
+possible live on the food of the country," she said. "It may be that
+by sharing to a greater extent the conditions of life of the people, I
+can come to a fuller understanding of them and they of me. Besides, it
+will not be so hard to leave home if I can feel that I am still earning
+something for mother."
+
+So Mary Slessor went, after a few months of special preparation to
+teach the natives of Calabar. She was at this time twenty-eight years
+old. Ever since she was a mere slip of a girl, she had longed to serve
+in that most discouraging of fields--"the slums of Africa," it was
+called. The people who inhabited that swampy, equatorial region were
+the most wretched and degraded of all the negro tribes. They had for
+ages been the victims of stronger neighbors, who drove them back from
+the drier and more desirable territory that lay farther inland; and of
+their own ignorance and superstitions, which were at the root of their
+blood-thirsty, savage customs.
+
+It was in September, 1876, that the vessel _Ethiopia_ sailed out of
+the clean, blue Atlantic into the mud-colored Calabar River. At its
+prow stood Mary Slessor, gazing soberly at the vast mangrove swamps and
+wondering about the unknown, unexplored land beyond, where she should
+pitch her tent and begin her work. Though white men had for centuries
+come to the coast to trade for gold dust, ivory, palm oil, spices,
+and slaves, they had never ventured inland, and the natives who lived
+near the shore had sought to keep the lion's share of the profit by
+preventing the remoter tribes from coming with their goods to barter
+directly with the men of the big ships. So only a few miles from the
+mouth of the Calabar River was a land where white people had never gone,
+whose inhabitants had never seen a white face. It was to this place of
+unknown dangers that Mary Slessor was bound.
+
+For a time she remained at the mission settlement to learn the language,
+while teaching in the day school. As soon as she gained sufficient ease
+in the use of the native speech, she began to journey through the bush,
+as the tropical jungles of palms, bananas, ferns, and thick grass were
+called. Her heart sang as she went along, now wading through a spongy
+morass bright with orchids, now jumping over a stream or the twisted
+roots of a giant tree. After the chill grayness of her Scottish country,
+this land seemed at first a veritable paradise of golden warmth,
+alluring sounds and scents, and vivid color. Now she paused in delight
+as a brilliant bird flashed through the branches overhead; now she went
+on with buoyant step, drinking in the tropical fragrance with every
+breath. Surely so fair a land could not be so deadly as it was said. She
+_must_ keep well for the task that lay before her. She could not doubt
+that each day would bring strength for the day's work.
+
+With two or three of the boys from the Calabar school as guides, she
+made the journey to some of the out-districts. Here a white face was a
+thing of wonder or terror. The children ran away shrieking with fear;
+the women pressed about her, chattering and feeling her clothing and her
+face, to see if she were real. At first she was startled, but she soon
+divined that this was just the beginning of friendly acquaintance.
+
+Miss Slessor soon showed an astonishing mastery of the language, and an
+even more amazing comprehension of the minds of the people. She realized
+that the natives were not devoid of ideas and beliefs, but that, on
+the contrary, certain crude conceptions, strongly rooted through the
+custom and tradition of ages, accounted for many of their horrible
+practices. They put all twin babies to death because they believed that
+one of them was a demon-child whose presence in a tribe would bring
+untold harm on the people. They tortured and murdered helpless fellow
+creatures, not wantonly, but because they believed that their victims
+had been bewitching a suffering chief--for disease was a mysterious
+blight, caused by the "evil eye" of a malicious enemy. When a chief died
+many people were slaughtered, for of course he would want slaves and
+companions in the world of spirits.
+
+It was wonderful the way Mary Slessor was able to move about among the
+rude, half-naked savages as confidently as she had among her people
+in Scotland, looking past the dirt and ugliness to the human heart
+beneath, tortured by fear or grief, and say a word that brought hope
+and comfort. She feared neither the crouching beasts of the jungle nor
+the treacherous tribes of the scattered mud villages. Picking her way
+over the uncertain bush trails, she carried medicine, tended the sick,
+and spoke words of sympathy and cheer to the distressed. Sometimes she
+stayed away over several nights, when her lodging was a mud hut and her
+bed a heap of unpleasant rags.
+
+The people soon learned that her interest went beyond teaching and
+preaching and giving aid to the sick. She cared enough for their welfare
+to lead them by night past the sentries of the jealous coast tribes to
+the factory near the beach, where they could dispose of their palm oil
+and kernels to their own profit. She won in this way the good will of
+the traders who said:
+
+"There is a missionary of the right sort! She will accomplish something
+because she is taking hold of all the problems that concern her people,
+and is working systematically to improve all the conditions of their
+lives."
+
+One day she set forth on a trip of thirty miles along the river to visit
+the village of a chief named Okon, who had sent begging her to come.
+A state canoe, which was lent by King Eyo of Calabar, had been gaily
+painted in her honor, and a canopy of matting to shield her from the sun
+and dew had been thoughtfully erected over a couch of rice bags. Hours
+passed in the tender formalities of farewell, and when the paddlers
+actually got the canoe out into the stream it was quite dark. The red
+gleam of their torches fell upon venomous snakes and alligators, but
+there was no fear while her companions beat the "tom-tom" and sang, as
+they plied their paddles, loud songs in her praise, such as:
+
+    "Ma, our beautiful, beloved mother is on board!
+            Ho! Ho! Ho!"
+
+Such unwonted clamor no doubt struck terror to all the creatures with
+claws and fangs along the banks.
+
+After ten hours' paddling, she arrived at Okon's village. A human skull
+stuck on a pole was the first sight that greeted her. Crowds gathered
+about to stare and touch her hand to make sure that she was flesh and
+blood. At meal times a favored few who were permitted to watch her eat
+and drink ran about, excitedly reporting every detail to their friends.
+
+For days she went around giving medicines, bandaging, cutting out
+garments, and teaching the women the mysteries of sewing, washing, and
+ironing. In the evenings all the people gathered about her quietly while
+she told them about the God she served--a God of love, whose ways were
+peace and loving kindness. At the end they filed by, wishing her good
+night with much feeling before they disappeared into the blackness of
+the night.
+
+These new friends would not permit her to walk about in the bush as she
+had been used to doing. There were elephants in the neighboring jungle,
+they said. The huge beasts had trampled down all their growing things,
+so that they had to depend mainly on fishing. One morning, on hearing
+that a boa constrictor had been seen, bands of men armed with clubs
+and muskets set off, yelling fearsomely, to hunt the common enemy. But
+more terrible to Mary Slessor than any beast of prey were the skulls,
+horrible images, and offerings to ravenous spirits, that she saw on
+every side. How was it possible to teach the law of love to a people who
+had never known anything but the tyranny of fear?
+
+"I must learn something of the patience of the Creator of all," she said
+to herself again and again. "For how long has He borne with the sins and
+weakness of His poor human children, always caring for us and believing
+that we can grow into something better in spite of all!"
+
+After two weeks in "Elephant Country," Miss Slessor made ready to return
+to the mission. Rowers, canoe, and baggage were in readiness, and a
+smoking pot of yams and herbs cooked in palm oil was put on board for
+the evening meal. Scarcely had they partaken, however, when Mary saw
+that the setting sun was surrounded by angry clouds, and her ear caught
+the ominous sound of the wind wailing in the tree-tops.
+
+"We are coming into a stormy night," she said fearfully to Okon, who was
+courteously escorting the party back to Old Town.
+
+The chief lifted his black face to the black sky and scanned the
+clouds solemnly. Then he hastily steered for a point of land that lay
+sheltered from the wind. Before they could reach the lee side, however,
+the thunder broke, and the wild sweep of the wind seized the canoe and
+whirled it about like a paper toy. Crew and chief alike were helpless
+from terror when Mary took her own fear in hand and ordered the rowers
+to make for the tangle of trees that bordered the bank. The men pulled
+together with renewed hope and strength until the shelter of the bush
+was reached. Then springing like monkeys into the overhanging branches,
+they held on to the canoe which was being dashed up and down like a
+straw. The "White Mother," who was sitting in water to her knees and
+shaking with ague, calmed the fears of the panic-stricken children who
+had buried their faces in her lap, and looked about in awed wonder at
+the weird beauty of the scene. The vivid flashes of lightning shattered
+the darkness with each peal of thunder, revealing luxuriant tropical
+vegetation rising above the lashed water, foaming and hissing under the
+slanting downpour of the rain, and the tossing canoe with the crouching,
+gleaming-wet figures of the frightened crew.
+
+This was but one of many thrilling adventures that filled the days of
+the brave young missionary. When the appeal came, no matter what the
+time of midday heat or midnight blackness, she was ready to journey for
+hours through the bush to bring succor and comfort.
+
+Once the news came that the chief of a village had been seized by a
+mysterious illness. Knowing that this would mean torture, and death,
+perhaps, to those suspected of having enviously afflicted him by the
+"evil eye," she set off along the trail through the dense forest to use
+all her influence to save the unfortunate victims.
+
+[Illustration: _Courtesy of George H. Doran Company_
+
+Mary Slessor]
+
+"But, Ma," the people would protest, "you don't understand. If you
+god-people not punish evil, bad ones say, 'God-ways no good!' Bad
+ones go round cast spells with no fear. No one safe at all."
+
+Of all their superstitious fears, the horror of twin babies was the most
+universal. With great difficulty Miss Slessor managed to save a few
+of these unfortunate infants. At first some of the people refused to
+come into the hut where a twin child was kept; but when they saw that
+no plague attacked the place or the rash white "Ma," they looked upon
+her with increased respect. The "White Mother" must have a power much
+greater than that of the witch-doctors.
+
+The witch-doctors knew a great deal, no doubt. When a man had a
+tormented back they could tell what enemy had put a spell on him.
+
+"Oh, yes, Ma, the witch-doctor he knows," declared a chief who was
+suffering with an abscess, "just see all those claws, teeth, and bones
+over there. He took them all out of my back."
+
+But if "Ma" did not understand about such spells, she had a wonderful
+magic of her own; she knew soothing things to put on the bewitched back
+that could drive the pain away and make it well. The influence of the
+healer was often stronger than the influence of the witch-doctor and the
+superstitious fears of all the tribe. Again and again her will prevailed
+in the palaver, and the chief to please her would spare the lives of
+those who should by every custom of the land be put to death.
+
+"Ma" required strange things of them, but she was the best friend they
+had ever had. When she stood up before them and spoke so movingly it
+seemed as if she would talk the heart right out of the sternest savage
+of them all! She made them forget the things that they had known all
+their lives. Who would have believed that they would even dream of
+allowing a chief's son to go unattended into the spirit-world? Yet
+when she begged them to spare the lives of the slaves who should have
+been sent with him, they had at last consented. And it didn't take a
+witch-doctor to tell one that a twin-child should never be allowed to
+live and work its demon spells in the world. Still they allowed her to
+save some of them alive. It was said that prudent people had even gone
+into the room where the rescued twins were kept and had touched them
+without fear. They had been almost persuaded that those queerly born
+babies were just like other children!
+
+The "White Mother" of Calabar always had a family of little black
+waifs that she had rescued from violent death or neglect. Besides the
+unfortunate twins, there were the children whose slave mothers had died
+when they were tiny infants. "Nobody has time to bring up a child that
+will belong to somebody else as soon as it is good for something," it
+was said. So the motherless children were left in the bush to die.
+
+Mary Slessor loved her strange black brood tenderly. "Baby things are
+always gentle and lovable," she used to say. "These children who have
+had right training from the beginning will grow up to be leaders and
+teachers of their people."
+
+For twelve years Miss Slessor worked in connection with the established
+mission at Calabar, journeying about to outlying villages as the call
+came. It had for long been her dream, however, to go still farther
+inland to the wild Okoyong tribe whose very name was a terror
+throughout the land. Her mother and her sister Janie, who together made
+"home" for her, had died.
+
+"There is no one to write and tell all my stories and troubles and
+nonsense to," she said. "But Heaven is now nearer to me than Britain,
+and nobody will be anxious about me if I go up country."
+
+In King Eyo's royal canoe she made the journey to the strange people.
+Leaving the paddlers, who were mortal enemies to the Okoyong tribe, at
+the water's edge, she made her way along the jungle trail to a village
+four miles inland. Here the people crowded about her greatly excited.
+They called her "Mother," and seemed pleased that she had come to them
+without fear. The chief, Edem, and his sister, Ma Eame, received her in
+a friendly fashion. Her courage, frankness, and ready understanding won
+favor from the beginning.
+
+"May I have ground for a schoolhouse and a home with you here?" she
+asked. "Will you have me stay as your friend and help you as I have
+helped the people of Calabar?"
+
+Eagerly they assented. It would be a fine thing to have a "White
+Mother" in their country.
+
+"Will you grant that the house I build shall be a place of refuge for
+those in distress--for those charged with witchcraft or threatened with
+death for any other cause? Will you promise that they shall be safe with
+me until we can consider together their case?"
+
+The people looked at the strange white woman wonderingly. Why should she
+ask this thing? What difference could it make to her?
+
+"All life is precious," she said simply, as if she had read their
+thoughts. "I am here to help you--to care for those who are sick or
+hurt, and I must be allowed to see that each one who is in any sort of
+trouble is treated fairly. Will you promise that my house shall be a
+place of refuge?"
+
+Again they gravely assented. So, greatly encouraged, she returned to
+Calabar to pack her goods and prepare to leave the old field for the new.
+
+All her friends gathered about her, loudly lamenting. She was surely
+going to her death, they said. Her fellow workers regarded her with
+wonder and pity. "Nothing can make any impression on the Okoyong save
+a consul and a British gunboat," they declared. But Mary Slessor was
+undaunted. She stowed her boxes and her little family of five small
+waifs away in the canoe as happily as if she were starting out on a
+pleasure trip. To a friend in Scotland, she wrote:
+
+    I am going to a new tribe up-country, a fierce, cruel
+    people, and every one tells me that they will kill me. But I
+    don't fear any hurt--only to combat their savage customs will
+    require courage and firmness on my part.
+
+The life in Okoyong did indeed require fortitude and faith. Remote
+from friends and helpers, in the midst of that most dreaded of all the
+African tribes, she patiently worked to lighten the darkness of the
+degraded people and make their lives happier and better. With her rare
+gift of intuition she at once felt that Ma Eame, the chief's sister, had
+a warm heart and a strong character.
+
+"She will be my chief ally," she said to herself, and time proved that
+she was right. A spark in the black woman's soul was quickened by the
+White Mother's flaming zeal. Dimly she felt the power of the new law
+of love. Often at the risk of her life, should she be discovered, she
+kept the missionary informed in regard to the movements of the people.
+Whether it was a case of witchcraft or murder, of vengeance or a raid on
+a neighboring tribe, "Ma" was sure to find it out; and her influence was
+frequently strong enough to avert a tragedy.
+
+As at Calabar, she found that the greatest obstacle in the way of
+progress was the general indulgence in rum, which the white people gave
+the natives in exchange for their palm oil, spices, rubber, and other
+products.
+
+"Do not drink the vile stuff--do not take it or sell it," she begged.
+"It is like poison to your body. It burns out your life and heart and
+brings every trouble upon you."
+
+"What for white man bring them rum suppose them rum no be good?" they
+demanded. "He be god-man bring the rum--then what for god-man talk so?"
+
+What was there to say? With a heavy heart the White Mother struggled
+on to help her people in spite of this great evil which men of the
+Christian world had brought upon these weak, ignorant black children.
+And she did make headway in spite of every discouragement. "I had a lump
+in my throat often, and my courage repeatedly threatened to take wings
+and fly away--though nobody guessed it," she said.
+
+For years this brave woman went on with her work among the wild tribes
+of Nigeria. As soon as she began to get the encouragement of results
+in one place she pressed on to an unworked field. Realizing that her
+pioneer work needed to be reënforced and sustained by the strong arm
+of the law, she persuaded the British Government to "take up the white
+man's burden" and (through the influence of consuls and the persuasive
+presence of a gunboat or two) assume the guardianship of her weak
+children. In spite of failing health and the discouragement of small
+results, she went from one post to another, leaving mission houses and
+chapel-huts as outward signs of the new life to which she had been a
+witness. "I am ready to go anywhere, provided it be forward," was her
+watchword, as well as Dr. Livingstone's.
+
+There are many striking points of likeness between the careers of these
+two torch-bearers to the Dark Continent. As children both had worked
+at the loom, studying hungrily as they toiled. Both did pioneer work,
+winning the confidence and love of the wild people they taught and
+served. No missionary to Africa, save Dr. Livingstone alone, has had a
+more powerful influence than Mary Slessor.
+
+When at last in January, 1915, after thirty-nine years of service, she
+died and left to others the task of bearing on the torch to her people,
+Sir Frederick Lugard, the Governor-General of Nigeria said:
+
+"By her enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and greatness of character she has
+earned the devotion of thousands of natives among whom she worked, and
+the love and esteem of all Europeans, irrespective of class or creed,
+with whom she came in contact."
+
+She was buried in the land to which she had given her long life of
+service. At the grave when the women, after the native fashion, began
+their wild wail of lament, one of them lifted up her voice in an exalted
+appeal that went straight to the heart:
+
+"Do not cry, do not cry! Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Ma
+was a great blessing."
+
+Of all the words of glowing tribute to her faithful work, we may be sure
+that none would have meant more to the lowly missionary than this cry
+from the awakened soul of one of her people of the bush.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEROINE OF RADIUM:
+
+MARIE SKLODOWSKA CURIE
+
+
+
+
+    One truth discovered is immortal and entitles its author
+    to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be
+    destroyed.
+
+        HAZLITT.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEROINE OF RADIUM
+
+
+You would hardly think that a big, bare room, with rows of battered
+benches and shelves and tables littered with all sorts of queer-looking
+jars and bottles, could be a hiding-place for fairies. Yet Marie's
+father, who was one of the wise men of Warsaw, said they were always to
+be found there.
+
+"Yes, little daughter," he said, "the fairies you may chance to meet
+with in the woods, peeping from behind trees and sleeping in flowers,
+are a tricksy, uncertain sort. The real fairies, who do things, are to
+be found in my dusty laboratory. They are the true wonder-workers, and
+there you may really catch them at work and learn some of their secrets."
+
+"But, Father, wouldn't the fairies like it better if it wasn't quite so
+dusty there?" asked the child.
+
+"No doubt of it," replied the professor.
+
+"We need one fairy more to put us to rights."
+
+At a time when most little girls are playing with dolls, Marie was
+playing "fairy" in the big classroom, dusting the tables and shelves,
+and washing the glass tubes and other things that her father used as he
+talked to his students. "I think we might see the fairies better if I
+make all these glasses clear and shiny," said Marie.
+
+"Can I trust your little fingers not to let things fall?" asked her
+father. "Remember, my funny glasses are precious. It might cost us a
+dinner if you should let one slip."
+
+The professor soon found that his little daughter never let anything
+slip--either the things he used or the things he said. "Such a wise
+little fairy and such a busy one!" he would say. "I don't know how we
+could do our work without her."
+
+If Professor Ladislaus Sklodowski had not loved his laboratory teaching
+above all else, he would have known that he was overworked. As it
+was, he counted himself fortunate in being able to serve Truth and to
+enlist others in her service. For the professor's zeal was of the kind
+that kindles enthusiasm. If you had seen the faces of those Polish
+students as they hung on his words and watched breathlessly the result
+of an experiment, you would have known that they, too, believed in the
+wonder-working fairies.
+
+It seems as if the Polish people have a greater love and understanding
+of the unseen powers of the world than is given to many other nations.
+If you read the story of Poland's tragic struggles against foes within
+and without until, finally, the stronger surrounding countries--Germany,
+Austria, and Russia--divided her territory as spoil among themselves
+and she ceased to exist as a distinct nation, you will understand why
+her children have sought refuge in the things of the spirit. They have
+in a wonderful degree the courage that rises above the most unfriendly
+circumstances and says:
+
+    One day with life and heart
+    Is more than time enough to find a world.
+
+Some of them, like Chopin and Paderewski, have found a new world in
+music; others have found it in poetry and romance; and still others
+in science. The child who dreamed of fairies in her father's classroom
+was to discover the greatest marvel of modern science--a discovery that
+opened up a new world to the masters of physics and chemistry of our day.
+
+Marie's mother, who had herself been a teacher, died when the child was
+very small; and so it happened that the busy father had to take sole
+care of her and make the laboratory do duty as nursery and playroom.
+It was not strange that the bright, thoughtful little girl learned to
+love the things that were so dear to her father's heart. Would he not
+rather buy things for his work than have meat for dinner? Did he not
+wear the same shabby kaftan (the full Russian top-coat that looks like a
+dressing-gown) year after year in order that he might have material for
+important experiments? Truth was, indeed, more than meat and the love of
+learning more than raiment in that home, and the little daughter drank
+in his enthusiasm with the queer laboratory smells which were her native
+air and the breath of life to her.
+
+The time came when the child had to leave this nursery to enter school,
+but always, when the day's session was over, she went directly to that
+other school where she listened fascinated to all her father taught
+about the wonders of the inner world of atoms and the mysterious forces
+that make the visible world in which we live. She still believed in
+fairies,--oh, yes!--but now she knew their names. There were the rainbow
+fairies--light-waves, that make all the colors we see,--and many
+more our eyes are not able to discover, but which we can capture by
+interesting experiments. There were sound-waves, too, and the marvelous
+forces we call electricity, magnetism, and gravitation. When she was
+nine years old, it was second nature to care for her father's batteries,
+beakers, and retorts, and to help prepare the apparatus that was to be
+used in the demonstrations of the coming day. The students marveled at
+the child's skill and knowledge, and called her with admiring affection
+"professorowna," (daughter-professor).
+
+There was a world besides the wonderland of the laboratory, of which
+Marie was soon aware. This was the world of fear, where the powers of
+Russia ruled. In 1861 the Poles had made a vain attempt to win their
+independence, and when Marie was a little girl (she was born in 1867),
+the authorities tried to stamp out any further sparks of possible
+rebellion by adopting unusually harsh measures. It was a crime to speak
+the Polish language in the schools and to talk of the old, happy days
+when Poland was a nation. If any one was even suspected of looking
+forward to a better time when the people would not be persecuted by the
+police or forced to bribe unprincipled officials for a chance to conduct
+their business without interference, he was carried off to the cruel,
+yellow-walled prison near the citadel, and perhaps sent to a life of
+exile in Siberia. Since knowledge means independent thought and capacity
+for leadership, the high schools and universities were particularly
+under suspicion. Years afterward, when Marie spoke of this reign of
+terror, her eyes flashed and her lips were set in a thin white line.
+Time did not make the memory less vivid.
+
+"Every corridor of my father's school had finger-posts pointing to
+Siberia!" she declared dramatically.
+
+When Marie was sixteen, she graduated from the "gymnasium" for girls,
+receiving a gold medal for excellence in mathematics and sciences. In
+Russia, as in Germany, the gymnasium corresponds to our high school, but
+also covers some of the work of the first two years of college. The name
+gymnasium signifies a place where the mind is exercised and made strong
+in preparation for the work of the universities.
+
+The position as governess to the daughters of a Russian nobleman was
+offered to the brilliant girl with the sweet, serious eyes and gentle
+voice. As it meant independence and a chance to travel and learn the
+ways of the world, Marie agreed to undertake the work.
+
+Now, for the first time in her life, the young Polish girl knew work
+that was not a labor of love. Her pupils cared nothing for the things
+that meant everything to her. How they loved luxury and show and gay
+chatter! How indifferent they were to truth that would make the world
+wiser and happier.
+
+"How strangely you look, Mademoiselle Marie," said the little Countess
+Olga one day, in the midst of her French lesson. "Your eyes seem to see
+things far away."
+
+Marie was truly looking past her pupils, past the rich apartment, beyond
+Russia, into the great world of opportunity for all earnest workers. She
+had overheard something about another plot among the students of Warsaw,
+and knew that some of her father's pupils had been put under arrest.
+
+"Suppose they should try to make me testify against my friends," said
+the girl to herself. "I must leave Russia at once. My savings will
+surely take me to Paris, and there I may get a place as helper in one of
+the big laboratories, where I can learn as I work."
+
+The eyes that had been dark with fear an instant before became bright
+with hope. Eagerly she planned a disguise and a way to slip off the very
+next night while the household was in the midst of the excitement of a
+masquerade ball.
+
+Everything went well, and in due time she found her trembling self
+and her slender possessions safely stowed away on a train that was
+moving rapidly toward the frontier and freedom. No one gave a second
+thought to the little elderly woman with gray hair and spectacles who
+sat staring out of the window of her compartment at the fields and
+trees rushing by in the darkness and the starry heavens that the train
+seemed to carry with it. Her plain, black dress and veil seemed those
+of a self-respecting, upper-class servant, who was perhaps going to the
+bedside of a dying son.
+
+"I feel almost as old as I look," Marie was saying to herself. "But
+how can a girl who is all alone in the world, with no one to know what
+happens to her, help feeling old? Down in my heart, though, I know that
+life is just beginning. There is something waiting for me beyond the
+blackness--something that needs just little me."
+
+It was a wonderful relief when the solitary journey was over and the
+elderly disguise laid aside. "Shall I ever feel really young again?"
+said the girl, who was not quite twenty-four. But not for a moment did
+she doubt that there was work waiting for her in the big, unexplored
+world.
+
+During those early days in Paris, Marie often had reason to be grateful
+for the plain living of her childhood that had made her independent
+of creature comforts. Now she knew actual want in her cold garret,
+furnished only with a cot and chair, like a hermit's cell. She lived,
+too, on hermit's fare--black bread and milk. But even when it was so
+cold that the milk was frozen,--cold comfort, indeed!--the fire of her
+enthusiasm knew no chill. Day after day she walked from laboratory to
+laboratory begging to be given a chance as assistant, but always with
+the same result. It was man's work; why did she not look for a place in
+a milliner's shop?
+
+One day she renewed her appeal to Professor Lippman in the Sorbonne
+research laboratories. Something in the still, pale face and deep-set,
+earnest eyes caught the attention of the busy man. Perhaps this strange,
+determined girl was starving! And besides, the crucibles and test-tubes
+were truly in sad need of attention. Grudgingly he bade her clean the
+various accessories and care for the furnace. Her deftness and skill
+in handling the materials, and a practical suggestion that proved of
+value in an important experiment, attracted the favorable notice of the
+professor. He realized that the slight girl with the foreign look and
+accent, whom he had taken in out of an impulse of pity, was likely to
+become one of his most valuable helpers.
+
+A new day dawned for the ambitious young woman. While supporting herself
+by her laboratory work, she completed in two years the university
+course for a degree in mathematics, and, two years later, she won a
+second degree in physics and chemistry. In the meantime her enthusiasm
+for science and her undaunted courage in the face of difficulties and
+discouragements attracted the admiration of a fellow-worker, Pierre
+Curie, one of the most promising of the younger professors.
+
+"I love you, and we both love the same things," he said one day. "Would
+it not be happier to live and work together than alone?"
+
+And so began that wonderful partnership of two great scientists, whose
+hard work and heroic struggle, crowned at last by brilliant success,
+has been an inspiration to earnest workers the world over.
+
+Madame Curie set up a little laboratory in their apartment, and toiled
+over her experiments at all hours. Her baby daughter was often bathed
+and dressed in this workroom among the test-tubes and the interesting
+fumes of advanced research.
+
+"Irene is as happy in the atmosphere of science as her mother was,"
+said Madame Curie to one of her husband's brother-professors who seemed
+surprised to find a crowing infant in a laboratory. "And if I could
+afford the best possible nurse, she could not take my place! For my baby
+and I know the joy of living and growing together with those we love."
+
+What was the problem that the mother was working over even while she
+sewed for her little girl, or rocked her to sleep to the gentle crooning
+of an old Polish folk-song whose melody Chopin has wrought into one of
+his tenderest nocturnes?
+
+[Illustration: Marie Sklodowska Curie]
+
+The child who used to delight in experiments with light-waves in her
+father's laboratory, was interested in the strange glow which Prof.
+Becquerel had found that the substance known as uranium gave off
+spontaneously. Like the X-rays, this light passes through wood and
+other bodies opaque to sunlight. Madame Curie became deeply interested
+in the problem of the nature of the Becquerel rays and their wonderful
+properties, such as that of making the air a conductor for electricity.
+One day she discovered that pitchblende, the black mineral from which
+uranium is extracted, was more _radioactive_ (that is, it gave off more
+powerful rays) than the isolated substance itself, and she came to the
+conclusion that there was some other element in the ore which, could it
+be extracted, would prove more valuable than uranium.
+
+With infinite patience and the skill of highly trained specialists in
+both physics and chemistry, Madame Curie and her husband worked to
+obtain this unknown substance. At times Pierre Curie all but lost heart
+at the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the way. "It cannot be
+done!" he exclaimed one day, with a groan. "Truly, 'Nature has buried
+Truth deep in the bottom of the sea.'"
+
+"But man can dive, _cher ami_," said his wife, with a heartening smile.
+"Think of the joy when one comes up at last with the pearl--the pearl of
+truth!"
+
+At last their toil was rewarded, and _two_ new elements were separated
+from pitchblende--polonium, so named by Madame Curie in honor of her
+native Poland, and radium, the most marvelous of all radioactive
+substances. A tiny pinch of radium, which is a grayish white powder not
+unlike coarse salt in appearance, gives out a strange glow something
+like that of fireflies, but bright enough to read by. Moreover, light
+and heat are radiated by this magic element with no apparent waste of
+its own amount or energy. Radium can also make some other substances,
+diamonds for instance, shine with a light like its own, and it makes
+the air a conductor of electricity. Its weird glow passes through bone
+almost as readily as through tissue-paper or through flesh, and it even
+penetrates an inch-thick iron plate.
+
+The Curies now woke to find not only Paris but the world ringing with
+the fame of their discovery. The modest workers wanted nothing,
+however, but the chance to go on with their research. You know how
+Tennyson makes the aged Ulysses look forward even at the end of his life
+to one more last voyage. The type of the unconquerable human soul that
+ever presses on to fresh achievement, he says:
+
+    All experience is an arch where-thro'
+    Gleams that untravel'd world, whose margin fades
+    Forever and forever when I move.
+
+So it was with Pierre Curie and his wife. Their famous accomplishment
+opened a new world of interesting possibilities, a world which they
+longed above all things to explore.
+
+Their one trouble was the difficulty of procuring enough of the precious
+element they had discovered to go on with their experiments. Because
+radium is not only rare, but also exceedingly hard to extract from the
+ore, it is a hundred times more precious than pure gold. It is said
+that five tons of pitchblende were treated before a trifling pinch of
+the magic powder was secured. It would take over two thousand tons of
+the mineral to produce a pound of radium. Moreover, it was not easy to
+secure the ore, as practically all the known mines were in Austria, and
+those in control wanted to profit as much as possible by this chance.
+
+"It does seem as if people might not stand in the way of our obtaining
+the necessary material to go on with our work," lamented Pierre Curie.
+"What we discover belongs to the world--to any one who can use it."
+
+"We have passed other lions in the way. This, too, we shall pass," said
+Madame Curie, quietly.
+
+They lived in a tiny house in an obscure suburb of Paris, giving
+all that they possessed--the modest income gained from teaching and
+lecturing, their share of the Nobel prize of $40,000, which, in 1903,
+was divided between them and Professor Becquerel, together with all
+their time and all their skill and knowledge, to their work.
+
+For recreation they went for walks in the country with little Irene,
+often stopping for dinner at quaint inns among the trees. On one such
+evening, when Dr. Curie had just declined the decoration of the Legion
+of Honor, because it had "no bearing on his work," his small daughter
+climbed on his knee and slipped a red geranium into his buttonhole,
+saying, with comical solemnity: "You are now decorated with the Legion
+of Honor. Pray, Monsieur, what do you intend to do about it?"
+
+"I like this emblem much better than a glittering star on a bit of red
+ribbon, and I love the hand that put it there," replied the father, his
+face lighting up with one of his rare smiles. "In this case I make no
+objection."
+
+Other honors, which meant increased opportunity for work, were quietly
+accepted. Pierre Curie was elected to the French Academy--the greatest
+honor his country can bestow on her men of genius and achievement.
+Madame Curie received the degree of Doctor of Physical Science, and--a
+distinction shared with no other woman--the position of special lecturer
+at the Sorbonne, in Paris.
+
+One day in 1906, when Dr. Curie, his mind intent on an absorbing
+problem, was absent-mindedly hurrying across a wet street, he slipped
+and fell under a passing truck and was instantly killed. When they
+attempted to break the news to Madame Curie by telling her that her
+husband had been hurt in an accident, she looked past them with a white,
+set face, and repeated over and over to herself, as if trying to get her
+bearings in the new existence that stretched blackly before her, "Pierre
+is dead; Pierre is dead."
+
+Now, as on that night when she was leaving Russia for an unknown world,
+she saw a gleam in the blackness--there was work to be done! There was
+something waiting in the shadowy future for her, something that she
+alone could do. As on that other night, she found her lips shaping the
+words: "The big world has need of little me. But oh, it will be hard now
+to work alone!" Then her eyes fell on her two little girls (Irene was
+now eight years old and baby Eve was three), who were standing quietly
+near with big, wondering eyes fixed on their mother's strange face.
+
+"Forgive me, darlings!" she cried, gathering her children into her arms.
+"We must try hard to go on with the work Father loved. _Together_ is a
+magic word for us still, little daughters!"
+
+Everybody wondered at the courage and quiet power with which Madame
+Curie went out to meet her new life. She succeeded to her husband's
+professorship, and carried on his special lines of investigation as
+well as her own. The value of her work to science and to humanity may
+be indicated by the fact that in 1911 the Nobel prize was again awarded
+to her--the only time it has ever been given more than once to the same
+person.
+
+At home, she tried to be father as well as mother. She took the
+children for walks in the evening, and while she sewed on their dresses
+and knitted them mittens and mufflers, she told them stories of the
+wonderland of science.
+
+"Why do you take time to write down everything you do?" asked Eve one
+day, as she looked over her mother's shoulder at the neat note-book in
+which the world-famous scientist was summing up the work of the day.
+
+"Why does a seaman keep a log, dearie?" the mother questioned with a
+smile. "A laboratory is just like a ship, and I want things shipshape.
+Every day with me is like a voyage--a voyage of discovery."
+
+"But why do you put question marks everywhere, Mother!" persisted the
+child.
+
+It was true that the pages fairly bristled with interrogation points.
+Madame Curie laughed as if she had never noticed this before. "It
+is good to have an inquiring mind, child," she said. "I am like my
+children; I love to ask questions. And when one gets an answer,--when
+you really discover something,--it only leads to more questions; and so
+we go on from one thing to another."
+
+When Madame Curie was asked on one occasion to what she attributed her
+success, she replied, without hesitation: "To my excellent training:
+first, under my father, who taught me to wonder and to test; second,
+under my husband, who understood and encouraged me; and third, under my
+children, who question me!"
+
+[Illustration: Madame and Dr. Curie and their little daughter Irene]
+
+It is the day of one of Madame Curie's lectures. The dignified halls of
+the university are a-flutter with many visitors from the world of wealth
+and fashion. There, too, are distinguished scientists from abroad, among
+whom are Lord Kelvin, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir William Ramsay. The
+President of France and his wife enter with royal guests, Don Carlos
+and Queen Amélie of Portugal, and the Shah of Persia. The plodding
+students and the sober men of learning, ranged about the hall, blink at
+the brilliant company like owls suddenly brought into the sunlight.
+
+At a given moment the hum of conversation dies away and the assemblage
+rises to its feet as a little black-robed figure steps in and stands
+before them on the platform. There is an instant's stillness,--a hush
+of indrawn breath you can almost hear,--and then the audience gives
+expression to its enthusiasm in a sudden roar of applause. The little
+woman lifts up her hand pleadingly. All is still again and she begins to
+speak.
+
+She is slight, almost pathetically frail, this queen of science. You
+feel as if all her life had gone into her work. Her face is pale, and
+her hair is only a shadow above her serious brow. But the deep-set eyes
+glow, and the quiet voice somehow holds the attention of those least
+concerned with the problems of advanced physics.
+
+Bank and wealth mean nothing to this little black-robed professor. It
+is said that when she was requested by the president to give a special
+demonstration of radium and its marvels before the Shah of Persia,
+she amazed his Serene Highness by showing much more concern for her
+tiny tube of white powder than for his distinguished favor. When the
+royal guest, who had never felt any particular need of exercising
+self-control, saw the uncanny light that was able to pass through plates
+of iron, he gave a startled exclamation and made a sudden movement that
+tipped over the scientist's material. Now it was the Lady Professor's
+turn to be alarmed. To pacify her, the Shah held out a costly ring from
+his royal finger, but this extraordinary woman with the pale face paid
+not the slightest attention; she could not be bribed to forget the peril
+of her precious radium. It is to be doubted if the eastern potentate had
+ever before been treated with such scant ceremony.
+
+In 1911, Madame Curie's name was proposed for election to the Academy
+of Sciences. While it was admitted that her rivals for the vacancy were
+below her in merit, she failed of being elected by two votes. There was
+a general protest, since it was felt that service of the first order
+had gone unrecognized merely because the candidate happened to be a
+woman. It was stated, however, that Madame Curie was not rejected for
+this reason, but because it was thought wise to appoint to that vacancy
+Professor Branly, who had given Marconi valuable aid in his invention
+of wireless telegraphy, and who, since he was then an old man, would
+probably not have another chance for the honor. As Madame Curie, on
+the other hand, was only forty-three, she could well wait for another
+vacancy.
+
+Since the outbreak of the present war the world has heard nothing new
+of the work of the Heroine of Radium. We do not doubt, however, that
+like all the women of France and all her men of science, she is giving
+her strength and knowledge to the utmost in the service of her adopted
+country. But we know, also, that just as surely she is seeing the pure
+light of truth shining through the blackness, and that she is "following
+the gleam." When the clouds of war shall have cleared away, we may see
+that her labors now, as in the past, have not only been of service to
+her country, but also to humanity. For Truth knows no boundaries of
+nation or race, and he who serves Truth serves all men.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF HULL-HOUSE:
+
+JANE ADDAMS
+
+
+
+
+    The Russian peasants have a proverb that says: "Labor is
+    the house that Love lives in"; by which they mean that no two
+    people, or group of people, can come into affectionate relation
+    with each other unless they carry on a mutual task.
+
+        JANE ADDAMS.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEART OF HULL-HOUSE
+
+
+Do you remember what the poet says of Peter Bell?
+
+    At noon, when by the forest's edge
+    He lay beneath the branches high,
+    The soft blue sky did never melt
+    Into his heart: he never felt
+    The witchery of the soft blue sky!
+
+In the same way, when he saw the "primrose by the river's brim," it was
+not to him a lovely bit of the miracle of upspringing life from the
+unthinking clod; it was just a common little yellow flower, which one
+might idly pick and cast aside, but to which one never gave a thought.
+He saw the sky and woods and fields and human faces with the outward
+eye, but not with the eye of the heart or the spirit. He had eyes for
+nothing but the shell and show of things.
+
+This is the story of a girl who early learned to see with the "inward
+eye"; she "felt the witchery of the soft blue sky" and all the wonder
+of the changing earth, and something of the life about her melted
+into her heart and became part of herself. So it was that she came to
+have a "belonging feeling" for all that she saw--fields, pine woods,
+mill-stream, birds, trees, and people.
+
+Perhaps little Jane Addams loved trees and people best of all. Trees
+were so big and true, with roots ever seeking a firmer hold on the good
+brown earth, and branches growing up and ever up, year by year, turning
+sunbeams into strength. And people she loved, because they had in them
+something of all kinds of life.
+
+There was one special tree that had the friendliest nooks where she
+could nestle and dream and plan plays as long as the summer afternoon.
+Perhaps one reason that Jane loved this tree was that it reminded her of
+her tall, splendid father.
+
+[Illustration: Jane Addams]
+
+"You are so big and beautiful, and yet you always have a place for
+a little girl--even one who can never be straight and strong," Jane
+whispered, as she put her arms about her tree friend. And when she crept
+into the shelter of her father's arms, she forgot her poor back, that
+made her carry her head weakly on one side when she longed to fling
+it back and look the world in the face squarely, exultingly, as her
+father's daughter should.
+
+"There is no one so fine or so noble as my father," Jane would say to
+herself as she saw him standing before his Bible-class on Sundays. Then
+her cheek paled, and her big eyes grew wistful. It would be too bad if
+people discovered that this frail child belonged to him. They would be
+surprised and pity him, and one must never pity Father. So it came about
+that, though it was her dearest joy to walk by his side clinging to his
+hand, she stepped over to her uncle, saying timidly, "May I walk with
+you, Uncle James?"
+
+This happened again and again, to the mild astonishment of the good
+uncle. At last a day came that made everything different. Jane, who had
+gone to town unexpectedly, chanced to meet her father coming out of a
+bank on the main street. Smiling gaily and raising his shining silk
+hat, he bowed low, as if he were greeting a princess; and as the shy
+child smiled back she knew that she had been a very foolish little girl
+indeed. Why of course! Her father made everything that belonged to him
+all right just because it _did_ belong. He had strength and power enough
+for them both. As she walked by his side after that, it seemed as if the
+big grasp of the hand that held hers enfolded all the little tremblings
+of her days.
+
+"What are these funny red and purple specks?" Jane asked once as she
+looked with loving admiration at the hand to which she clung.
+
+"Those marks show that I've dressed millstones in my time, just as this
+flat right thumb tells any one who happens to notice that I began life
+as a miller," said her father.
+
+After that Jane spent much time at the mill industriously rubbing the
+ground wheat between thumb and forefinger; and when the millstones
+were being dressed, she eagerly held out her little hands in the hope
+that the bits of flying flint would mark her as they had her father.
+These marks, she dimly felt, were an outward sign of her father's true
+greatness. He was a leading citizen of their Illinois community by
+right of character and hard-won success. Everybody admired and honored
+him. Did not President Lincoln even, who was, her father said, "the
+greatest man in the world," write to him as a comrade and brother,
+calling him "My dear Double D'ed Addams"?
+
+Years afterward, when Jane Addams spoke of her childhood, she said that
+all her early experiences were directly connected with her father, and
+that two incidents stood out with the distinctness of vivid pictures.
+
+She stood, one Sunday morning, in proud possession of a beautiful new
+cloak, waiting for her father's approval. He looked at her a moment
+quietly, and then patted her on the shoulder.
+
+"Thy cloak is very pretty, Jane," said the Quaker father, gravely; "so
+much prettier, indeed, than that of the other little girls that I think
+thee had better wear thy old one." Then he added, as he looked into her
+puzzled, disappointed eyes, "We can never, perhaps, make such things as
+clothes quite fair and right in this hill-and-valley world, but it is
+wrong and stupid to let the differences crop out in things that mean so
+much more; in school and church, at least, people should be able to feel
+that they belong to one family."
+
+Another day she had gone with her father on an errand into the poorest
+quarter of the town. It had always before seemed to her country eyes
+that the city was a dazzling place of toy- and candy-shops, smooth
+streets, and contented houses with sleek lawns. Now she caught a glimpse
+of quite another city, with ugly, dingy houses huddled close together
+and thin, dirty children standing miserably about without place or
+spirit to play.
+
+"It is dreadful the way all the comfortable, happy people stay off to
+themselves," said Jane. "When I grow up, I shall, of course, have a big
+house, but it is not going to be set apart with all the other big homes;
+it is going to be right down among the poor horrid little houses like
+these."
+
+Always after that, when Jane roamed over her prairie playground or
+sat dreaming under the Norway pines which had grown from seeds that
+her father had scattered in his early, pioneer days, she seemed to
+hear something of "the still, sad music of humanity" in the voice of
+the wind in the tree-tops and in the harmony of her life of varied
+interests. For she saw with the inward eye of the heart, and felt the
+throb of all life in each vital experience that was hers. It would be
+impossible to live apart in pleasant places, enjoying beauty which
+others might not share. She must live in the midst of the crowded ways,
+and bring to the poor, stifled little houses an ideal of healthier
+living. She would study medicine and go as a doctor to the forlorn,
+dirty children; but first there would be many things to learn.
+
+It was her dream to go to Smith College, but her father believed that a
+small college near her home better fitted one for the life to which she
+belonged.
+
+"My daughter is also a daughter of Illinois," he said, "and Rockford
+College is her proper place. Afterward she may go east and to Europe in
+order to gain a knowledge of what the world beyond us can give, and so
+get a fuller appreciation of what life at home is and may be."
+
+Jane Addams went, therefore, to the Illinois college, "The Mt. Holyoke
+of the West," a college famed for its earnest, missionary spirit. The
+serious temper of her class was reflected in their motto which was the
+Anglo-Saxon word for lady--_hláfdige_ (bread-kneader), translated as
+_bread-giver_; and the poppy was selected for the class flower, "because
+poppies grow among the wheat, as if Nature knew that wherever there was
+hunger that needed food there would be pain that needed relief."
+
+The study in which she took the keenest interest was history,--"the
+human tale of this wide world,"--but even at the time of her greatest
+enthusiasm she realized that while knowledge comes from the records of
+the past, wisdom comes from a right understanding of the actual life of
+the present.
+
+After receiving from her Alma Mater the degree of B. A., she entered
+the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia to prepare for real work in
+a real world, but the old spinal trouble soon brought that chapter to
+a close. After some months in Doctor Weir Mitchell's hospital, and a
+longer time of invalidism, she agreed to follow her doctor's pleasant
+prescription of two years in Europe.
+
+"When I returned I decided to give up my medical course," said Jane
+Addams, "partly because I had no real aptitude for scientific work, and
+partly because I discovered that there were other genuine reasons for
+living among the poor than that of practicing medicine upon them."
+
+While in London Miss Addams saw much of the life of the great city from
+the top of an omnibus. Once she was taken with a number of tourists to
+see the spectacle of the Saturday night auction of fruits and vegetables
+to the poor of the East Side, and the lurid picture blotted out all the
+picturesque impressions, full of pleasant human interest and historic
+association, that she had been eagerly enjoying during this first visit
+to London town. Always afterwards, when she closed her eyes, she could
+see the scene; it seemed as if it would never leave her. In the flare of
+the gas-light, which made weird and spectral the motley, jostling crowd
+and touched the black shadows it created into a grotesque semblance of
+life, she saw wrinkled women, desperate-looking men, and pale children
+vying with each other to secure with their farthings and ha'pennies the
+vegetables held up by a hoarse, red-faced auctioneer.
+
+One haggard youth sat on the curb, hungrily devouring the cabbage that
+he had succeeded in bidding in. Her sensation-loving companions on the
+bus stared with mingled pity and disgust; but the girl who saw what she
+looked on with the inward eye of the heart turned away her face. The
+poverty that she had before seen had not prepared her for wretchedness
+like this.
+
+"For the following weeks," she said, "I went about London furtively,
+afraid to look down narrow streets and alleys lest they disclose this
+hideous human need and suffering. In time, nothing of the great city
+seemed real save the misery of its East End."
+
+[Illustration: Polk Street façade of Hull-House buildings]
+
+[Illustration: A corner of the Boys' Library at Hull-House]
+
+This first impression of London's poverty was, of course, not only
+lurid, but quite unfair. She knew nothing of the earnest workers who
+were devoting their lives to the problem of giving the right kind of
+help to those who, through weakness, ignorance, or misfortune, were
+not able to help themselves.
+
+When, five years later, she visited Toynbee Hall, she saw effective
+work of the kind she had dimly dreamed of ever since, as a little
+girl, she had wanted to build a beautiful big house among the ugly
+little ones in the city. Here in the heart of the Whitechapel district,
+the most evil and unhappy section of London's East End, a group of
+optimistic, large-hearted young men, who believed that advantages mean
+responsibilities, had come to live and work. While trying to share what
+good birth, breeding, and education had given them with those who had
+been shut away from every chance for wholesome living, they believed
+that they in turn might learn from their humble neighbors much that
+universities and books cannot teach.
+
+"I have spent too much time in vague preparation for I knew not what,"
+said Jane Addams. "At last I see a way to begin to live in a really real
+world, and to learn to do by doing."
+
+And so Hull-House was born. In the heart of the industrial section of
+Chicago, where workers of thirty-six different nations live closely
+herded together, Miss Addams found surviving a solidly built house with
+large halls, open fireplaces, and friendly piazzas. This she secured,
+repaired, and adapted to the needs of her work, naming it Hull-House
+from its original owner, one of Chicago's early citizens.
+
+"But we must not forget that the house is only the outward sign," said
+Miss Addams. "The real thing is the work. 'Labor is the house that love
+lives in,' and as we work together we shall come to understand each
+other and learn from each other."
+
+"What are you going to put in your house for your interesting
+experiment?" Miss Addams was asked.
+
+"Just what I should want in my home anywhere--even in your perfectly
+correct neighborhood," she replied with a smile.
+
+You can imagine the beautiful, restful place it was, with everything in
+keeping with the fine old house. On every side were pictures and other
+interesting things that she had gathered in her travels.
+
+Of course, Miss Addams was not alone in her work. Her friend, Ellen
+Gates Starr, was with her from the beginning. Miss Julia Lathrop, who
+is now the head of the Children's Bureau in Washington, was another
+fellow-worker. Soon many volunteers came eagerly forward, some to teach
+the kindergarten, others to take charge of classes and clubs of various
+kinds. They began by teaching different kinds of hand-work, which then
+had no place in the public schools.
+
+"One little chap, who was brought into the Juvenile Court the other day
+for breaking a window, confessed to the judge that he had thrown the
+stone 'a-purpose to get pinched,' so they would send him to a school
+where 'they learn a fellow to make things,'" Miss Addams was told.
+
+Classes in woodwork, basketry, sewing, weaving, and other handicrafts
+were eagerly patronized. There were also evening clubs where boys and
+girls who had early left school to work in factories could learn to make
+things of practical value or listen to reading and the spirited telling
+of the great world-stories.
+
+One day Miss Addams met a small newsboy as he hastily left the house,
+vainly trying to keep back signs of grief. "There is no use of coming
+here any more," he said gruffly; "Prince Roland is dead!"
+
+The evening classes were also social clubs, where the children who
+seemed to be growing dull and unfeeling like the turning wheels among
+which they spent their days could relax their souls and bodies in free,
+happy companionship and get a taste of natural living.
+
+"Young people need pleasure as truly as they need food and air," said
+Miss Addams. "When I see the throngs of factory-girls on our streets in
+the evening, it seems to me that the pitiless city sees in them just two
+possibilities: first, the chance to use their tender labor-power by day,
+and then the chance to take from them their little earnings at night by
+appealing to their need of pleasure."
+
+One of the new buildings that was early added to the original Hull-House
+was a gymnasium, which provided opportunities for swimming, basket-ball,
+and dancing.
+
+"We have swell times in our Hull-House club," boasted black-eyed
+Angelina. "Our floor in the gym puts it all over the old dancehalls for
+a jolly good hop,--no saloon next door with all that crowd, good classy
+music, and the right sort of girls and fellows. Then sometimes our club
+has a real party in the coffeehouse. That's what I call a fine, cozy
+time; makes a girl glad she's living."
+
+Hull-House also puts within the reach of many the things which their
+active minds crave, and opens the way to a new life and success in the
+world.
+
+"Don't you remember me?" a rising young newspaper man once said to Miss
+Addams. "I used to belong to a Hull-House club."
+
+"Tell me what Hull-House did for you that really helped," she took
+occasion to ask.
+
+"It was the first house I had ever been in," he replied promptly, "where
+books and magazines just lay around as if there were plenty of them in
+the world. Don't you remember how much I used to read at that little
+round table at the back of the library?"
+
+Some good people who visit the Settlement in a patronizing mood are
+surprised to discover that many of "these working-girls" have a taste
+for what is fine. Miss Addams likes to tell them about the intelligent
+group who followed the reading of George Eliot's "Romola" with
+unflagging interest.
+
+"The club was held in our dining-room," she said to one incredulous
+visitor, "and two of the girls came early regularly to help wash the
+dishes and arrange the photographs of Florence on the table. Do you
+know," she added, looking her prosperous guest quietly in the eyes,
+"that the young woman of whom you were inquiring about 'these people'
+is one of our neighborhood girls? Those who live in these dingy streets
+because they are poor and must live near their work are not a different
+order of beings. Don't forget what Lincoln said, 'God must love the
+common people--He made so many of them.' You have only to live at
+Hull-House a while to learn how true it is that God loves them."
+
+"Nothing has ever meant more real inspiration to me," said a student of
+sociology from the university, who had spent a year in the Settlement,
+"than the way the poor help each other. A woman who supports three
+children by scrubbing will share her breakfast with the people in the
+next tenement because she has heard that they are 'hard up'; a man who
+has been out of work has a month's rent paid by a young chap in the
+stock-yards who boarded with him last year; a Swedish girl works in
+the laundry for her German neighbor to let her stay home with her sick
+baby--and so it goes."
+
+"Our people have, too, many other hardships besides the frequent lack
+of food and fuel," said Miss Addams. "There are other hungers. Do you
+know what it means for the Italian peasant, used to an outdoor life in
+a sunny, easy-going land, to adapt himself to the ways of America? It
+is a very dark, shut-in Chicago that many of them know. At one of the
+receptions here an Italian woman who was delighted with our red roses
+was also surprised that they could be 'brought so fresh all the way from
+Italy.' She would not believe that roses grew in Chicago, because she
+had lived here six years and had never seen any. One always saw roses
+in Italy. Think of it! She had lived for six years within ten blocks of
+florists' shops, but had never seen one!"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Starr, "they lose the beauties and joys of their old
+homes before they learn what the new can give. When we had our first art
+exhibit, an Italian said that he didn't know that Americans cared for
+anything but dollars--that looking at pictures was something people did
+only in Italy."
+
+A Greek was overjoyed at seeing a photograph of the Acropolis at
+Hull-House. He said that before he came to America he had prepared a
+book of pictures in color of Athens, because he thought that people
+in the new country would like to see them. At his stand near a big
+railroad-station he had tried to talk to some of those who stopped
+to buy about "the glory that was Greece," but he had concluded that
+Americans cared for nothing but fruit and the correct change!
+
+At Hull-House the Greeks, Italians, Poles, and Germans not only find
+pictures which quicken early memories and affections, but they can give
+plays of their own country and people. The "Ajax" and "Electra" of
+Sophocles have been presented by Greeks, who felt that they were showing
+ignorant Americans the majesty of the classic drama. Thanksgiving,
+Christmas, and other holidays are celebrated by plays and pageants. Nor
+are the great days of other lands forgotten. Garibaldi and Mazzini, who
+fought for liberty in Italy, are honored with Washington and Lincoln.
+
+Old and young alike take part in the dramatic events. A blind patriarch,
+who appeared in Longfellow's "Golden Legend," which was presented one
+Christmas, spoke to Miss Addams of his great joy in the work.
+
+"Kind Heart," he said (that was his name for her),--"Kind Heart, it
+seems to me that I have been waiting all my life to hear some of these
+things said. I am glad we had so many performances, for I think I can
+remember them to the end. It is getting very hard for me to listen to
+reading, but the different voices and all made this very plain."
+
+The music classes and choruses give much joy to the people, and here
+it seems possible to bring together in a common feeling those widely
+separated by tradition and custom. Music is the universal language of
+the heart. Bohemian and Polish women sing their tender and stirring
+folk-songs. The voices of men and women of many lands mingle in
+Schubert's lovely melodies and in the mighty choruses of Handel.
+
+As Miss Addams went about among her neighbors she longed to lead them to
+a perception of the relation between the present and the past. If only
+the young, who were impatiently breaking away from all the old country
+traditions, could be made to appreciate what their parents held dear; if
+the fathers and mothers could at the same time understand the complex
+new order in which their children were struggling to hold their own.
+When, one day, she saw an old Italian woman spinning with distaff and
+spindle, an idea came to her. A Labor Museum, that would show the growth
+of industries in every country, from the simplest processes to the
+elaborate machinery of modern times, might serve the purpose.
+
+The working-out of her plan far exceeded her wildest dream. Russians,
+Germans, and Italians happily foregathered to demonstrate and compare
+methods of textile work with which they were familiar. Other activities
+proved equally interesting. The lectures given among the various
+exhibits met with a warm welcome. Factory workers, who had previously
+fought shy of everything "improving," came because they said these
+lectures were "getting next to the stuff you work with all the time."
+
+Hull-House has worked not only _with_ the people but _for_ them, by
+trying to secure laws that will improve the conditions under which they
+labor and live. The following incident will speak for the fight that
+Miss Addams has made against such evils as child labor and sweat-shop
+work.
+
+The representatives of a group of manufacturers waited upon her and
+promised that if she would "drop all this nonsense about a sweat-shop
+bill of which she knew nothing," certain business men would give fifty
+thousand dollars for her Settlement. The steady look which the lady of
+Hull-House gave the spokesman made him wish that some one else had come
+with the offer of the bribe.
+
+"We have no ambition," said Miss Addams, "to make Hull-House the largest
+institution in Chicago; but we are trying to protect our neighbors from
+evil conditions; and if to do that, the destruction of our Settlement
+should be necessary, we would gladly sing a Te Deum on its ruins."
+
+The girl who saw what she looked on with "the eye of the heart," had
+become a leader in the life and the reforms of her time. "On the whole,"
+one writer has said of her, "the reach of this woman's sympathy and
+understanding is beyond all comparison wider in its span--comprehending
+all kinds of people--than that of any other living person."
+
+Jane Addams has won her great influence with people by the simple means
+of working with them. Her life and the true Hull-House--the work itself,
+not the buildings which shelter it--give meaning to the saying that
+"Labor is the house that love lives in."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Simple typographical errors were corrected.
+
+Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
+preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
+
+This book contains double quotation marks within double quotation marks.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Heroines of Service, by Mary Rosetta Parkman
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42451 ***