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diff --git a/42451-0.txt b/42451-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e10667 --- /dev/null +++ b/42451-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5545 @@ +*** 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 *** |