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Selections

FROM

Mary A. Livermore

BOSTON:

MASS. W. C. T. U.
171 Tremont St.

Copyright 1892,
BY
MASSACHUSETTS WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN
TEMPERANCE UNION.

Press of
B. WILKINS & CO.,
197 Devonshire St.,
Boston.

What my heart taught me, I taught the world.
— BROWNING.

SELECTIONS.
The day has gone by when it is necessary to apologize for
the entrance of women into the temperance reform, or to argue
in favor of it, for it is conceded that women as well as men
have a vital interest in all that concerns mankind. The pleas
of ignorance, helplessness, and occupation in other pursuits no
longer excuse them from lending a hand in some department
of the multiform work of the age, which aims at the world's
regeneration.

Women are the mothers of the world, and, in a very large
sense, the creators of the home. And of all the influences
that sway and mould humanity, none are so powerful for good
or for evil as those exerted by the home. Whatever menaces
the home or destroys the family strikes at the very foundation
of civilization.

Nowhere is the vice of intemperance visited with more
appalling and destructive effects than in the family. It has
wrought more wretchedness for wives and mothers, and more
ruin for children, than any other evil that lives. Exaggeration of statement in regard to this matter is not possible. No
pen has power to portray the truth. No imagination can
create anything that will exceed the truth.

The increasing knowledge and culture which the last half
century has brought to women has arrayed them in inappeasable hostility to their deadliest foe. They have heard the call
of " the trumpet that never sounds retreat," and with exhaustless organizing power have founded societies that affiliate,
are within easy reach of each other, and that now stretch
throughout the civilized world and overflow into heathendom.
These constitute to the drink habit, and the drink traffic, a
perpetual day of judgment.

From institutes of heredity and temperance unions, from
maternal associations and societies for moral education, from
press and from pulpit, there comes a united entreaty to the
young women of the present day to forbear allying themselves
in marriage with drinking and licentious men. No woman
has an ethical right to become the mother of children when
the father is a libertine or a drunkard. Dr. Darwin says :
" The diseases from drinking fermented liquors (and, he
6

might have added, licentious habits) are liable to become
hereditary even to the third generation, gradually increasing,
if the cause be continued, till the family becomes extinct."

The temperance question is a large part of the labor question. The complaint of the laboring man that he fails to
receive a fair share of the wealth he helps to create is undeniably true; and when his scanty earnings are diminished by
the waste of intoxicants and tobacco, destitution and wretchedness are certain to overwhelm both himself and family. His
personal loss is a double one ; for he not only drinks up his
wages, but thereby diminishes his productive ability, and
reduces his value as a workingman. He soon takes a lower
place in the working world, and must be content with smaller
wages.

Nothing would so add strength to labor reformers, as a genuine temperance revival in their ranks, which would commit
them to total abstinence from drink, and lead them to the
advocacy of prohibition. An army with banners would not
reinforce them more powerfully.

Alas ! women are powerless to repeal the laws which sanction and protect the drink traffic. They are the greatest sufferers from its ravages, but no redress is afforded them. Illiterate foreign peasants, who cannot read, write, or under7

stand the English language, and whose moral sense is deadened by alcoholic indulgence, and by an appetite inherited
from generations of brutish ancestors, are marshalled to the
polls by tens of thousands to cast their vote in favor of the
saloon, the brewery, and the distillery. But the self-governed,
Christian, cultivated women of the land, its wives and mothers,
are denied the right to a vote in the settlement of the mighty
question. Sooner or later in our country all political conviction crystallizes into ballots, and because women are refused
this power of expression they work at great disadvantage.

The ballot in the hands of woman will prove the most powerful enginery for temperance reform that the world has ever
seen. Prohibition of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
beverages can never be accomplished and enforced, except by
the aid of women's votes, and the day that witnesses their
enfranchisement will behold the beginning of the end. The
temperance work of women is now educational, and covers the
whole field. It is a preparation for the other work on which
they are to enter, in the not far remote future, and that will be
constructive, legislative, and judicial.

Many years ago Lydia Maria Child narrated her visit to a
country church, where an untrained choir sang so shockingly
out of tune and time, that the harsh discord jarred on the ears
of the most uncritical. Presently the clear, sweet soprano of a
8

woman's voice penetrated the unmusical clamor. In perfect
time and exquisite tune, she sang on, her voice soaring above
the din, like the note of a lark. Soon one, and then another
caught her tone, and followed her lead, until when the hymn
ended all the choir were singing in perfect harmony. The
world is full of discord, and seems sadly out of tune. It has
long jangled inharmoniously with strife and sensuality, want
and woe, selfishness and crime uttering their varying plaints
on the ear of the ages. But in these latter days sweeter
sounds are chiming in, and women, who have risen out of the
repression and ignorance of the past, are catching the keynote of the divine song heard at Bethlehem, "Peace on earth
and good-will to men ! " Be it their mission to hasten the fulfillment of the blessed prophecy.

Nearly half a century ago, Margaret Fuller, standing, as
she said, "in the sunny noon of life," wrote a little book,
which she launched on the current of thought and society. It
was entitled " Woman in the Nineteenth C e n t u r y " ; and as
the truths it proclaimed, and the reforms it advocated, were
far in advance of public acceptance, its appearance was the
signal for an immediate, widespread, newspaper controversy,
that raged with great violence. I was young then ; and as I
took the book from the hands of the bookseller, wondering
what the contents of the thin little volume could be to provoke so wordy a strife, I opened at the first page. My attention was immediately arrested, and a train of thought started,
9

by the two mottoes at the head of the opening chapter, one
underneath the other, one contradicting the other.
The first was an old-time adage, indorsed by Shakespeare,
believed in by the world, and quoted in that day very generally.
It is not entirely obsolete. " Frailty, thy name is Woman."
Underneath it, and unlike it was the other,— u The Earth waits
for her Queen." The first described woman as she has been
understood in the past; as she has masqueraded in history;
as she has been made to figure in literature ; as she has, in a
certain sense, existed. The other prophesied of that grander
type of woman, towards which to-day the whole sex is moving,—consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly,—
because the current sets that way, and there is no escape from
it.

"New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth,"—
and the training of fifty years ago is not sufficient for the girls
of to-day. The changed conditions of life that our young
women confront compel greater care and thought on the part
of those charged with their education than has heretofore
been deemed necessary. They are to be weighted with larger
duties, and to assume heavier responsibilities ; for the days of
tutelage seem to be ended for civilized women, and they are to
think and act for themselves.
Nature has so constituted us that the sexes act and re-act
upon each other, making every "woman's cause" a man's
IO

cause, and every man's cause a woman's cause; so that we
" rise or sink
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free."
And they are the foes of the race, albeit not intentional, who
set themselves against the removal of woman's disabilities,
shut in their faces the doors of education or opportunity, or
deny them a large and complete training. For it is true that
u
who educates a woman, educates a race."

Good health is a great pre-requisite of successful, happy
living. To live worthily or happily, to accomplish much for
one's self, or others, when suffering from pain or disease, is
attended with difficulty. Dr. Johnson used to say that "every
man is a rascal when he is sick." And very much of the
peevishness, irritability, capriciousness, and impatience seen in
men and women has its root in bodily illness. The very
morals 'Suffer from disease of the body. Therefore I would
give to " our daughters " a good physical education.

We shall by and by come to recognize the right of every
child to be well born,—sound in body, with inherited tendencies toward mental and moral health. We have learned thai
it is possible to direct the operations of nature so as to have
finer breeds of horses, cattle, and fowls, to improve our
fruits, flowers, and grains. Science searches for the pre-natal
ii

laws of being, and comes to the aid of all who wish to improve the lower creation. When shall an enlightened public
sentiment demand that those who seek of God the gift of little
children shall make themselves worthy the gift, by healthful
and noble living, practical acquaintance with pre-natal laws of
being, and all that relates to the hereditary transmission of
qualities ?

The tendency to follow fashions that deform the body is
inexplicable ; and yet is found among all people, the savage as
well as the civilized. The Polynesian tattooes his body from
head to foot. The Australian wears a plug of bone through
the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other.
Many of the East Indians wear rings in their noses, instead
of in their ears. The Malays blacken their teeth. The
Zulus bore holes in their ears, which holes they enlarge enormously by stretching. Tribes of North-American Indians
flatten the form of the head, commencing the distortion in
infancy. The Chinese bandage the feet of women till they
fail to be the organs of support and locomotion, and resemble
the hoofs of animals in shape. While civilized European and
American women not only deform the feet, pierce the ears for
the wearing of rings, but compress the waist till the vital
organs are displaced, and frightful diseases are incurred.
u
Seest thou not," said Shakespeare, " what a deformed thiet
this fashion i s ? "
12

Beauty comes from within. To be "upright before G-od,
and downright before man,-" to be honest, faithful, helpful,
patient, and kindly disposed, will give a charm to any face,
though it be irregular in feature, or framed in white hair and
beard. It is within the province of all to possess beauty of
this highest order.

Health is a means to an end. It is an investment for the
future. That end is worthy work and noble living. And life
has little to offer the young girl who has dropped into physical
deterioration, which cuts her off from the activities of the
time, and makes existence, to her, synonymous with endurance.

There are women to-day — not a large number as they
" s t a n d and are counted," but a host when estimated by the
largeness of their moral purpose — who watch and weigh legislation in the interest of the advancement of their sex, and oppose it as it erects barriers to their progress. There are others
whose idols of seeming fine gold have deteriorated to filthy
clay, under the debasing influence of the dram-shop, and who
have seen the feet of their unwary sons caught in the nets it
spreads for them, who have dried their useless tears, and are
looking about for a remedy. When they discover that the
dram-shop is protected by law, they organize their forces, and
seek to change it. Is there any unwoinanliness in such action ?
13

If I were able, I would change the public sentiment so
radically, that no girl should be considered well-educated, no
matter what her accomplishments, until she had acquired
knowledge of a trade, a business, a vocation, or a profession.
Self-support would then be possible to her, and she would not
float on the current of life, a part of its useless driftwood,
borne hither and thither by its troubled waters. There would
then be fewer heavily taxed fathers and brothers, toiling like
galley-slaves to support healthy and vigorous human beings in
stagnating idleness,— idle for no earthly reason than that God
has made them women.

Indolence is always demoralizing. It ruins health, destroys beauty, enfeebles the will. And industry is as great a
means of grace to women, as to men.

The very highest function of woman is to raise and train
the family: it is the very highest function of man also. Indeed civilization has but this end in view,—the perpetuation
and improvement of the race. The establishment of homes,
the rearing of families, the founding of schools and colleges,
the planting of institutions, the maintaining of governments,
all are but means to this end. As Humboldt said years ago,
" Governments, religion, property, books, are but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her Master no fruit but
the finished man."
14

The advance of a nation comes only through the improve^
ment of the homes of the nation. As the aggregate of these
may be, so will the nation be. For it is here that the real
humanizing and civilizing is carried forward. As a rule, the
worth, or the worthlessness of the home is the work of the
woman. U A man may build a castle or a palace," says
Frances Power Cobbe, " b u t , poor creature, be he as wise as
Solomon and as rich as Croesus, he cannot turn it into a home.
No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a
woman,—a woman, all by herself, if she likes, and without
any man to help her,—who can turn a house into a home."

A wife and mother should always be mistress of herself and
of her department, and never the slave of another,—not
even when that other is her husband, and the slavery is
founded on her undying love. That robs her of half her value.
u
Grive your child to be educated by a slave," said the old
Greek, " and, instead of one slave, you will then have two."

There is one matter about which there can be but one opinion. The family homestead should be secured to the wife inviolably. She should hold it in fee, secure from the blunders
of crazy speculators, who dishonor legitimate business ; from
the squanderings of the debauche, who sinks the husband in
the sensualist; and from the sad reverses which befall the
honest, sore-pressed man of business. JSiever should the
15

homestead be the basis for business credit. And the wife
should stand firm in the resolve never to consent to the mortgage of the home, nor to its sale, — unless a change of residence compels it, and she is sure that the sale of one home is
antecedent to the purchase of another.

Moral training underlies and permeates all other training
when it is wisely and judiciously given. The education of the
will to the customs and habits of good society begins long before the child is old enough to reason on the subject. But its
education to the law of right, its submission to the will ot
God, while it must be begun early, cannot be carried on to
perfection until the child's reason is developed, and its moral
nature is evolved sufficiently to feel how paramount to all other
demands are those of right and duty.

It is no heresy now to teach that God made man and
woman two halves of one whole, — equal, but different; and
that he created them for the same cause, and to the same ultimate end. They are alike amenable to the laws of God,
which are supreme, and to be obeyed in contravention of the
laws of man, when these conflict.

Milton's theory, that man was to be u for God only," but
woman for " God through'man," is not now accepted: it is
heterodox. Both man and woman are to be " for God only."
i6

There are not two standards of right and wrong, —- one for
man, and one for woman. Nor are there two standards of
morality. It is as wrong for a man to be intemperate and unchaste as for a woman, no matter what a depraved public sentiment may declare to the contrary. It is as wrong for a
woman to lead an idle life, to be untruthful, truckling, and dishonorable, as for a man. And this we must teach thoroughly
till it permeates society, — that there is but one law of right
for both man and woman, which is supreme, and for which
there is no appeal.

The periods of our lives which give us most joy at the
moment, and which are most exquisite in memory, are those
when we have gone the most out of ourselves, and lived for
others.

The secret of many low and miserable lives is the complete absorption of the man and the woman in their own
pleasures, and wants, cares, reputation, and prospects.

The doors of colleges, professional schools, and universities, closed against women for ages, are now open to them.
They are invited to pursue the same courses of study as
their brothers, and are graduated with the same diplomas, and
the question of woman's collegiate education is practically
settled.
17

Trades, businesses, remunerative industries, and the liberal
professions seek women ; and their capacity for public affairs
receives large recognition in the United States. They are
elected, or appointed, to such offices as those of county clerk,
register of deeds, pension agent, prison commissioner, State
librarian, overseer of the poor, school supervisor, school superintendent, executors and administrators of estates, trustees,
guardians, engrossing clerks of State legislatures, superintendents of women's State prisons, college presidents and professors, and members of boards of State charities, lunacy, and
correction. And in all these positions women serve with men,
who acknowledge most graciously the practical wisdom and
virtue they bring to their duties.

Women are occupying positions as accountants and bookkeepers, physicians and surgeons, painters, sculptors, and
architects, authors and journalists, clergy women and lawyers,
and when admitted to practice law at the bar of their own
States, they have the right to practise at the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. President Grant appointed
over five thousand women to the office of post-mistress. Hon.
Carroll D-. Wright, Chief of the National Bureau of the statistics of Labor reports the number of trades, professions, and
occupations in which women are now working as 342.

It is evident to all who watch the movements of the times,
that the experiment of full woman suffrage wrill be made at no
• 18

very remote day, not only in America, but among all civilized
peoples. Women are throbbing with the same general unrest
against a government to which they have never consented, as
men have manifested in their long struggle for liberty against
kings, emperors, popes, and czars.

Earthly life is the first school of the soul, where there are
lessons to be learned, tasks to be mastered, hardships to be
borne, and where God's divinest agent of help is often hindrance. And only as we learn well the lessons given us here,
may we expect to go joyfully forward to that higher school to
which we shall be promoted, where the tasks will be nobler,
the lessons grander, the outlook broader, and where life will
be on a loftier plane.

The highest ideal of marriage is likely, other things being
equal, to eventuate in the highest type of family, and the best
thing that can happen to any human being is to be well born.
A true marriage is the union of one man with one woman,
both of whom are normally developed, mentally, morally, and
physically, of suitable age and similar convictions, who are
drawn to each other by mutual respect and love. The attraction of each to the other is so strong that it unifies their differing tastes and temperaments, and makes their happiness
consist in mutual helpfulness.
It renders concession and
forbearance an ever-fresh delight to both, divides sorrow,
19

doubles pleasure, and creates an Elysium for " the twain made
one " that is found nowhere else on earth.
A low tone pervades society at the present time in reference
to marriage. It is urged upon both men and women as a
means of obtaining a living, and the self-indulgent young man
who is on the hunt for a marriageable heiress, that he may
live without effort, is as common to-day as the luxurious girl
who declares her purpose to marry only a rich man — " a
great catch " — without regard to age, character, intelligence,
or compatibility. Marriages are made for convenience, position, policy, and for almost every other conceivable purpose.
No dream of love hallows them, no thought of noble living
dignifies them, no vision of little children whose u infancy
is a perpetual Messiah," enters the heart of the wretched
home.

Very many of the evils that have sprung up in the marriage
relation have originated in the fact that one sex has been the
sole dictator of laws which concern both equally. Men have
made the laws of marriage arid divorce, women have never
been consulted as to their wisdom, or their adaptability to
women's circumstances, or their approval of them.

Only six of the United States allow the married mother to
be an equal owner and guardian of the minor children with
their father. In all other States the father is their sole owner
and guardian. If the mother has no ownership in her little
20

children, whom she wins in the valley of death at the risk of
her own life, she is indeed pauperized, most abject, most
wretched. Ah, if men were not, in most instances, better
than the laws they have made for women, this world would
be Pandemonium itself!

4

' No ordinary man," said John Stuart Mill years ago, " i s
willing to find at his fireside an equal in the person he calls
his wife." Have we outgrown the narrowness of the day
when these words were penned? Are men now just enough
to counsel with women, in formulating a code of laws that
shall bear equally on husband and wife ? Are they prepared
to convert into living verity the axiom of our great Bill of
Rights, which declares that u all just governments derive their
power from the consent of the governed " ?

' ' The ultimate form of government for the world is republican," says Matthew Arnold, " and America easily leads the
future." Public opinion, in our country, long ago decided
that ' ' universal suffrage is the first truth and only basis of a
genuine republic," and that no just government can be formed
without the consent of the governed." Our fathers enunciated
and defended these doctrines by a generation of dispute with
the British crown, and at last won their case, in the arbitrament of a seven years' war. They probably did not think of
women at the time. They used the word "people," which
21

includes women, and what they struggled for and won was a
principle of universal application. For if the ballot is given
man to protect him in " h i s life, liberty, and property," for
the same reasons should it be given to woman, as she has the
same u life, liberty, and property" to protect. And this is
to-day very largely conceded, for no valid argument can be
made against it.
During the last fifty years the evolution of woman has
lifted her out of a legal relation to man which was that of a
servant to a master, or a ward to a guardian. To-day she
stands by his side a disfranchised citizen. Every step of her
advance from slavery to her present partial freedom has been
hotly contested by men, and sometimes by women, who
in selfish luxury and unthinking ignorance, have been subsidized by demagogues, and used as flails to beat back
their struggling sisters from the attainment of their aims. The
bitter conflict still goes on. There is no lack of vulgar inuendo, or ignoble political dodge, among the weapons of
woman's opponents. Every rag of prejudice, and every
threadbare scrap of objection are brought into requisition
when women demand their rights, although they have been
shrivelled a hundred times in the scorching fires of the last
forty years' debate.

Only by complete enfranchisement which will place women on
an equal legal footing with the men of the nation, can their
centuries of dishonor be brought to an honorable close. Nor
will this accomplish any quick-coming millenium. It will
22

only bring in the beginning of the end, when manly men and
womanly women, equal in rights, but differing in function,
shall work together for the accomplishment of righteousness
and justice in national, as in family life.

The best and noblest men of the world are found in our
republic. In the mighty warfare which they are waging for
the good against the evil in the nation, they are fearfully hindered by an army of their own sex, who crowd the prisons,
and surge through the dram-shops. Let them reinforce themselves with the votes of the wives and mothers in the homes,
and the women in the schools and churches, and the great
reforms, which now seem to require a century for their accomplishment, will hasten to success in a brief score of years.

There is no country like America. The youngest of the
family of nations, its territorial area exceeds that of Rome
when its empire was mightiest. Europe, with her sixty
empires, kingdoms, and republics, is only a sixth larger in
extent. Its population of sixty-three millions includes all
tongues, creeds, and races. Every nation on the globe sends
us yearly a consignment of another million, most of whom
bring with them brawn and muscle, health, hope, and energy.
The railroad and steamship, telegraph and telephone, make all
these millions akin. Bankrupt in the start, our country has
in a century outstripped all nations in the acquisition of wealth.
2

3

Its resources are of every variety, and multiply infinitely.
With all its imperfections its government is the freest, the
noblest, the most humane, and the most just the world has
ever seen. If the Roman declared his nationality with pride,
the American may announce his with pride and thanksgiving,
for America is
" The mother with the ever open door,
The feet of many nations on her floor,
And room for all the world about her knees."

The great uprising among men, who ignored party and politics, and forgot sect and trade, in the fervor of their quickened
love of country, in April 1861, was paralleled by a similar uprising among women.
The patriotic speech and song, which
fired the blood of men, and led them to enter the list as soldiers, nourished the self-sacrifice of women, and stimulated
them to the collection of hospital supplies, and to brave the
horrors and hardships of hospital life.

The transition of the country from peace to the tumult and
waste of war was appalling and swift, but the regeneration
of its women kept pace with it.
They lopped off superfluities, retrenched in expenditures, became deaf to the calls of
pleasure, and heeded not the mandates of fashion. The incoming patriotism of the hour swept them to the loftiest height
of devotion, and they were eager to do, to bear, to suffer, for
24

the beloved country.
The fetters of caste and conventionalism dropped at their feet, and they sat together; patrician and
plebeian, Protestant and Catholic, and scraped lint, and rolled
bandages, or made garments for the poorly-clad soldiery.

At a meeting in Washington during the war, called in the
interest of the Sanitary Commission, President Lincoln said:
" I am not accustomed to use the language of eulogy. I have
never studied the art of paying compliments to women.
But
I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets
since the creation of the world in praise of women, was applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice
for their conduct during the war. I will close by saying, God
bless the women of America! "

It is to the honor of American women, not that they led
hosts to the deadly charge, and battled amid contending armies,
but that they confronted the horrid aspects of war with mighty
love and earnestness.
They kept up their own courage and
that of the households.
They became ministering angels to
their countrymen who periled health and life for the nation.
They sent the love and impulses of home into the extended
ranks of the army, through the unceasing correspondence they
maintained with " the boys in blue." They planned largely,
and toiled untiringly, and with steady persistence to the end,
that the horrors of the battlefield might be mitigated, and the
25

hospitals abound in needed comforts. The men at the front
were sure of sympathy from the homes, and knew that the
women remembered them with sleepless interest.
" This put
heroic fibre into their souls," said Dr. Bellows, " a n d restored
us our soldiers with their citizen hearts beating normally under
their uniforms, as they dropped them off at the last drumtap."

The object of the Sanitary Commission was to do what the
government could not. The government undertook, of course,
to provide all that was necessary for the soldier, whether sick
or in health ; whether in the army or hospital. But, from the
very nature of things, this was not possible, and it failed in
its purpose, at times, as all governments do, from occasional
and accidental causes. The methods of the Commission were
so elastic and so arranged to meet any emergency, that it was
able to make provision for any need, seeking always to supplement, and never to supplant, the government. It never forgot
that it must be subordinate to army rules and regulations, and
in no way break down the essential military discipline, on the
observance of which everything depended.

In the first five minutes of my interview with General Grant,
I learned, by some sort of spiritual telegraphy, that reticence,
patience, and persistence were his dominant traits. I had had
familiar and unconventional interviews with other officers. I
26

had met, had asked questions and given opinions, had gossiped and joked, and "played the agreeable" with them.
But I would as soon have undertaken a tete-a-tete with the
Sphinx itself as with this quiet, repressed, reluctant, undemonstrative man, and I should have succeeded as well with one as
with the other. 1 instinctively put myself on " short rations"
of talk with him, and so compressed the porosities of language
that I shall never have to give account of u idle words " used
on that occasion.

The courage of the nation during the civil war proved
equal to the great emergency. Its patriotism never faltered, its
faith in the permanency of the undivided republic grew mightier
as the contest was protracted.
But never was a nation more
profoundly thankful for the cessation of war than were the
American people. They turned with infinite gladness to the
duties of peace—they sought to forget the dark days of conflict
through which they had toiled. Quietly, and without any
friction, the vast army was resolved into its original elements,
and soldiers became again civilians, members of homes, and
components of families. A grateful nation still honors the
memories of those who fell in the conflict, cares tenderly for
those who are disabled, and cherishes their stricken families.

No painter has ever put into the sad face of President Lincoln any hint of the beauty that could radiate, and -completely
metamorphose his homely features, when his great soul shone
27

out t h r o u g h t h e m .
N o sculptor h a s ever liberated from the
imprisoning m a r b l e , the face t h a t shone like an angel's w h e n
t h e depths of his large h e a r t were reached. ' ' N o artist is successful," said H e a l y , — one of t h e most successful modern
painters of portraits, — " who does not bring out on the canvas, or in t h e m a r b l e , t h e best there is in his subject, t h e loftiest ideal of N a t u r e when she designed t h e m a n . "
I f this be
t r u e , then neither painter nor sculptor h a s ever been successful
with M r . Lincoln's face.

P r e s i d e n t Lincoln h a d a genius for kindness and s y m p a t h y .
H e traveled out of his w a y to do good ; and, overwhelmed with
public affairs, he found time for m a n y exquisite private
ministrations. H a s a n y t h i n g ever been penned m o r e touching
t h a n t h e following letter, w r i t t e n by h i m to a m o t h e r w h o m
t h e w a r h a d bereaved of five sons ?—
Dear Madam : — I have seen in the flies of the W a r Department
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are
the mother of five sons who died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and comfortless must be any words of mine
which should attempt to beguile you of the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to
save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish
of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of
the loved and lost, and the solemn pride t h a t must be yours, to
have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
A.

Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
23

LINCOLN.

The millionaire and the tramp form the two extremes of
American society; but in one respect they have a common
quality — they are for the most part homeless. The homeless
tramp, because of dire poverty, vagabondizes to any place that
will give him temporary food and shelter. The homeless rich,
because of what Matthew Arnold calls u beastly prosperity,"
u
close their houses " b y the sea-side, in the mountains, and
in the cities, and wander the world over in quest of pleasure. Both classes are itinerants, and both suffer loss because
they are not rooted in homes, which "never so humble," or
never so grand, give an anchorage to the human being, and
a chance for growth.

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E x t r a c t from an ode sung at a Festival in Music H a l l , M a y
29, 1862.

And some — oh, more than brothers they,
We call them saviors now ! —
Have pledged their lives to save the land,
And bravely keep the vow.
God of our fathers ! where to-day
May be their battle-field,
Be thou to them a strong right arm,
A shelter and a shield!
Why should we weep ? They need no tears
Who look from heaven to-clay;
And every swiftly speeding hour
Makes less to them our way.
Then sing along the broken lines —
Close up the ranks anew —
F o r see ye not the hills of heaven
E'en now loom up to view ?

30

An Angel Quest.
'Twas morn in the glorious summer-time,
The mountain-tops were reel,
Each flower its drooping eyelids oped,
And raised its clewy head.
The breeze swept back a veil of mist
Erom singing streams of blue,
And then went playing in and out,
The vine-wreathed casement through.
'Twas on this glorious summer morn
A guest to us was given,
So wond'rous fair, she almost seemed
A fugitive from heaven.
Our hearts swung wide to let her in —
A tiny baby guest —
And wondered at the love and joy
With which our home was blest.

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Wide swung the door on noiseless hinge —
The heavenly land stood full in view;
The silent angel waited near,
With outstretched hand, to lead her through.
Oh, deathless love! that brighter glowed,
As life went out, in dark eclipse,
Bend low, and lay thine healing chrism
On stricken heart and anguished lips.
Oh, mighty faith! whose strengthening arm
Bore her through death with conquering tread,
Uplift us o'er the fogs of life,
That we may see there are no dead.

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