a 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
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'ST.0WE 
 
HEROINES OF 
 MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 BY 
 ELMER C. ADAMS 
 
 * * 
 
 AND 
 
 WARREN DUNHAM FOSTER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 IRcw 
 
 STUB G IS & W 
 . COMPANY 
 
 . ; V 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
.1 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY 
 STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1913 
 
 ' .'. 
 
 
 
 
 
FOEEWOED 
 
 BY ELLEN M. HENKOTIN 
 
 Hon. President of General Federation of 
 
 Women's Clubs 
 
 I am the woman, ark of the law and its breaker, 
 Who chastened her steps and taught her knees to be 
 
 meek, 
 
 Bridled and bitted her heart and humbled her cheek, 
 Parcelled her will, and cried "Take more!' to the 
 
 taker, 
 Shunned what they told her to shun, sought what 
 
 they bade her seek, 
 Locked up her mouth from scornful speaking: now 
 
 it is open to speak. 
 
 WILLIAM VAUGHAN MOODY. 
 
 In all causes, in all lands, the woman who 
 steps aside from the beaten path, the pioneer 
 woman, must make her decision and abide by it: 
 she must live her life alone. She may be sur- 
 rounded by family and friends, but if she does 
 not shun what they proscribe and seek what they 
 ordain, her inner life must be passed in soli- 
 tude. For creeds and philosophies she has no 
 care, unless she can apply them, though she has 
 tried all those of man's invention. 
 
 In the past woman has occupied a far more 
 important economic position than has been con- 
 ceded to her. While generalities are often mis- 
 
 255419 
 
FOKEWOBD 
 
 leading, the following distinction may be made 
 between the activities of man and woman. The 
 intellect and power of man have been given to 
 the conquest of the earth the natural forces- 
 first for his own use, as in the individualistic 
 age ; then for his tribe or clan ; and, in a more 
 advanced civilization, for his country. Woman, 
 on the contrary, has centered her activities on 
 developing the agencies which conserve life. 
 First as the mother in the tent of the nomad she 
 dressed the skins that her man and their chil- 
 dren might be clothed; she cultivated the corn 
 around the tent that the family might have a 
 permanent supply of food; she preserved the 
 meat against the winter. In the tribal life 
 women carried on the trades which underlie the 
 home, working in groups. Now, in modern city [ 
 life women are endeavoring to adapt them- 
 selves to the specialization necessary under 
 present conditions for both man and woman. 
 In primitive civilizations the woman alone ap- 
 plied the industrial arts to the articles in daily 
 use. The man did not concern himself with the 
 form or the ornamentation of his garments ; the 
 woman not only manufactured the garments 
 worn by the family but ornamented them as 
 well. These conditions still exist among all 
 primitive races, the women doing the work, and 
 bearing and nursing the children. Even to-day 
 in many civilized countries either the economic 
 stress or military duty, which must be per- 
 formed by the men, throw a burden, quite out 
 of proportion to her limited power of accom- 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 plishment, on the shoulders of the woman. It is 
 estimated that the German woman supports the 
 civil list of the government. In the United 
 States, where women are considered more for- 
 tunate than elsewhere, the last census shows 
 that approximately eight million women are 
 wage-earners and this number does not include 
 those women who do their housework, only the 
 wage-earners. Thus woman has always been 
 and still is in the labor-market and in industry, 
 and it is vain to decry her contribution to 
 primitive or modern civilization. It is true 
 that a larger number of men than of women 
 have scaled the heights of genius, but, while the 
 men were climbing, all women were laboring to 
 sustain life, and thus materially increase the 
 sum of human comfort and happiness. In re- 
 calling ancient days, the thought of the hard 
 and painful struggle of the woman of the no- 
 madic tribes to keep herself and her children 
 alive is absolutely appalling. To-day the peas- 
 ant woman the world over must toil almost day 
 and night to wring a bare living from a bit^of 
 ground. The thousands of women in modern 
 industry in factories, in stores succeed in se- 
 curing on the average but a very meager wage. 
 It is true there have been periods when 
 woman has emerged from her semi-seclusion 
 and has taken her part in the world's honors 
 the great women of the Church, who founded 
 the missions which still endure, the women who 
 have won renown in the paths of literature, 
 and those who in the golden age of the Italian 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 and French renaissance received a European 
 tribute of recognition and admiration. All 
 these women were, however, exceptions, and 
 exceptionally placed, and the great mass of 
 women profited not a whit by their glory. The 
 interests of women have in the past been 
 strangely overlooked in all schemes of govern- 
 ment, in the laws which control family and civic 
 life, even in religious life. Only in very recent 
 times has woman obtained a measure of repre- 
 sentation and found voice to express herself 
 as a member of a group. The individualistic 
 life of woman in the past, either in tent or in 
 palace, has had the effect of making her, as a 
 general thing, extremely tenacious of her own 
 opinions and convinced of the importance of 
 her own affairs. Thus even in face of the 
 splendid future of new and wider opportunities 
 before her, she is sometimes timid, apathetic, 
 and bound by outworn conventionalities, the old 
 ideas of the past giving no place to those of the 
 present and the time to come. At the first 
 ' ' lion in her path" such a one falls back 
 alarmed, and flees panic-stricken to her old nar- 
 row prison. But, for all that, now as never 
 before women are wide awake to a realization 
 of their identical and common interests as 
 women. The spirit of democracy is invading 
 even the four walls of home; it is calling them 
 out into the world the great impersonal world 
 to combine and struggle for their rights and 
 privileges, their happiness, and their well being. 
 Now, at the bright dawn of a fairer day for 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 women, is a peculiarly fitting moment to pause 
 and review, as is done in the case of a group 
 of noble women in the present volume, all that 
 we owe to our sisters of the past, beautiful in 
 memory, who haunt us with their charm, their 
 intellect, their tenderness, or their power 
 warrior queens and empresses; women of the 
 religious life; teachers and nurses; humble 
 toilers, heroic in patient endurance ; brave pio- 
 neers in reform; all those high souls who in 
 one fashion or another have left the world 
 lovelier and better for their lives and labors. 
 The following pages are concerned with pio- 
 neers in modern progress. We Americans ac- 
 knowledge our debt to two classes of these 
 pioneers : to those who in pain or danger walked 
 beside the men on the prairies or through the 
 forests, who shared their labors in clearing and 
 building, and organizing the school and the 
 church; and to those other heroines, true pio- 
 neers, dauntless yet tender spirits, who blazed 
 new trails for their sex in new worlds of 
 thought and beneficent effort, in philanthropy, 
 in literature and in the professions. Souls of 
 high courage, belonging to this latter group, 
 are presented in this book, women who mate- 
 rially, intellectually, and morally struck out 
 new and perilous ways, and who pushed on 
 fearlessly and without a backward look in the 
 face of derision and strong hostility alike from 
 their own sex and from the opposite sex 
 women who represent the latest stage in a 
 progress that has led from the mere mother of 
 
FOKEWORD 
 
 the family to the mother of the group, and soi 
 to the "World Mother" of to-day; women who 
 find their high calling in devoting their hearts 
 and their intelligence to the mastery of great 
 problems in government, in science, and in ad- 
 vanced ethics, upon which the future welfare 
 of their sisters depend. The women of to-day, 
 who reap the harvest sown by the "heroines of 
 modern progress," can with difficulty appre- 
 hend how dearly the pioneers paid in body and 
 in soul for the privileges they now so freely 
 enjoy. They can only repay the debt they owe 
 by a just appreciation of its value and a full, 
 grateful recognition of the high courage of those 
 who broke the bonds of conventionality and 
 opened wide for them the door of opportunity. 
 It is to such appreciation and to such recognition 
 that this book cannot fail to lead. 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 For several years requests have come to me 
 for adequate snort biographies of those women 
 who have done the most for the world's prog- 
 ress during the last century. Members of my 
 college classes in English composition began 
 it; young men and women alike told me that 
 they were disappointed in being unable to find 
 concise and readable statements of the lives 
 of such women as Florence Nightingale and 
 Frances Willard. To be sure, there were many 
 biographies, but these books, though excellent 
 in their way, often proved lacking in some es- 
 sential. Other teachers in public schools as 
 well as in college state librarians and village 
 librarians, school officials, managers of reading 
 circles and normal school executives reported 
 the same need. Even more significant, how- 
 ever, have been statements from fathers and 
 mothers and boys and girls, statements that 
 they wanted between two covers the story of 
 the women who have worked most successfully 
 to make this world of ours a better place to 
 live in. 
 
 To meet this need, this book has been writ- 
 ten. Obviously, one volume cannot contain the 
 biographies of all the illustrious heroines of 
 modern progress ; the task of selection has been 
 difficult. Although we have been forced to 
 
PREFACE 
 
 make no mention of many women whose deeds 
 are as well worth chronicling as some that are 
 set forth here, we have tried to include biog- 
 raphies that are representative of the best 
 feminine effort of the century. And how far 
 reaching is that effort! How much have 
 women contributed to the evolution of social 
 ethics ! In the lives here pictured can be read 
 the story of modern progress. And in the 
 story of modern progress can be read these 
 lives. 
 
 "Whoever candidly studies modern progress 
 will find facts to astound him. If the student 
 is a man, he may also be somewhat sobered in 
 his traditional self -adulation about the superior 
 initiative and originality of his sex ; if a woman, 
 she may see good reason to lift up her heart 
 and rejoice, because her sisters, far from be- 
 ing the dependents and imitators they were 
 once thought, have founded or shaped so many 
 of our institutions that modern society, to a 
 very great extent, is a woman-made society. 
 Our penal system, by which wrong doers are 
 reformed instead of flogged; our hospitals, with 
 their life-saving care, and our nurses who pre- 
 vent disease in the homes 4 of the poor and aid 
 physicians in the homes of the rich; our 
 woman's colleges, where women are educated 
 to be the peers of men, as well as the teachers 
 of the young ; our peace-time service of the Bed 
 Cross that succors so many victims of flood, 
 fire, and cyclone ; our riddance of negro slavery, 
 once the menace of national honor; our tern- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 perance societies, and all the encouragement 
 they lend to cleanly and sober living; our fast- 
 growing sentiment for woman suffrage, at- 
 tended by its train of social reforms ; our clubs 
 in which women, escaped from the narrowness 
 of the house, may both amuse and instruct 
 themselves in the company of their equals, and 
 unite for social service; our settlements, try- 
 ing to distribute the benefits of civilization and 
 recombine the classes in a true democracy 
 each of these things is in part, and most of 
 them are for the greater part, the work of 
 women. 
 
 But if it surprises the reader that women 
 have done so much, he will ask what kind of 
 women did it, and how the various tasks upon 
 which they entered reacted upon them, as 
 women. For always the question that flashes 
 out when one speaks of woman's work, is 
 whether the woman was any less a woman for 
 doing it. The fact is that each reform has been 
 the natural, almost the inevitable, outgrowth 
 of a woman's experience as a woman and 
 the expression of a rich feminine personality. 
 The times made the reformer, and the re- 
 former made the times ; and each may be read 
 in each. 
 
 The purpose of these little stories is to show 
 how certain women, under certain influences, 
 grew into worth-while personalities; and then 
 how they reacted upon society in a way that, 
 while still personal, touched so great and gen- 
 eral a need that they became representatives 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 of millions, and hence leaders, truly " hero- 
 ines " of modern progress. 
 
 The stories, therefore, are intimate charac- 
 ter sketches of women in their proper social 
 and historic setting. The endeavor has been to 
 avoid rhapsody and the heaping up of ad- 
 jectives. These feats of rhetoric sometimes 
 appear all too common with biographers, par- 
 ticularly the biographers of women. The 
 method attempted here has been to show the 
 character growing, resolving and acting under 
 stimulus necessarily, therefore, more by the 
 relation of incidents than by description. We 
 have tried, however, not to smother our narra- 
 tive by anecdotes ; not to use illustrations that 
 do not illustrate. It is our hope that, although 
 the characters thus sketched may not be so 
 brilliantly colored, they may be the more ob- 
 jective, they will appear in clearer outlines- 
 and they can be seen to move. The women of 
 the book are to the authors interesting cases 
 of human nature in the course of development. 
 The opinions most often given are the women's 
 own opinions about themselves, and about 
 their work and the world. For the way life 
 looked to them is, for our purposes, more im- 
 portant than the way that they may happen to 
 look to us, or to any of their admiring friends. 
 
 It has been with the young woman of from 
 twelve to thirty in mind that we have written 
 this book. We feel we have reason to hope, 
 however, that the stories we have told will 
 appeal to her little sister, her mother and 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 her grandmother to say nothing of her brother 
 and father. 
 
 Acknowledgment is due to Mr. M. A. De Wolfe 
 Howe for valuable suggestions, to Mr. Gluyas 
 Williams for his share in the labor of editing, 
 to Mr. Paul P. Foster for his assistance in se- 
 curing photographs, to the many individuals 
 and institutions that have furnished us mate- 
 rial, and to the many persons, young and old, 
 whose enthusiastic interest in the lives of the 
 women whose stories we have told gave the 
 stimulus that led to the creation of the book. 
 Acknowledgment is due, also, to those friends 
 and relatives whose help has been so intimate 
 as to be intangible but so powerful as to have 
 been indispensable. 
 
 When a book is the joint product of two 
 minds, it is only fair to state what the division 
 of labor has been. In this instance credit for 
 whatever literary excellence there may be is 
 due to Mr. Adams. His collaborator has fur- 
 nished but ideas, plans and suggestions. 
 
 Attention may here be called to the chronolog- 
 ical outline at the end of this volume, which af- 
 fords a conspectus of each of the lives, a broader 
 conspectus of the relations of each life to the 
 others and of all of them to the events and move- 
 ments of the time, and also indicates the under- 
 lying unity of the book as a whole. 
 
 W. D. F. 
 Boston, Mass., 
 
 June 15, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ELIZABETH FRY 1 
 
 MARY LYON 30 
 
 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 58 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 89 
 
 ^FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE . . 120 
 
 K CLARA BARTON . . . . 147 
 
 X JULIA WARD HOWE 178 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD 215 
 
 J. ELLEN FOSTER 245 
 
 JANE ADDAMS 280 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 309 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE .... Frontispiece 
 
 PACING PAGE 
 
 /ELIZABETH FRY 1 
 
 MARY LYON 30 
 
 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 58 
 
 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 120 
 
 CLARA BARTON 146 
 
 JULIA WARD HOWE 178 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD 214 
 
 J. ELLEN FOSTER . 244 
 
 JANE ADDAMS 280 
 
J 
 
 1 O 
 
 
ELIZABETH FRY 
 

 leroines of Modern Progress 
 
 ELIZABETH FEY 
 
 earliest record of the character of Eliza- 
 beth Gurney (Fry) is in a letter written by 
 r mother before the child was three years 
 1. She said, in her quaint Quaker phrase, 
 V[y dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and 
 in every sense of the word, truly engag- 
 jg." This docility, as will be seen, did not 
 anif est itself so charmingly a few years later. 
 The parents were liberal Quakers, living in 
 prwich, England. Elizabeth, the third of 
 J3ven children, was born May 21, 1780. Dur- 
 her first twelve years she was dominated 
 her mother. That excellent woman had 
 ^o formulas for child raising. She was very 
 atethodical. She divided the day up into small 
 irts, and allotted one part to study, one to re- 
 : jious observance, one to gardening or house- 
 ,Drk, one to recreation, and so on. And then 
 t e took special care to fill the children's minds 
 1th religious ideas. While walking in the 
 irden she would tell them about Adam and 
 ve being driven out of Eden, about the flood, 
 id the plague, and other gloomy instances of 
 [>ivine wrath. 
 
 The child Betty had a nervous make-up that 
 ceived more harm than good from this treat- 
 
2 HEROINES' OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 ment. The "method* did not agree with ler. 
 She would not, or could not, apply herself to 
 her lessons in that ceremonious way, and she 
 had the name of being stupid. A name for ob- 
 stinacy attached to her too and, she admits, 
 with justice. "I was disposed to a sp;rit 
 of contradiction, always ready to see thing? a 
 little differently from others, and not willing 
 to yield my sentiments to theirs.' 
 
 The gloomy Bible stories stirred up her ,m- 
 agination far too much. The pleasure of >er 
 childhood was almost spoiled through fear. 
 She suffered acutely on being left alone in -he 
 dark. At her first sight of the sea, perhaps be- 
 lieving it another deluge, she wept for terror. 
 And where her religious impressions ran coi n - 
 ter to her natural affection, her anxiety flrist 
 have been extreme. When her mother slept in 
 the day time she "used to go gently to her b<-d- 
 side to listen, from the awful fear that she (lid 
 not breathe.'' And as for the rest of the fam- 
 ily, she wished two large walls would crrsh 
 them all together, that they might perish at 
 once, and thus avoid the misery of each other's 
 death. 
 
 When Elizabeth was twelve years old, the 
 mother died, and she came under the care or 
 rather the neglect of her liberal-minded and 
 easy-going father. For a time she held away 
 from the rigid course in which she had been 
 brought up, and became a "fly-away" creature, 
 whose only pleasure was in society. She had 
 a tall, slender figure, and a pleasing 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 3 
 
 nance, with "a profusion of soft, flaxen hair"; 
 in conversation she was brisk and pert, and 
 never lacked for an original, witty rejoinder; 
 and it was not unnatural that for the next five 
 years she should turn these graces to account. 
 
 She learned to ride, as most English country 
 women do. She learned to sing and to dance, 
 against the rules of the strict Quakers, and 
 indulged in these amusements within her 
 father's house. The study that she formerly 
 put upon religion she now put upon dress, 
 sometimes scandalizing the sober brethren in 
 the meeting house by wearing "smart purple 
 boots, laced with scarlet." She gave dinners 
 and attended them; she ran, "almost beside 
 herself," to hear the band play in the square; 
 she went to the opera, and was made giddy on 
 seeing the Prince and being seen by him. More 
 than that, her mind strayed far from religious 
 themes and she became a hardened doubter. 
 "I seldom or never thought of religion," she 
 says. "I gave way freely to the weaknesses 
 of youth. I was flirting, idle, rather proud and 
 vain till the time I was seventeen." 
 
 Due allowance must be made for the severe 
 canons by which she judged herself. In a 
 gayer society she would, at her worst, prob- 
 ably be thought a quiet and exemplary sort of 
 girl. But the Quakers set up an ideal of so- 
 berness that her bubbling spirits led her to 
 deny every day. 
 
 When she was /about seventeen, however, the 
 prevailing modes of thought and the remem- 
 
4 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 bered lessons of her mother began to disturb 
 her conscience. She was too much "wrapped 
 up in trifles/' and wanted a greater stimulus t 
 virtue. "I am in a most idle mind," she wrot 
 in her journal, "and inclined to have an indo- 
 lent, dissipated day. Company to dinner; I 
 must beware of being a flirt, it is an abominable 
 character ; I hope I shall never be one, and yet 
 I fear I am one now a little. Be careful not" 
 to talk at random. If I do pass this day with- 
 out one foolish action, it is the first I have ever 
 passed so." 
 
 With her mind in this state, it was easy for 
 her friends to ply her on the subject of reli- 
 gion. They advised her to read books and 
 tracts on it. But she would do no such thing. 
 She said if she was to consider the subject at 
 all, she would read the New Testament and 
 judge clearly for herself. She did begin the 
 reading and the result took her violently b; 
 surprise. 
 
 Her sins found her out in a most amazing 
 fashion. She was flirtatious; she got out of 
 temper with the children; she contradicted 
 without cause; she mumped when her sisters 
 were liked and she was not; she lost her tem- 
 per; gave way to luxury; was idle in mind; 
 spoke satirically to the hurt of others; was 
 occupied too much with trifles, such as dress; 
 she was inclined to be extravagant in her own 
 expenses and mean in her gifts to others. In 
 fact, a great many of her bad impulses were 
 allowed to sway her, and she did not hearken 
 
 
ELIZABETH FRY 5 
 
 as she ought to the good. And some days, 
 after a " storm of pleasure,' her mind was 
 hopelessly dissatisfied and "flat." 
 
 Then one night she dreamed she stood on a 
 beach. The tide rose and surrounded her, she 
 could not run, the water was about to wash her 
 away, and she had all the terror of being 
 drowned. This vision was repeated the next 
 night and the next, and so for weeks, until she 
 dreaded to go to sleep. She had already re- 
 solved to seek relief, if it were possible, in re- 
 ligion, when William Savery, an American 
 Quaker, came to Norwich. After hearing him 
 preach one Sunday, when she sat in a row with 
 her six sisters, she was deeply moved, and wept 
 most of the way home. "What he said and 
 what I felt was like a refreshing shower fall- 
 ing upon earth that had been dried up for 
 ages." And that night she dreamed the sea 
 was coming as usual, but she was beyond its 
 reach! She believed the dream was an omen 
 from heaven ; and from that day, one sister tes- 
 tifies, "her love of pleasure and the world 
 seemed gone," and the leading aim of her life 
 was to abound in piety. 
 
 She did not at once unite with the Quaker 
 sect. Her "obstinacy" or independence of 
 spirit prevented that. She prayed not to be 
 led away by enthusiasm or the opinions of 
 others, but to consult the Power or Light 
 within at every step. She knew she had reli- 
 gion; but she was not conscious of any definite 
 sectarian leanings ; and if she ever did join the 
 
6 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 communion of any church she did not want to 
 repent it. 
 
 However, she awoke one morning in an un- 
 comfortable state, and was astonished that she 
 felt a scruple against dancing. She weighed 
 the matter carefully, testing her feelings for 
 several weeks in the family dances at home and 
 in those at the houses of her friends. She 
 found that the exercise carried her "far be- 
 yond the center " of calm reason and made her 
 do things she later regretted. "If I could 
 make a rule never to give way to vanity, excite- 
 ment or flirting, I do not think I should object 
 to dancing; but it always leads me into one of 
 these faults.' So, after a little more debating, 
 she set down the decision in her journal, "John 
 is just come in to ask me to dance in such a 
 kind way oh, dear me ! Remember this, as I 
 have this night refused to dance with my dear- 
 est brother, I must out of kindness to him not 
 be tempted by any one else. Have mercy, O 
 God, have mercy upon me ! Let me act rightly, 
 I humbly pray Thee. ' ' 
 
 Singing and music of all kinds she shortly 
 gave up, though her natural heart loved them, 
 because they increased all the wild passions and 
 worked on enthusiasm. Yet people sometimes, 
 not knowing her opinions, would ask her to 
 dance or sing, and it embarrassed her greatly 
 to refuse. Hence she assumed the Quaker 
 garb, the cap and close handkerchief, and the 
 drab colored gown. For, she concluded, 
 "Plainness appears to be a sort of protection. 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 7 
 
 to the principles of Christianity." And it was 
 only another short step to the adoption of the 
 numerical style of dates because the months 
 and days were named after pagan gods and 
 the custom of using "thee" and "thy" in her 
 speech. 
 
 At last Elizabeth Gurney was a full fledged 
 Quaker; and not in social forms only, but in 
 her unfaltering faith ; a faith so great that she 
 could say to a dying man she knew the bless- 
 ings of immortality so well that she pitied not 
 his state. 
 
 This spiritual ripening was the thing she 
 thought about constantly, the thing she believed 
 most vital. In her own mind, she was a woman 
 striving for a pure and flawless religion. There 
 was another element in her nature almost un- 
 regarded by her. And yet this element finally 
 wrote her name and fame on the pages of his- 
 tory. 
 
 The girl had a warm heart and was unusually 
 sensitive to the discomforts of others. Her 
 obstinacy related only to matters touching her 
 personal conduct. As she said in her eight- 
 eenth year, "I believe I feel much for my fel- 
 low creatures. I don't remember ever being 
 any time with any one who was not extremely 
 disgusting but I felt a sort of love for them, 
 and I do hope I would sacrifice my life for the 
 good of mankind." 
 
 This tenderness found vent very early in at- 
 tentions to the poor and the sick of Norwich 
 town. She invited poor children on Sunday 
 
8 HEKOINES OF MODERN PEOGEESS 
 
 evenings to read in the Testament, beginning 
 with " Billy' ' and increasing one by one. This 
 gave her so much satisfaction that she opened 
 a charity day school at her father's residence, 
 which in time accommodated eighty pupils. 
 She also visited the sick, giving them religious 
 cheer and useful presents as well. 
 
 All this, however, she did from the generous 
 impulses of her heart, and not from a sense of 
 duty. It needed no act of the will, no dicta- 
 tion of the church, not even the counsel of Scrip- 
 ture. It was not religious, she thought; and 
 she did not count it to herself for righteous- 
 ness. On the other hand, her renunciation of 
 frivolous pleasures, and her devotional exer- 
 cises were thought to be of the greatest mo- 
 ment. The two tendencies in the girl ran on 
 side by side with all her serious thoughts di- 
 rected upon the religious. They would both de- 
 velop strongly, and in ways she little expected. 
 
 Miss Gurney at nineteen had already set her 
 heart upon doing some active work in the 
 church, when she received offers of marriage 
 from Joseph Fry, a London merchant. This 
 overturned all her theories. She had thought 
 the duties of a wife incompatible with those of 
 a church worker. But now whether her affec- 
 tions were touched she does not say she was 
 not certain but the Divine will enjoined her to 
 marry, and she could not have "refused him 
 with a proper authority at this time.' So, she 
 "left all to the wisdom of a superior Power,* 
 wedded her suitor, and went to live in London. 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 9 
 
 Here for a time the spiritual cares of the 
 young wife outweighed all her other interests. 
 First came the prompting to read the Bible 
 aloud in the presence of her guests which she 
 put off and put off with conscience pricking 
 more and more, until at last, "I began to read 
 the forty-sixth Psalm, but was so overcome that 
 I could hardly read, and gave it to Joseph to 
 finish/' Then the Finger of Light pointed to 
 the duty of praying for the women who took tea 
 with her. This threw her into "an agitation 
 not easy to be described,' and made her actu- 
 ally ill in body. She was even vexed with her- 
 self because her manners had too much of the 
 courtier in them ; her aversion to hurting others 
 by telling them the blunt truth, she feared orig- 
 inated in self love. However, she was able by 
 degrees to conquer herself and to measure up 
 to her standard of Christian virtue. 
 
 Then the cares of home began to obsess her, 
 and for some years she drifted away, as she 
 thought, from the straight path of truth. 
 There were so many guests the family did not 
 have one-fourth of their meals alone so many 
 children Mrs. Fry became the mother of 
 eleven that all her days were full of worldly 
 thoughts. Her life appeared to be spent to 
 little more purpose than eating, drinking, sleep- 
 ing and clothing herself; slie was as one who 
 has "lost his pilot and is tossed about by the 
 waves of the world." 
 
 Meanwhile, to be sure, she was not lacking in 
 good works. She found time and means to sue- 
 
10 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 cor many destitute and ill. But to her way of 
 thinking this did not atone for her spiritual 
 back-sliding. Her charity was nothing. She 
 hoped it might not prove a snare to her. "It 
 is one of those things that give my nature pleas- 
 ure ; therefore I believe I am no further praise- 
 worthy than that I give way to a natural in- 
 clination. ' ' 
 
 Still, even a woman with such unworldly 
 ideals could little by little become reconciled to 
 a housewife's lot. Religion, she had always 
 held, should not unfit one for the duties of 
 this life, but "stimulate and capacitate " her 
 to perform those duties properly. And now she 
 could, though perhaps at rare moments, believe 
 that "doing our duty is most effectually serv- 
 ing the Lord" ; that a careworn wife and mother 
 may serve as nobly as a soldier in the Church 
 Militant; and that one should rejoice in being 
 something, or nothing, as He may see best for 
 us. It was from this valley of content that she 
 was to be led out, after eight years, into the 
 land of her ideal. 
 
 Mrs. Fry's father fell ill, and died with an 
 avowal of Christian trust on his lips. On en- 
 tering the room, soon after, she had an expe- 
 rience possible only for those who are upheld 
 by the purest faith. Her heart "was bowed 
 within" her, in love not only for the deceased, 
 but also for the living. She could not under- 
 stand it. But the power given to her was won- 
 derful, and the cross none ; her heart was so full 
 that she could scarcely hinder the utterance of 
 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 11 
 
 her thanksgiving and praise. The feeling con- 
 tinued into the next day. And at the grave, 
 the fear of man being removed, she fell on her 
 knees with a strange outburst, ' ' Great and mar- 
 velous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty! 
 just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of 
 Saints! Be pleased to receive our thanksgiv- 
 ing. ' ' 
 
 Days and nights of gloom followed this. 
 What, asked the timid worshiper, would people 
 think? Yet the very next time she was in meet- 
 ing a similar impulse arose, and a scriptural 
 text rested on her mind until her fright was 
 extreme, and it appeared that duty would com- 
 pel her to utter it. She cried out to be excused 
 for that time. But at the next meeting the 
 words recurred and courage with them and 
 she " dared again to open her mouth in public.' 
 
 In short, it seemed very much as if, accord- 
 ing to Quaker beliefs and precepts, Elizabeth 
 Fry was called to be a minister. Her family 
 responsibilities were heavy and she was loath 
 to shirk them; her preparation for public 
 speaking was not what it should be ; and she felt 
 unworthy, before the Lord, of such a sacred 
 work. "Yet when the feeling and power con- 
 tinue, so that I dare not omit it, then what can 
 Ido!" 
 
 She could do nothing but submit. She went 
 on speaking, therefore, and, her power increas- 
 ing with her practice, she was within a year 
 acknowledged a minister by the Society of 
 Friends. This act entitled her to appoint spe- 
 
12 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 cial meetings and, with the consent of the local 
 society, to preach the gospel abroad. 
 
 This ordination was conferred in 1810. For 
 the next six years she engaged in active min- 
 istry, in England and Scotland, and met every- 
 where with eminent success. Those who heard 
 her simple, earnest speeches and prayers were 
 struck first with surprise, then with awe, and 
 then with pious fervor. Particularly was she 
 fitted to wait at the bedsides of the sick and 
 dying. Though it was sometimes awful "to be 
 looked to as a minister from whom something 
 is expected," the afflicted, it seems, seldom 
 looked in vain. She tells of one occasion where 
 "we had, I think, a most glorious time; for the 
 power of the Most High appeared to over- 
 shadow us. ' And her dying brother, when she 
 prayed, exclaimed, "What a sweet prayer!' 
 and afterward, "What a beautiful day this has 
 been. ' ' Altogether Elizabeth Fry had been dig- 
 nified with what she believed was the highest 
 calling, that of a truly inspired minister for the 
 Friends. Her daily and hourly prayer was that 
 she should not err or fail in any particular of 
 that calling. 
 
 At the same time, two forces were at work 
 that would in a measure undo her. The first 
 was that unforced tenderness of her nature 
 which almost daily prompted her to acts of 
 benevolence. Finding that the poor children 
 near her home were ignorant and shiftless, she 
 opened a school for them. She kept a depot of 
 calico, flannels, and medicines which in hard 
 
ELIZABETH FRY 13 
 
 weather she would in person dispense in the 
 most squalid homes. She had soup boiled in an 
 outhouse and supplied hundreds with nourish- 
 ing meals. She never, as was said, took any 
 pride in these deeds ; they were natural and not 
 religious. But all the same they consumed her 
 time. She could no more resist doing them 
 than she could resist speaking in meeting. And, 
 in spite of the "higher" offices that went be- 
 side, she esteemed them well worth her effort. 
 
 The other thing that disturbed her was the 
 conduct of her children. When they were 
 young, she prayed that they might rather die 
 than live to dishonor the Cause ; and at that age 
 her motherly kindness so enveloped them that 
 they obeyed, and she had little fear. As they 
 grew up, however, she could not hold them so 
 well in rein. She was too much absent from 
 home, and when at home she was too indulgent 
 of their whims. Their father, who did not ob- 
 serve the Quaker formulas strictly, set them an 
 example in waywardness. Then, many of their 
 more distant relatives adhered to the Church of 
 England. In consequence they began to pull 
 away one by one from the faith of their mother. 
 They all joined other denominations. Eliza- 
 beth Fry, a minister for the Friends, could not 
 but doubt they were being ensnared by evil. 
 
 These two minor interests, then, interfered 
 with her wholehearted service as a sectarian 
 minister. She tried to set them aside, or to 
 hold them in the background of her thoughts. 
 But she little knew how strong they were. 
 
14 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGEESS 
 
 They would take a larger and larger place as 
 the years went on, and would turn her career 
 into unforeseen ways. And the change would 
 be both for her good and that of the world. 
 
 One winter day in 1813 a member of the So- 
 ciety of Friends came to ask Mrs. Fry to help 
 allay the sufferings of the prisoners in New- 
 gate jail. She stacked her carriage with cloth- 
 ing, intending to distribute it and then go about 
 her business. But when she peeped into the 
 jail, she saw that which made her think twice. 
 
 The great room was one horde of scrambling 
 women and children. Some women were old 
 and some were girls, some vicious looking and 
 hard, and some innocent and frightened and 
 the children, they surely were guiltless of any 
 crime ! Everybody was in rags for the prison 
 did not clothe them and most of them unclean. 
 Some were cooking, some washing, and some, 
 worn out, were sleeping amid the din with only 
 a raised board for a pillow. Others were gam- 
 ing; some stretched out their hands to the 
 strangers in clamorous begging; and a good 
 many to come to the worst were drinking, 
 and quarreling and using, as one said, "the 
 most terrible language. ' 
 
 Elizabeth Fry gave away the clothing she 
 had brought and then went home. But she 
 carried in her mind a grewsome picture : a pic- 
 ture of guilty women without comfort or re- 
 proof, of innocent women herded with the guilty 
 and forced to hear their talk, of children, who 
 had never so much as thought of evil, exposed 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 15 
 
 to the company of the most abandoned crim- 
 inals of the London slums. Elizabeth Fry as a 
 young woman had thought her path a hard one 
 because her sisters did not exactly conform. 
 But they had almost conformed; and their 
 ideal of virtue was as high as hers. How, 
 then, must she have sympathized with the many 
 here who would do right if they could but who 
 had fallen among such temptations? 
 
 At that time a wrong-doer was looked upon 
 as a willful enemy of society, as a person who 
 from wicked motives born within himself loved 
 to infringe the rights of others. The proper 
 way to reward him was to take an eye for an 
 eye and a tooth for a tooth. Or rather you 
 could exact more than equal payment ; for since 
 the man was incurable you might as well have 
 his life and be done with it ; and if he was poor 
 you could send him to the gallows for stealing 
 a leg of lamb as readily as you could send an- 
 other man for homicide. That a criminal might 
 possibly be reformed was unthought of. When 
 a person sinned let society take vengeance. 
 That was the eighteenth century idea. 
 
 In tune with this inhuman theory was the 
 prison system of which Elizabeth Fry had 
 caught a glimpse. People were not merely to 
 be detained in the jail ; they were to be punished 
 there. Hence all the women good and bad 
 were thrown in together, with absolutely no 
 employment but that of bickering among them- 
 selves, suffering as they might till the day ar- 
 rived for their release or the payment of a 
 
16 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 heavier penalty. The children of a poor 
 mother were shut up with her, simply because 
 there was no one outside to harbor them. 
 
 Elizabeth Fry saw that something was wrong 
 about this. Away back in her youth she had 
 said, " No thing gives me so much pleasure as 
 instructing the lower classes of people. " She 
 had of late, in pity, taught the children of the 
 poor near her London home. But here were 
 children untaught and consorting with evil be- 
 sides. The women she had seen die in want 
 had been fortunate compared to these who 
 lacked every material comfort, and were under 
 moral condemnation as well. The more she 
 thought of it the more it fretted her. In brief, 
 the "natural inclination" to benevolence got 
 the better of the Quaker woman, and she de- 
 termined, if it could be done, to make that 
 prison a little less vile. 
 
 One day she appeared at Newgate and aske< 
 to be left alone with the prisoners. The turn- 
 key warned her to put her valuables in his 
 keeping, but she declined. She went in with 
 the Bible in her hand. The inmates flocked 
 around her. She was frightened at their 
 violence, but began in her calm, even tones to 
 read the parable of the lord of the vineyard. 
 The audience became attentive. Many of them 
 had never heard Scripture readings before, and 
 some asked who Christ was! "It seemed to 
 be glad tidings to them," she said. And, far 
 from being robbed, when she dropped some 
 article a woman ran after her to restore it. 
 
ELIZABETH FRY 17 
 
 Then Mrs. Fry pointed out to the mothers 
 the "grievous consequences to their children 
 of living in such a scene of depravity/ She 
 said she would like to start a prison school, 
 and the mothers wept for joy at the idea. 
 With this encouragement she called upon the 
 authorities. They said her scheme was vision- 
 ary and would fail. However, they assigned 
 an unoccupied cell for a school room. The pris- 
 oners selected a governess from among them- 
 selves to enforce rules. A teacher was hired 
 and classes formed for all persons under 
 twenty-five years of age. And on the opening 
 day the eager prisoners struggled with such 
 violence for the front seats that the new 
 teacher said, "I felt as if I were going into a 
 den of wild beasts, and well recollect shudder- 
 ing when the door was closed upon me, and I 
 was locked in with such a herd of novel and 
 desperate companions." 
 
 This spirited, if noisy, response made Mrs. 
 Fry sure that her first theory was correct. 
 The best of these women were at heart not 
 wicked at all, and the worst still retained a 
 pretty big lump of the leaven of righteousness. 
 They .all, like flowers in a cellar, would grow 
 strong and beautiful if brought into the light. 
 
 She now formed an association of twelve to 
 help her. She induced the prison guards to 
 clean and whitewash a large room, and one day 
 summoned all the prisoners into it. She re- 
 minded them of the wages of sin, part of which 
 they were now paying; and praised, in con- 
 
18 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGEESS 
 
 trast, the sweetness and peace of an upright 
 life. Then she described the comforts to be 
 derived from industry and sobriety, and said 
 one chief reason why their minds ran upon 
 wicked thoughts was that their hands were 
 busied in no useful work. Finally she carried 
 in a quantity of cloth and yarn and scissors, 
 and a supply of needles and thread. Here, 
 now, she said if they would, they could knit 
 and sew and make garments and earn honest 
 money! Would they? 
 
 Would they ! The women were eager for the 
 opportunity. But Mrs. Fry restrained them. 
 They must have some rules to go by. They 
 must all work, every one. Would they! 
 Every hand went up. They must stop begging, 
 gaming, using bad words. The hands ap- 
 proved. They must choose monitors to su- 
 perintend them, and must obey the monitors. 
 In short, they must not look to Elizabeth Fry 
 or their jailers for reproof or reward; they 
 must govern themselves. They would! Well, 
 then, here was their chance. And the women 
 set to work. 
 
 The effect was hardly credible. Mrs. Fry 
 wrote in her journal in 1818, "A remarkable 
 blessing still appears to accompany my prison 
 concerns perhaps the greatest apparent bless- 
 ing on my deeds that ever attended me. How 
 have the spirits both of those in power and the 
 poor afflicted prisoners appeared to be sub- 
 jected, and how has the work gone on!' 
 
 Those of the convicts who were to be trans- 
 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 19 
 
 ported had formerly made a disagreeable 
 scene before they left, breaking and burning 
 everything they could reach ; now they thanked 
 their benefactors and withdrew so quietly that 
 the usual guard was reduced by half. Those 
 who stayed behind wished unselfishly to give 
 their savings to the friends that had to go. 
 
 Once Mrs. Fry was informed that some of 
 the women were still gaming. She went into 
 the prison and told them what she had heard. 
 She dwelt upon the evil effects of this habit, 
 and said she " would consider it a proof of 
 their regard if they would have the candor and 
 kindness to bring the cards to her." Soon 
 after she retired, a trembling girl knocked at 
 her room, and with tears of penitence gave up 
 a pack of cards. Another woman came, and 
 another five women in all. Mrs. Fry de- 
 stroyed the cards in their presence. A few 
 days later she gave the first penitent a hand- 
 kerchief as a token of good will. But the girl 
 was disappointed. She would have preferred 
 a Bible with Elizabeth Fry's name written in 
 it, which she would value above everything 
 else! 
 
 Twice a day, before the prisoners settled 
 down to their work or study, Mrs. Fry read to 
 them from the Bible, expounded what she read, 
 and prayed. But she did not put forward the 
 claims of her own sect. "It would be highly 
 indecorous,' she said, "to press any peculiar 
 doctrines of any kind, anything beyond the 
 fundamental doctrines of Scripture." Nor, 
 
20 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 inspired religionist that she was, did she be- 
 lieve her rites alone could effect a reformation. 
 "We may instruct as we will," she said, "but 
 if we allow them their time, and they have 
 nothing to do, they naturally must return to 
 their evil passions." 
 
 On this basis her fame began to spread. 
 Upon request, the Lord Mayor of London, the 
 sheriffs and aldermen came to inspect the 
 transformed prison. They hardly recognized 
 it and they adopted Mrs. Fry's whole plan 
 as a part of the system of Newgate. After 
 this the place became one of the curiosi- 
 ties of London. Letters poured in from all 
 parts of the kingdom: ladies wished to imitate 
 what Mrs. Fry had done; magistrates wished 
 to better the prisons under their control. 
 When Mrs. Fry went on a preaching tour, 
 nothing would do but she must see all the jails 
 along the way and suggest improvements. 
 The English parliament commended her work. 
 The Princess Royal of Denmark breakfasted 
 with Mrs. Fry, and questioned her about what 
 she had done. A reformer from Russia, after 
 seeing Newgate, went home with the new idea 
 to advertise it in St. Petersburg. 
 
 In a word, Elizabeth Fry, scarcely a year 
 after the beginning of her prison labors, found 
 herself among the most famous and most 
 sought-after women in all Europe. She ha 
 been and was still an eloquent preacher of the 
 gospel. She professed no other calling. But 
 her fame came not that way. It came throng 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 21 
 
 practical benevolence, her "natural inclination,' 
 in which she saw no special merit. That trait 
 had led her to unfold a new and splendid idea 
 that the world had been waiting for. That 
 idea, in her own words, was this. "Not only 
 that many will be stopped in their career of 
 vice, but some truly turned from their evil 
 ways by our prisons which have been too gen- 
 erally the nurseries of vice, being so arranged 
 that they may become schools where the most 
 reprobate may be instructed in their duty 
 towards their Creator and their fellow mortals, 
 and where the very habits of their lives may be 
 changed. ' ' 
 
 In all these public endeavors Mrs. Fry 
 mingled with many people not of her own class 
 or her own faith. Large crowds met at her 
 house, "noblemen, ladies, clergy, dissenters, 
 Friends." With all their diversity, they man- 
 aged to get on peaceably both in practical af- 
 fairs and in worship, ' ' our dear Lord and Mas- 
 ter Himself appearing remarkably to own us 
 together. ' ' 
 
 She was not yet willing, however, to admit 
 this liberality as a principle in the bringing 
 up of her family. For herself, she was very 
 thoroughly a Quaker. As a Quaker she had 
 worked and worshiped; and since the faith 
 had been so signally blessed in her, she could 
 not help feeling that any deviation from that 
 faith was, after all, a little bit wrong. But her 
 husband had for a long time showed signs of 
 discontent, and her children, as they grew 
 
22 HEEOINES OF MODEKN PKOGRESS 
 
 older, generally inclined away from the pe- 
 culiar views and customs so dear to her. This 
 was a deep trial for Mrs. Fry: that she, 
 through whom the Power had spoken to thou- 
 sands of strangers, should let her own family 
 lose themselves in error. It caused her to be 
 criticised severely in meeting. It raised douhts 
 as to whether the children loved and respected 
 her as they ought, and whether, in fact, their 
 religion had a true foundation. "Oh, ? ex- 
 claims she once in her journal, "may I ever 
 have the encouragement of seeing those nearest 
 to me walking closely with God; not doing 
 their own pleasure, nor walking in their own 
 ways, but doing His pleasure and walking in 
 His ways." 
 
 The crisis finally came in 1833. Her daugh- 
 ter Eachel wedded a man of another sect. 
 Mrs. Fry, in obedience to the rules of the So- 
 ciety and also to her own conscience de- 
 clined to witness the ceremony. A son also 
 married out of the sect, and Mrs. Fry writes, 
 1 i Here I am, sitting in solitude, keeping silence 
 before the Lord ; on the wedding day of my be- 
 loved son William. " Then these children, and 
 others soon to follow, were one by one brought 
 up before the meeting and formally cast out 
 of the Society. What humiliation could be 
 greater for the most famous member of that 
 Society! 
 
 To this trial was added for a time that of 
 poverty. Her husband 's business failed. She 
 was obliged to neglect her prisoners, to omit 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 23 
 
 inviting friends into her home for worship, to 
 part with servants, and to abandon the schools 
 and the poor. On top of all she had to take 
 refuge with some of her dissenting children 
 and to accept aid from others. It cannot be 
 asserted that their care and sympathy in these 
 tribulations brought her closer to them; but 
 certain it is that before long she became more 
 kindly toward them and more tolerant of their 
 views. 
 
 One day, when she had resumed some of her 
 outside work, she was present at a death bed 
 in a Eoman Catholic home. Here her mouth 
 "was remarkably opened in prayer and 
 praises," little otherwise than at her father's 
 grave years before. " Indeed, " she says, "all 
 day at their house something of a holy influence 
 appeared to be over us.' And she concludes, 
 "It surely matters not by what name we call 
 ourselves, or what outward means we may 
 think right to use, if our hearts are but in- 
 fluenced by the love of Christ. With cere- 
 monies or without ceremonies, if there be but 
 an establishment upon the Kock of Ages, all 
 will be well." 
 
 After this, her relations with people of 
 variant sects grew every day more genial. 
 Wherever she went preaching she was loaded 
 with kindness, and returned it. "I felt how 
 sweet it is to be on good terms with them all 
 one day drinking tea at the parsonage, abound- 
 ing with plate, elegancies and luxuries, the 
 next day at a humble Methodist shoemaker's, 
 
24 HEBOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 they having procured a little fresh butter, that 
 I might take tea under their roof. The con- 
 trast was great, but I can indeed see the same 
 kind Lord over all." 
 
 This tendency to religious union soon came 
 to a head. The same kind Lord was over all. 
 He was over her children who had left the So- 
 ciety, and over those who still, against her will, 
 desired to leave. Then, was it not a mistake, 
 after all, to put religious restraint upon one's 
 children ? Should not sober-minded young per- 
 sons judge for themselves? As respects the 
 peculiar scruples of the Friends, were they not 
 perhaps a stumbling block when adopted just 
 to please others, and not from principle? 
 
 And if it was right to choose one's religion, 
 could it be terribly wrong to choose one's wife 
 or husband even though their religion dif- 
 fered from that of one's mother? 
 
 Another child fell in love, married, and was 
 ejected from the Friends' communion. Mrs. 
 Fry felt the humiliation deeply. And, through 
 her love for her children, she felt at last a 
 grave injustice. It was highly desirable, she 
 thought, to settle with one of the same re- 
 ligious views and education. But a parent 
 ought not to influence a child unduly, providing 
 love, "the essential ingredient,' were present. 
 And she concluded boldy, "I disapprove the 
 rule of our Society that disowns persons for 
 allowing a child to marry one not a Friend 
 it is a most undue and un-Christian restraint, as 
 far as I can judge it." 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 25 
 
 This train of thought reached its climax in 
 1837 in a letter to all her children. While the 
 larger number of them no longer ' l walked with 
 her/ 7 she believed they were still "united in 
 their Holy Head.' Their points of union were 
 strong; they were members of one living 
 Church. She proposed that they all meet to- 
 gether once a month, at each house in rotation, 
 to read Scripture, and talk of anything "that 
 is doing for the good of mankind in the world 
 generally. ' ' 
 
 The plan .was tried, and it answered well. 
 Elizabeth Fry's head had again been compelled 
 to make terms with her heart. Through sheer 
 love she had proved religious communion as 
 well as benevolent work to be possible far 
 above the narrow restrictions of creeds. And 
 she had made a model in little for the religious 
 history of the century to follow. 
 
 The last years of Mrs. Fry's life (she died in 
 1845) were given to the extension of her phil- 
 anthropic and religious ideas. She saw the 
 need of a home for discharged prisoners, where 
 they could continue their training, and she pre- 
 vailed upon a rich woman to build the home. 
 Then her attention was claimed by the neg- 
 lected little girls, some of whom had been in 
 prison and some of whom in their slum homes 
 had no chance of betterment. At her suggestion, 
 a school of discipline was founded for these 
 where, with good associates, they might be 
 trained in orderly habits. She urged more 
 careful trial of culprits, and a less frequent 
 
26 HEKOINES OF MODEKN PEOGEESS 
 
 use of capital punishment; less abuse of soli- 
 tary confinement, where the idle fancy would 
 be likely to corrupt itself worse and worse ; more 
 kindness to the insane, who were certainly to 
 be pitied, and not punished. In her lifetime 
 within thirty years from the beginning at New- 
 gate she saw most of these changes carried 
 out in England and Scotland. And when, with 
 permission of the Friends, she five times toured 
 the continent, the reforms were taken up with 
 vigor there also. 
 
 While the philanthropic work overshadowed 
 the religious, the latter did not cease by any 
 means. Mrs. Fry selected passages of Scrip- 
 ture for all the days of the year, and published 
 them as a text book. Thereafter, she gave 
 them away, thousands of copies, alike to kings 
 and beggars. It was her practice to invite the 
 servants and guests of the inn where she stayed 
 to an evening service, and to speak a word or 
 give a tract to all she had dealings with upon 
 the way. Once in France, so her daughter 
 says, those to whom she had given text books 
 on her previous visit, "begged for more, and 
 came creeping up to her apartments to prefer 
 their request. They beguiled her into the 
 kitchen where she told them in broken French 
 a little of her wishes for them as to faith and 
 practice. Then all would shake hands with 
 her.' And in the meetings of the Friends she 
 was still enabled to declare gospel truths 
 boldly. " This to me is wonderful; and un- 
 believers may say what they will, it must be 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 
 
 the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our 
 eyes how He strengtheneth them that have no 
 might, and helpeth them that have no power.' 
 
 Even more worthy of her later growth was 
 the stand she took on religious toleration. 
 What she had done in her own family she 
 would have the world do. Particularly in Ger- 
 many, where the Lutherans were oppressed in 
 various ways, she addressed a remonstrance 
 to the ruler, of which he said the " Spirit of 
 God must have helped them to express them- 
 selves as they had done." 
 
 The idea of crime and punishment and the 
 idea of sectarianism are both different now 
 from what they were when Elizabeth Fry 
 looked first into Newgate jail. 
 
 Crime is now considered an object of pity 
 rather than of blame. A man does wrong not 
 because he prefers wrong-doing, but because 
 it is easiest, and because he does not know how, 
 or lacks the opportunity, to do right. The re- 
 proach should rest on the society which for- 
 sook him in his ignorance and denied him op- 
 portunity. And, though he has sinned once, 
 he need not keep on sinning nor need he be 
 hanged as a preventive. Society can atone for 
 its former neglect. It can teach him. It can 
 give him opportunity. It can heal him as it 
 heals the sick. 
 
 So our institutions for wrong-doers are now 
 designed as moral hospitals. In our prisons, 
 our reformatories, our reform schools, our in- 
 dustrial schools in all, people are forcibly de- 
 
28 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 tained, it is true, but detained only that they 
 may be taught. This modern system of pen- 
 ology was begun by, and owes much of its 
 growth to, Elizabeth Fry. 
 
 Twentieth century churches, too, have gen- 
 erally given up persecution. They cooperate 
 widely in their practical work. They often 
 unite for worship whole congregations as 
 did the members of Elizabeth Fry's large 
 family. The Quaker woman, it is true, did 
 not stand out so prominently as the leader of 
 this change. But both in her acts and her 
 ideas she attained a breadth and charity that 
 few have excelled. 
 
 The springs of her influence are not far to 
 seek. They are found in her extraordinary 
 human kindness. Without that she might have 
 been a Quaker minister, inspired and eloquent 
 as she was; but she could never have been a 
 prison reformer, and a friend of religious 
 toleration. 
 
 Yet such was her modesty that when this 
 "natural inclination * began to yield great 
 results she gradually came to recognize it 
 no less than the power to preach, as a gift 
 from her Creator. "In nothing,' she said, 
 "has the work of grace been so marvelous to 
 me as in the ministry. It surely is not my 
 work ; I know enough of myself to believe it to 
 be quite impossible." But she could say, with 
 almost equal devoutness, "To myself it is 
 really wonderful what has been accomplished 
 in the prisons during the past few years. 
 
ELIZABETH FEY 29 
 
 What a cause for deep thanksgiving and still 
 deeper humiliation to have been one of the in- 
 struments made use of to bring about these 
 results. ' ' 
 
 So, though she had broadened beyond the 
 comprehension of most people of her time, she 
 included her whole experience under the name 
 of religion, and ended her public career as she 
 began it, with a profession of faith. " Since 
 my heart was touched at seventeen years old, 
 I believe I never have awakened from sleep, in 
 sickness or in health, by day or by night, with- 
 out my first waking thought being how best I 
 might serve my Lord." 
 
MAEY LYON 
 
 WHEN Mary Lyon was a very small child, 
 she one day climbed upon a chair, and 
 stood with an air of great wisdom scrutinizing 
 the hour glass. Her mother asked what she 
 was about. She replied that she had found a 
 way to make more time. 
 
 She probably aimed to obstruct the flow of 
 the sand. The girl's elders told her that that 
 would not delay the setting of the sun nor 
 lengthen out the hours of the daylight. But 
 the principle involved, the principle that, 
 given a good thing one had as well multiply it, 
 they made her grasp and hold. 
 
 Mary Lyon was born February 28, 1797, in 
 Buckland, Massachusetts. Magnificent hill 
 scenery was hers to revel in, and the expan- 
 sive freedom of a community not yet grown 
 old. These had a side, however, that was 
 rough and sinister. The hills, so lovely in a 
 distant sunset, were seen at closer view to be 
 rugged, bleak and unfertile; a family which, 
 like the Lyon, made shift to farm them for a 
 living, would certainly have to forego their 
 ease. The; country freedom in such a place 
 had much to do if it would offset the isolation, 
 the poverty, and the lack of books, schools, and 
 other properties that were so agreeable in the 
 older settlements. 
 
 so 
 
MARY LYON 
 
MAEY LYON 31 
 
 This rough side of life presented itself from 
 the first to Mary Lyon. She was the fifth of 
 seven children. Her father died when she was 
 six years old, and the burden fell upon the 
 mother of wresting from a rocky hillside food 
 and clothing for six girls and one boy. The 
 family was undeniably poor. There was sel- 
 dom any surplus of maple sugar or of apples in 
 the winter store, and never any money in the 
 purse for extravagant pleasures; and "the 
 rare gift of the Sunday suit, kept expressly for 
 the occasion, formed an important era in the 
 life of the possessor.' But in spite of their 
 poverty, they were not unhappy. The younger 
 children scarcely knew anything was lacking 
 for complete comfort, for the mother, who 
 ruled the home, was a genius at making the 
 most of small things. 
 
 "In that little domain, " wrote Mary Lyon 
 long afterward, in a tribute to her mother, 
 ' ' nothing was left to take its own way. Every- 
 thing was made to yield to her faithful and 
 diligent hand. It was no mistake of that good- 
 hearted neighbor who came in one day begging 
 the privilege of setting a plant of rare virtues 
 in a corner of her garden, because, as he said, 
 there it could never die. ... I can now re- 
 member just the appearance of that woman who 
 had a numerous household to clothe, as she 
 said one day, 'How is it that the widow can 
 do no more for me than anyone else f ' 
 
 It is natural that the children of such a 
 mother should early learn to work and look out 
 
32 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 for themselves. Mary, it is said, never had 
 time to play save for an incidental outburst of 
 song or a dash of her light feet on the way to 
 school or to the berry pastures. She was too 
 much occupied with housekeeping and garden- 
 ing and nursing, arts that she learned thor- 
 oughly. On winter evenings she carded and 
 spun into thread the raw wool from Buckland 
 sheep, wove the thread into cloth, and of the 
 cloth fashioned sheets, counterpanes, and the 
 clothing she herself was to wear. Yet the 
 steady round of serious toil was not oppressive. 
 Mary seems to have had an uncommon dower 
 of high spirits and humor. She would find 
 even in the most irksome duties a large ele- 
 ment of fun. 
 
 Because of a thrifty mother who exercise< 
 her also in thrift, Mary Lyon had a plenty of 
 material comforts. Beyond mere food and 
 clothes, however, this reign of plenty did not 
 extend. Buckland, or in fact any town or city 
 in the world where the girl might have lived, 
 held out to her only the slenderest chance for 
 culture of the mind. This circumstance she 
 would have to meet herself. Fortunately the 
 habits of economy and self-help were grounded 
 deep in her nature, and she went about getting 
 her education with the same cheerfulness and 
 practical good sense with which she had potted 
 her own peas and woven her own garments on 
 the hillside farm. 
 
 When scarcely six years old, Mary Lyon 
 walked a mile to her first school and two miles 
 
 
MARY LYON 33 
 
 to her second. After that she took a term 
 now in Buckland, now in Ashfield, following 
 the teachers of best repute, and earning her 
 keep, wherever she stayed, by housework. She 
 had an eager thirst for knowledge, and a strong 
 faculty for drinking it up, sometimes with 
 little heed to its kind or quality. Once she 
 memorized, in four days, the whole of Alex- 
 ander's English Grammar, and her progress 
 in other studies was little less fleet. One of 
 her teachers exclaimed, "I should like to see 
 what she would make if she could be sent to 
 college ! ' ' 
 
 But college, at that day, was out of the ques- 
 tion for girls like Mary Lyon. The standard 
 of education for women was modest, not to say 
 low. Her proper occupation was home-build- 
 ing; and for that, mental training was thought 
 not only unnecessary but harmful. "When 
 girls become scholars, who is to make puddings 
 and pies f ' ' was the favorite query which no one 
 could answer. A woman might aspire to the 
 best society without the preliminary trouble of 
 learning to write her name. 
 
 Of late, to be sure, a slight change had come 
 to pass. With the establishment of district 
 schools, women were often hired as teachers, 
 because the paltry salaries would not attract 
 men. To equip women for this ill-paid but 
 necessary service, numerous private academies 
 owned and run on a commercial basis had 
 sprung up in New England. A girl of suf- 
 ficient means might commence in one of these 
 
34 HEKOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 at an early age, and linger on as long as she 
 chose. Buckland, however, boasted no acad- 
 emy. Mary Lyon could not meet the expense 
 of schooling away from home. Still hungry 
 for the knowledge she had barely glimpsed, she 
 was forced out of school at the age of thirteen, 
 and set to earn her living. 
 
 She kept house for her brother until he mar- 
 ried, receiving for her pains a dollar a week. 
 Besides this she derived a scanty income from 
 spinning and weaving for the neighbors. 
 .Finally she began to teach, at seventy-five cents 
 a week, and board. But "her mirthful ten- 
 dencies threatened her success as a teacher "; 
 she failed in discipline, and declared she was 
 done with the profession. In the meantime her 
 own craving for knowledge still persisted, but 
 only at irregular intervals, when a promising 
 new teacher strayed into the neighborhood, 
 could she seize a few weeks at school. Her 
 education had to go on in this intermittent 
 fashion until her twentieth year. 
 
 Then in 1817 the Sanderson Academy was 
 founded at Ashfield, and Mary Lyon, impatient 
 from all her years of waiting, bore down upon 
 it with tremendous purpose. She paid for her 
 board with two coverlets spun, woven and dyed 
 by herself. At first she excited the contempt 
 of better bred students by the blue homespun 
 gown she wore, and by "impossible" crudities 
 of speech and manner. But she was not long 
 a laughing stock. She consumed a Latin gram- 
 mar over Sunday, and recited the whole on 
 
 
MAKY LYON 35 
 
 Monday. She was at her books, if report be 
 true, on an average of twenty hours a day. 
 A girl whom she asked to share her seat ad- 
 mits, "I did, and pursued the same branches 
 as far as I could keep up." "She is all intel- 
 lect," people said, "she does not know that she 
 has a body to care for.' 
 
 Yet she evidently had other gifts besides the 
 intellectual, for her fellow students liked as 
 well as admired her. "I loved her from my 
 first acquaintance," said Amanda White, the 
 Squire's daughter, "and felt that her heart 
 was made for friendship. . . . Her frank, 
 open countenance invited confidence, and a 
 mutual feeling of interest was at once awak- 
 ened." Her charm must have risen, in part 
 from the fact that "she was ever ready to lay 
 aside her books and lend a helping hand to 
 those of weaker intellect." Then, too, when it 
 came to manual labor, she was no laggard. 
 She could clean a school room with as much 
 despatch as she could solve a problem in 
 mathematics, a happy offset to her mental su- 
 premacy. 
 
 This faculty for friendship stood her in good 
 stead. For through Amanda she captured 
 Squire White's interest, and the Squire pre- 
 vailed on the trustees to vote her free tuition. 
 She was invited also to make her home at the 
 Squire's house. 
 
 At first she was awkward and ill at ease, and, 
 what was worse, due to her absorption with 
 books, she had fits of absent-mindedness. Said 
 
36 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGBESS 
 
 Amanda, "She was very likely to leave off 
 some article or put on one wrong side out. 
 She was one of those unfortunate ones whose 
 wearing apparel seemed doomed to receive the 
 contents of every overturned inkstand or 
 lamp." But in the Squire's household, the 
 young woman happily became conscious of her 
 lapses. Though she would never be free from 
 defects of style and manner, she did, to use her 
 own words, correct " more such things than 
 anybody ought to have. ' 
 
 Too soon, however, Mary Lyon's small sav- 
 ings gave out, and she had again to retreat to 
 the ranks of the earners. During the next few 
 years she would teach a term and then, with 
 her small store of money, doggedly turn back 
 for a season at the academy. She once at- 
 tended a school of penmanship, and once 
 strained her purse for a term at Amherst 
 Academy, where "her homespun apparel, her 
 extraordinary scholarship, and her boundless 
 kindness were about equally conspicuous." 
 Finally, in the summer of 1821, Squire White 
 urged a loan upon her for a summer with 
 Amanda at the distant Byfield Academy. 
 There she gained knowledge by handfuls, as 
 Amanda said, and was much too busy to write 
 letters, or even to eat when she went to the 
 table. 
 
 The same autumn she was offered the posi- 
 tion of assistant in the Sanderson Academy. 
 She would have liked several years more of 
 study, but so good a chance to work a poor 
 
 
 
MARY LYON 37 
 
 girl could not decline. So, still unsatisfied as 
 she was, she saw the years of her preparation 
 come abruptly to an end. 
 
 Mary Lyon had spared no sacrifice to get 
 her education. With a farm-bred genius for 
 profiting to the utmost by small advantages, 
 she had without money and with little assist- 
 ance climbed far above the average woman of 
 her day. 
 
 And yet, when she bade good-by to the 
 school-room, the lore of her books was the least 
 thing that stuck in her mind. Woman's edu- 
 cation, as a whole, was wrong; that was her 
 conclusion from twenty odd years of moiling 
 and toiling after it. The academies were gen- 
 erally a jungle of unrelated courses, with 
 French, music, painting and manners put fore- 
 most, so that while women graduates might 
 amuse an idle half hour they " never had a 
 dozejn thoughts in all their lives," and were 
 incapable of any useful work. She, herself, 
 with her vigorous appetite for anything that 
 bore the name of learning, had nibbled here 
 and there with no one to direct her, and had 
 got a smattering of many things, but fullness 
 of none. 
 
 Education, she had decided, was to "fit one 
 to do good." Should she not, therefore, use 
 what she had to better the courses of study for 
 other girls who should come after her? 
 
 Through the winter of 1821 Miss Lyon 
 taught in Ashfield. Buckland soon fitted up 
 a primitive academy a third story room, with 
 
38 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 board benches along the side walls, heated by 
 four fireplaces, and stole her away from the 
 rival town. For eight years she wavered back 
 and forth, according as the one or the other 
 would enlarge its rooms or give her fuller au- 
 thority. Meantime, Miss Zilpah Grant, for- 
 merly assistant at Byfield, engaged her for the 
 summers at a new school in Derry, New Hamp- 
 shire. All the tried policies of the older 
 teacher she put in use in her own winter schools 
 at home. 
 
 She must by this time have subdued her 
 mirthful tendencies, for her teaching was a 
 marked success. Girls came to her already 
 from beyond the State. Those intending to 
 teach would enter her classes, if only for a 
 week, to learn her methods. Her students 
 were in demand as teachers long before gradu- 
 ation and no other certificate than her approval 
 was required. 
 
 In 1828, Miss Grant moved to an academy in 
 Ipswich, Massachusetts. Miss Lyon yielded 
 to persuasion and became her assistant. 
 Within four years this seminary had a na- 
 tional reputation. It sent out teachers to all 
 parts of the Union, and drew its pupils from 
 as wide an area. "And," said Miss Lyon, 
 "it has often numbered among its pupils those 
 who have been employed as teachers in schools 
 of almost every grade, those who had, as they 
 supposed, completed their education years be- 
 fore. " 
 
 The surprising growth of these various 
 
MAEY LYON 39 
 
 schools was built on the new ideals and 
 methods of Miss Lyon and her friends. Ips- 
 wich, unlike other seminaries, admitted none 
 but girls over fourteen, and it named certain 
 entrance requirements. Having selected these 
 more mature pupils, it introduced them to a 
 course of study truly novel in those days. 
 "Away with French and music and painting 
 from our school," cried Miss Grant, "until its 
 worth is so much diminished that it must be 
 patched and puffed up with these appendages." 
 Courses of English studies were substituted. 
 The number that a pupil might pursue at one 
 time was limited, and since promotion was by 
 examination, a girl never found herself floun- 
 dering unprepared in the higher classes. "If 
 you want to have a polished education," ran 
 Miss Lyon's precept, "have a good foundation. 
 You would find it hard to polish a piece of 
 sponge, but not to polish steel." 
 
 In teaching, even the best method is futile 
 without a personality behind it. Miss Lyon 
 breathed life into the method. The young 
 woman had her periods of despondency, it is 
 true; she once complained that tea was ready 
 too early, because "I was wishing to have a 
 good crying spell, and you could not give me 
 time enough/' But these fits never betrayed 
 her in the class room. There with her "full, 
 smiling, happy blue eyes, plump rosy cheeks, 
 sandy hair, and as much intellect and intelli- 
 gence as you can conceive," she was all cheer- 
 fulness and vigor. She taught well because 
 
40 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 the work was to her fine and noble. " Never 
 teach the immortal mind for money, ' ' she said. 
 "If money-making is your object, be milliners 
 or dressmakers, but teaching is a sacred, not a 
 mercenary employment.' 
 
 In these several schools, therefore, Mary 
 Lyon forced up the standard of scholarship to 
 where she thought it should be, so that a girl 
 attending them could have the systematic and 
 thorough instruction she had missed in her 
 own youth. But it is not to be supposed that 
 she was contented with the result. On the con- 
 trary, as she repaired one fault of the 
 schools, it was only to make another more 
 prominent. 
 
 In the first place, few but wealthy girls could 
 attend the seminary. Like the rest of its kind, 
 it was a business enterprise, and the trustees 
 frankly expected fat dividends from their in- 
 vestment. As a result a girl's expenses for 
 one year were nearly double what it cost a man 
 for his whole college course. A girl of mod- 
 erate means could not even taste of the higher 
 education unless by a miracle. Had not Miss 
 Lyon herself, coming up from the ranks, had 
 to fight every inch of the way? She knew 
 many poor girls wanted an education; and she 
 knew, as few could, the hopelessness of their 
 desire. 
 
 The personal aspirations of the girls did not 
 constitute the whole problem. The country 
 was in sore need of girls with a seminary train-' 
 ing. Over a million children, in the different 
 
MAEY LYON 41 
 
 states, were growing up illiterate. Thirty 
 thousand seminary graduates should be seated 
 at once in as many teachers' chairs, and ten 
 thousand more should be made ready yearly 
 for the vacancies. 
 
 Again, Miss Lyon's Ipswich school, half per- 
 fected as it was, had not the prospect of a 
 long life. Her presence and that of Miss 
 Grant made it, for the time, a plant that 
 yielded profits to the shareholders. But when 
 they were gone the school would, like its many 
 predecessors, collapse and even their model of 
 scholarship would be buried with it. 
 
 How, asked Miss Lyon, could these defects 
 be amended? How could she outfit middle 
 class girls with real scholarship? "My 
 thought, feelings and judgment are turned 
 toward the middle classes of society," she once 
 wrote. "This middle class contains the main- 
 springs and main wheels which are to move the 
 world." How could she minimize the expense 
 of a seminary course and how could she insure 
 the continuance of a course at once cheap and 
 sound, after her death? It was a formidable 
 question, but Mary Lyon looked it square in 
 the face. "I am about to embark in a frail 
 boat on a boisterous sea," she wrote in 1834. 
 "I know not whither I shall be driven, nor how 
 I shall be tossed, nor to what port I shall aim." 
 But she did embark, and for the rest of her life 
 she was beating for the port. 
 
 A plan gradually took form in her mind for 
 a girls ' seminary endowed by free gifts like the 
 
42 HEEOINES OF MODEKN PKOGRESS 
 
 colleges for men. "Give to a literary institu- 
 tion on this principle, an amount of property 
 sufficient to be viewed as an object of great 
 importance,' she argued, "and it is almost 
 impossible to extinguish its vital life by means 
 of adversity.' That meant permanence. The 
 scholarship she would take care of as she had 
 already done at Ipswich. Because the build- 
 ing and furnishings were owned outright by the 
 public, tuition would be low ; and she could fur- 
 ther diminish it by rallying round her a staff 
 of teachers who would serve for part pay, and 
 by making the students keep house at the school 
 on a cooperative plan. 
 
 The initial difficulty would be to get the en- 
 dowment, for money was scarce in the New 
 England of 1834. Even had it been plentiful, 
 men would not sink large sums in a fanciful 
 project for the education of girls. "This may 
 seem like a wild scheme,' Miss Lyon herself 
 confessed, but added, "but I cannot plead that 
 it is a hasty one." 
 
 A dozen prominent men met with the young 
 woman at Ipswich and became temporary trus- 
 tees of the enterprise. She offered to collect 
 from women that the honor might be theirs 
 a thousand dollars to finance the campaign 
 for the building fund. 
 
 In two months she raised the money in and 
 near Ipswich from teachers, students and 
 women of the town. The trustees chose a site 
 at South Hadley for the proposed institution, 
 and named it Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary. 
 
MAKY LYON 43 
 
 Then began the long, hard grind of piling up 
 the main fund. 
 
 Several agents pastors and professors 
 traveled over New England to solicit dona- 
 tions. They were not wholly unsuccessful, 
 though the most faithful of them once worked 
 three months and booked nothing. But to 
 Mary Lyon must be given credit for most 
 of the subscriptions that went into Mount 
 Holyoke. 
 
 She scurried hither and thither, by train and 
 stage coach, all over New England. "I wan- 
 der about without a home,' she wrote, 
 "scarcely knowing one week where I shall be 
 the next." She unfolded her plan before 
 mixed audiences in churches and district 
 school-houses. She spoke in parlor meetings, 
 with wealthy ladies called together by their 
 pastors. She besieged rich men in their offices 
 and in their homes. Even in the rumbling 
 coach she would outline her dream to the 
 chance companions of a journey, and opening 
 her familiar green money bag would take their 
 offerings on the spot. At Squire White's 
 house a child remembered " grandfather and 
 Miss Lyon sitting in this very room, a table, 
 its leaves opened, drawn near the fireplace; 
 papers, plans of the seminary spread out upon 
 it; she on one side and he on the other. Some- 
 times they worked over them until after mid- 
 night." Careless of her health, she braved all 
 weathers : ( ' Our personal comforts are delight- 
 ful, but not essential," she said. All of her 
 
44 HEKOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 own expenses, down to the last cent, she de- 
 frayed herself. "Had I a thousand lives, I 
 could sacrifice them all in suffering and hard- 
 ship for the sake of the seminary," she declared. 
 "Did I possess the greatest fortune, I could 
 readily relinquish it all, and become poor, and 
 more than poor, if its prosperity should demand 
 it." 
 
 Scarcity of money was not the only obstacle. 
 The pudding-and-pies argument had not been 
 wholly throttled. Higher education, many 
 feared, would ruin a girl's health, and her gen- 
 tleness and modesty as well, and disqualify her 
 for womanly duties. Then Miss Lyon, herself, 
 was harshly criticised for her boldness in 
 traveling alone and speaking in public. 
 
 But apparently criticism did not daunt her 
 in the least. "My heart is sick, my soul is 
 pained with this empty gentility, this genteel 
 nothingness," she cried. "I am doing a great 
 work. I cannot come down.' Again, "The 
 object of this institution penetrates too far into 
 futurity and takes in too broad a view to 
 discover its claims to the passing multi- 
 tude. . . . We appeal to those who can ven- 
 ture as pioneers in the great work of renovat- 
 ing a world." No wonder she made the im- 
 pression on everyone, from the common day 
 laborer to the president of a college, that if 
 she set herself to do anything, it was of no use 
 to oppose her. 
 
 So the people gave of their small savings. 
 There were a few pledges of a thousand dol- 
 
MARY LYON 45 
 
 lars, and many of a hundred. But there were 
 long lists, too, of five, two, one dollar and fifty 
 cent subscriptions and several as low as six 
 cents. One poor farmer with five sons to edu- 
 cate, and no daughter, gave a hundred dollars. 
 Two spinsters, after they had promised a 
 hundred dollars, lost their property by fire, 
 but worked with their own hands to recover 
 the amount. In two years with such self- 
 sacrificing gifts as these from the poverty of 
 the common people, Mary Lyon had in hand 
 the amount requisite for beginning the build- 
 ing. For furnishings she relied on the various 
 towns each of which, through its women, was 
 to levy fifty or sixty dollars for one girl's room. 
 Finally in October, 1836, the corner-stone was 
 laid. Miss Lyon exclaimed, with pardonable 
 elation, "The stones and brick and mortar 
 speak a language which vibrates through my 
 very soul. How much thought and how much 
 feeling have I had on this general subject in 
 years that are past? And 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 females. " 
 
 Even yet, however, there were long and 
 heavy roads ahead. When the walls were partly 
 reared, their sandy foundation sank and they 
 fell in. Preceding the panic of 1837, the money 
 market tightened, and many honest pledges 
 could not be redeemed. The date of opening 
 had been set for November 8 and already in 
 
46 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 distant homes students were packing their 
 trunks to come ; but it seemed doubtful whether 
 they could be received so early, or indeed, be 
 received at all ; and Mary Lyon who had hoped 
 so high now almost abandoned hope. "When 
 I look through to November 8,' she said, "it 
 seems like looking down a precipice of many 
 hundred feet which I must descend. I can only 
 avoid looking to the bottom, and fix my eye on 
 the nearest stone till I have safely reached it. ' 
 
 Time and again, in a tight pinch, she went to 
 her own purse for a hundred dollars the small 
 share of her father 's estate. She had at last 
 to ask entering students to borrow what they 
 could from their friends. And lest any cent 
 be wasted, she superintended personally every 
 step of the building, the mason work, the 
 painting, the laying of carpets. The workmen 
 might complain of her interference, it is true, 
 but she felt responsible to the people who had 
 given in trust their hard-earned mites and she 
 felt responsible to her own vision of the new 
 "era in education. " She did not flinch from 
 criticism for she scarcely had time to notice 
 its sting. 
 
 When November 8 came, the building was 
 still unfinished. Girls from far away got 
 down from the stage coaches into a whirl of 
 confusion that would do anything but relieve 
 their homesickness. Certain flustered gentle- 
 men, later known as trustees, and deacons of 
 the town were unloading furniture from the 
 vans, rushing about with cans of paint, and 
 
MAKY LYON 47 
 
 tacking down carpets. Women later known 
 as trustees ' wives were placing the furniture, 
 setting up beds, and washing, paring and cook- 
 ing in the kitchen. One woman of motherly 
 mien there was, who seemed to dominate the 
 rest. She stood in the midst of the tumult and 
 ordered where each separate article should go. 
 She greeted the newcomers with a glad word 
 and a kiss. And she told them to unpack 
 quickly and roll up their sleeves and help re- 
 duce this chaos to order! For this was to be 
 their home, and she their foster-mother, Mary 
 Lyon. 
 
 And when, a little later, the girls found 
 themselves cornered on the stair, or in the 
 kitchen or the back-yard taking examinations, 
 they knew that Mount Holyoke Female Semin- 
 ary had opened. 
 
 Mary Lyon had realized her dream. She 
 had her endowed school for middle class girls. 
 The charges for forty weeks, room, board, 
 and tuition came to sixty-four dollars. 
 Where space had been reserved for only 
 eighty pupils, one hundred and twenty were 
 chattering in the halls that opening day. They 
 averaged over sixteen years of age. Most of 
 them were daughters of educated but not of 
 wealthy men. There were few "harmless 
 cumberers of the ground, " or of those " whose 
 highest ambition is to be qualified to amuse a 
 friend in a vacant hour." Miss Lyon had her 
 cheap seminary and her advanced, earnest 
 students; all that remained was to make the 
 
48 HEEOINES OF MODERN PEOGEESS 
 
 combination work, so that it would prove its 
 worth and become permanent. Mary Lyon 
 herself was surety that the thing would work. 
 
 The course of study, covering three years, 
 was lifted over from Ipswich, and made a 
 little harder. There were no "fashionable' 
 classes; or, at any rate, such did not count 
 toward graduation. A plain array of mathe- 
 matics, English, science, history and philosophy 
 could alone win the coveted diploma. 
 
 The teachers, except for an occasional lec- 
 turer, were all women. This was unusual, and 
 in a way hazardous ; for there were men avail- 
 able who had been through college, but never 
 any woman. But even so, Mary Lyon believed 
 that persons of her own sex could get on faster 
 with the girls. "Either gallantry or want of 
 confidence makes gentlemen let young ladies 
 slip along without knowing much,' she said. 
 "They will make boys study. 7 ' So she picked 
 women teachers, the best obtainable, who would 
 have faith in girls' brains and make them 
 study. 
 
 During the first year Miss Lyon herself stole 
 a little time for class room teaching. But that 
 was the least of her duties. The wheels of the 
 whole machine had been fitted by her. They 
 moved at her bidding, and at every turn they 
 reflected some angle of her character. 
 
 Her pet idea of cooperative housework ran 
 smoothly from the beginning. The girls in 
 "circles" under the leadership of an older 
 student did the cooking, sweeping and so on, 
 
MAEY LYON 49 
 
 each being " assigned to that in which she had 
 been well trained at home.' 7 Donors to the 
 Seminary had at first been skeptical of this 
 feature, because to the wealthier students it 
 might savor unpleasantly of earning one's 
 way. But with so many workers the tasks 
 were swiftly despatched. "No young lady 
 feels that she is performing a duty from which 
 she could be relieved by the payment of higher 
 bills," declared Miss Lyon. The daily work, 
 at regular hours, was convenient for exercise 
 in the winter; and all the year round it fos- 
 tered a "union of interests, " "social vivacity,' 
 and an atmosphere of home, "very important,' 
 as Miss Lyon judged, "for literary pursuits." 
 The general routine, too, was home-like 
 enough to be familiar and pleasant. The stu- 
 dents rose, retired, studied, and worked, 
 washing dishes, and filling their whale oil 
 lamps and wood-bins all by schedule. By 
 schedule, too, they worshiped daily in chapel, 
 and kept a sober Sabbath; and by schedule 
 they did their calisthenic drill. To break up 
 the rigor, however, there were long, free walks 
 over hills, to pick flowers or blueberries, or for 
 the exercise alone. There were merry Thanks- 
 giving and Mayday festivals. There were lec- 
 tures and vocal concerts in college hall by out- 
 side talent. Once the whole school was dis- 
 missed to "see the elephant and other rare 
 specimens of animated nature" at a menagerie 
 in South Hadley. The instructions were not 
 to stay for the performance, but to fall in be- 
 
50 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 hind the first teacher they saw moving toward 
 the exit. Happily no teacher moved until the 
 last tame tiger and juggling seal had been 
 locked in his cage. A senior, the daughter of a 
 missionary, even dared to ride the elephant; 
 but she was not expelled nor even reprimanded. 
 
 While in these ways the students felt in turn 
 Miss Lyon's firmness and her geniality, the 
 personal touch possible in a school of that size 
 counted for even more. 
 
 One who was a student in 1837 says that 
 going near Miss Lyon that first year was like 
 getting in front of an automobile. If she had 
 been a busy woman before, now she never 
 rested. Her assistant wrote this list of her 
 cares: "Besides giving systematic religious 
 instruction, she matured a course of study, 
 watched the recitations, directed individual 
 students in the selection of studies, criticised 
 compositions, instructed the middle class in 
 chemistry, . . . and taught several other 
 branches. " The oversight of domestic mat- 
 ters drew further on her strength. She had to 
 order not only ink for the school-room, but 
 flour and potatoes for the kitchen, and wood 
 and oil for the parlors and bedrooms. She 
 had to supervise the repairing of the linen, and 
 make out menus for each meal. And when a 
 cook or a teacher felt indisposed, or married, 
 or turned missionary, she shouldered their 
 duties, sometimes for a good long space until 
 a new recruit could be broken in. This 
 glimpse of her by a student suggests the stress 
 
MAKY LYON 51 
 
 of events and her readiness to cope with them: 
 "I remember seeing her once in the domestic 
 hall whither she had fled at the sound of some 
 need, trailing a large piece of dress lining 
 pinned to her back, having escaped from the 
 hands of the dressmaker, who in the room was 
 holding the scissors ready for a clip at the next 
 chance. ' ' 
 
 In the chapel talks, again, her direct influence 
 was very strong. There she put into words 
 the few simple rules that had governed her own 
 conduct, and which she wished to transmit to 
 the school. 
 
 The missionary fever was then at its height 
 and Miss Lyon encouraged her girls to go to 
 the foreign field. "Be willing to do anything 
 anywhere ; be not hasty to decide that you have 
 no physical or mental strength, no faith or 
 hope.' But she advised them not to expect to 
 make over this world, and recommended, be- 
 sides piety, "a sound constitution and a merry 
 heart." Though she never talked doctrine, 
 or perhaps because of it her quiet and steady 
 religious fervor was all pervasive. Few girls 
 left the seminary in her time without a certifi- 
 cate of Christianity as well as of scholarship. 
 "I pray as truly that the bread may be sweet 
 for this great family as I do for the conversion 
 of the world,' ' she said. 
 
 But the phrase that became a proverb of the 
 school was, "We must consider the good of the 
 whole. 7 "The young lady needs to feel her- 
 self a member of a large community," she said, 
 
52 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 "where the interests of others are to be sought 
 equally with her own." For the good of the 
 whole Miss Lyon could wield a strict and re- 
 lentless discipline. She could gently dismiss 
 a girl that had no brains for study and expel 
 one that used her brains for mischief. Her 
 shrewd understanding of character usually ap- 
 palled wrong doers before the act. "Why, 
 young ladies," she once said, "by the principle 
 of comparative anatomy I can tell by one or 
 two characteristics what you are likely to make 
 of yourselves. I could walk down this aisle and 
 tell by the tie of your shoes who were good 
 students in geometry." She pointed with her 
 finger as she spoke, and there was an audible 
 drawing in of feet. 
 
 Generally she disciplined by kindness alone. 
 The institution was an experiment, she often 
 said ; the eyes of the world were on it ; and the 
 least act of the least of them all would tell not 
 only on the fate of this single venture, but on 
 the whole future of female education. More- 
 over, were they not simply a large family,- 
 they the daughters, she the mother and should 
 they not always behave with the charity and 
 considerateness becoming in relatives so close? 
 "I thought I should always arrange my hair 
 this way, and always wear a turban," she re- 
 marked, in reference to her fondness for old 
 styles. Yet at the wish of her "daughters,' 
 who doubtless had one eye on the fashion 
 plates, she discarded the turban in favor of the 
 cap. "I will do almost anything to please 
 
MAEY LYON 53 
 
 daughters/' she said. Could the daughters do 
 less? 
 
 So it was as a mother that her students liked 
 best to remember her. When they first dis- 
 mounted at the door she received them as in a 
 second home. When they pined for the places 
 and friends they could not see until the year 
 was out, she spared no effort to revive their 
 spirits. She gave patient ear to their com- 
 plaints, heartened them in their ambitions, 
 and helped them plan their futures, all as 
 though their welfare were her own. "I have 
 loved her more and more,' wrote one girl, 
 "and have called her mother, and she has 
 treated me with all the affectionate tenderness 
 of a mother." 
 
 Take it all together, during that first year, 
 Mary Lyon was about as busy as a person can 
 reasonably be. "Do not ask for a life of ease; 
 you are asking a curse,' she had advised the 
 students ; and in that point of view she was cer- 
 tainly the least cursed and the happiest of mor- 
 tals. But she was not always happy, for she 
 carried too great a burden of uncertainty. 
 Could Mt. Holyoke prolong its life after this 
 first year, or would the public desert it and let 
 it be bought up for a private academy? She 
 had done her part ; she had taxed every energy 
 as chief executive of the school; and she had 
 been teacher, and friend, and mother to over 
 a hundred girls. But still she knew that ad- 
 verse opinion blew strong in many quarters. 
 Would the institution live, after all? 
 
54 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 On the anniversary day she made note of 
 some hopeful signs. Examinations, with a 
 "free interchange of questions and answers," 
 were attended by outsiders. The orator from 
 England, after hearing a few of them, secluded 
 himself to write a new speech, because "it 
 would never do to present anything he had 
 brought with him.' Evidently the girls had 
 done their part, too. "On the whole,' Miss 
 Lyon confessed, "the success of our institution 
 in every department is greater than I antici- 
 pated." 
 
 By the opening of the second year, however, 
 any lingering doubt she may have had was 
 finally dispelled. Four hundred would-be stu- 
 dents so suddenly did the school spring into 
 fame had to be turned away ! And the disap- 
 pointed ones entered their applications for the 
 next year and the next. 
 
 Then, no longer doubting its success, men be- 
 gan to give or bequeath great sums to it, 
 seventy thousand dollars in a few years, enough 
 to free the plant from debt and to build large 
 additions. Mary Lyon in her frail craft had 
 surely made port. She had established a girl's 
 advanced school that was publicly endowed and 
 inexpensive to attend; and now, she had every 
 reason to believe, it was destined for perma- 
 nence. 
 
 "The institution must live," Miss Lyon 
 wrote in 1839, "but whether its influence shall 
 be extended and its principles disseminated, is 
 yet to be determined." But she fully counted 
 
MAEY LYON 55 
 
 upon the second result also. Even at the lay- 
 ing of the corner-stone she had said, "Surely 
 the Lord hath remembered our low estate. 
 This will be an era in female education. The 
 work will not stop with this institution. It is 
 a concession on the part of gentlemen in our 
 behalf which can be used again and again. ' In 
 fact, Mt. Holyoke was never, to the mind of its 
 founder, a mere solitary school, existing for its 
 own sake and that of the few pupils it could 
 hold; it was a laboratory where some im- 
 portant principles were being worked out, and 
 where she hoped to change the trend of female 
 education for all time to come. 
 
 As for the principles, she was bound, if it lay 
 in human nature, to put them to the proof at 
 Mt. Holyoke. Every day the school was 
 modeled anew under her anxious hands. 
 "There is a best way to do everything,' she 
 believed. Even in the kitchen where eleven 
 years of testing and changing did not quite 
 satisfy her she sought that one best way. 
 Mr. Hanks, president of the trustees, is said 
 to have been so wearied by her continual ex- 
 perimenting that he would tiptoe past her door 
 lest he be called in to hear some new proposal. 
 
 There could be but one outcome to this. 
 From Illinois, Alabama and Wisconsin, people 
 about to found schools for women wrote for 
 the plan of Mt. Holyoke. The "era in edu- 
 cation " had been decisively launched. Could 
 Mary Lyon have looked forward half a century 
 she would have seen women's colleges almost 
 
56 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 as numerous, as rich, and as exacting in 
 scholarship as those of men; and she would 
 have heard them all acknowledge their debt to 
 her and to Mt. Holyoke. More than that 
 she would have seen women studying side by 
 side with men in state universities, with no dis- 
 tinction of courses ; and those women too would 
 owe some thanks to her. For she had given, 
 not the first, but the most " clear and forcible 
 expression to the truth that intelligence is as 
 valuable in a woman's mind as in a man's.' 
 She had been, by several years, the first to de- 
 mand that a woman's intelligence be fed and 
 cherished by the public. 
 
 Such looking forward, however, was for- 
 bidden. Nor did Miss Lyon live to see much 
 accomplished in fact. She had sometimes la- 
 bored so hard that to recuperate she had to 
 sleep two or three days at a stretch. Her sal- 
 ary all she would take of two hundred dol- 
 lars a year, could not purchase her many com- 
 forts. Her vacations were infrequent, brief, 
 and generally plagued with the endless prob- 
 lems of her school. Happy or not, she was 
 certainly overworked. She died in 1849, when 
 her friends had hoped that ten or twenty years 
 yet stretched before her. 
 
 Her failure to economize her strength would 
 seem to contradict one of her own favorite 
 rules. " Never throw anything in the fire that 
 a bird will open its bill to get,' ' she warned her 
 pupils. She had had to practice that shrewd 
 economy as a girl at home, and as a young 
 
MARY LYON 57 
 
 woman fighting her way through school. Yet 
 now, as a teacher, she had not hesitated to 
 throw "in the fire" her own life. 
 
 But the contradiction is not real. "The 
 right use of money is to accomplish what you 
 wish with it, 7 she said. "A poor man may 
 not be as economical in spending four pence as 
 a rich man in spending a thousand dollars. " 
 The same might be said of the years of one's 
 life. 
 
 In spending her life she had obtained what 
 she wished an education for girls. By her 
 own definition, therefore, she would not have 
 gained much by living longer. ' ' Better twenty 
 years with an education than forty without," 
 she once said. In other words, she had in- 
 vented a new economy. She had doubled her 
 own life and that of any ambitious girl who 
 should be born thereafter. Not by turning 
 back the hour glass, as the hill farm child had 
 done, but by feeding the numan mind she had 
 succeeded, in the only possible way, in "mak- 
 ing more time." 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 
 
 THE first event clearly stamped upon Eliza- 
 beth Cady's memory was the birth of a 
 sister. Elizabeth was four years old, and al- 
 ready had four sisters and one brother. When 
 the Scotch nurse carried her in to see the baby, 
 she heard someone exclaim, "What a pity the 
 baby is a girl!" Others in the room wagged 
 their heads dolefully in recognition of the in- 
 fant's misfortune in not being created a boy. 
 Elizabeth, as a girl, had fallen in the way of 
 a good deal of fun, and, so far as she could see, 
 her sisters managed to extract as much enjoy- 
 ment from life as her brother. What mat- 
 tered it whether one were boy or girl? 
 
 That was a serious question. Just at pres- 
 ent, however, her baby mind did not dwell upon 
 it. Her father, a judge and a member of Con- 
 gress, was somewhat austere by nature; and 
 the mother, though noted for her independence 
 and vivacity, leaned to rigidness in the gov- 
 ernment of children. But the numerous girls 
 had inherited a share of vivacity, and they 
 seem to have had a merry time. On rainy 
 days they would climb to the garret and dress 
 up in their ancestors' clothes, and then crack 
 hickory nuts, nibble the maple sugar cakes, 
 chew the dried herbs and sweet flag, whirl the 
 
 58 
 

 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 59 
 
 old spinning wheels, throw and catch the bags 
 of cloth, and play hide and seek among the 
 barrels and boxes. And then, there was a 
 forest to roam in and a mill-pond to sail on. 
 In winter, there was always a bobbing party or 
 snow battle in progress in some part of town. 
 And since Peter, the colored servant, was sel- 
 dom out of her shadow, Elizabeth might wan- 
 der far without hurt and without fear of re- 
 buke when she returned home. 
 
 Elizabeth was born November 12, 1815, in 
 Johnstown, New York. She is described as 
 "a plump little girl, with a very fair skin, 
 rosy cheeks, good features, dark brown hair, 
 and laughing blue eyes." She had one defect, 
 however; at least so averred a student in her 
 father's office. "Your eyebrows should be 
 darker and heavier," said he, "and if you will 
 let me shave them once or twice, you will be 
 much improved.' The girl consented once. 
 But her odd-looking face, without its brows, 
 aroused so much merriment that she never sat 
 for a second treatment. 
 
 Elizabeth was much given to acts which 
 some, according to the point of view, called 
 rebellious and some, ingenious and daring. 
 For example, she would not part from Peter 
 in church, but preferred to sit with him in the 
 negro pew. "He was the only colored member 
 of the church and, after all the other communi- 
 cants had taken the sacrament, he went alone to 
 the altar. Dressed in a new suit of blue, with 
 gilt buttons, he looked like a prince as, with 
 
60 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 head erect, lie walked up the aisle . . . ; 
 and yet so strong was the prejudice against 
 color in 1823 that no one would kneel beside him. 
 On leaving us, on one of these occasions, Peter 
 told us all to sit still until he returned; but, 
 no sooner had he started, than the youngest 
 of us slowly followed after him and seated 
 herself close beside him. As he came back, 
 holding the child by the hand, what a lesson it 
 must have been to that prejudiced congrega- 
 tion!" 
 
 This incident, in a way, presaged one main 
 branch of her future activity. Another branch, 
 closely related to the first, was indicated in 
 the mill-pond adventure. One day when no 
 boys were there to captain the raft, Elizabeth 
 and her sister startled the crowd of waiting 
 girls by declaring that they could propel and 
 steer it as well as a boy! Once aboard and 
 caught in the current, however, they found 
 they could not lift the poles. They drifted 
 slowly toward the dam, unable to move a finger 
 to avoid their fate. But they caught their 
 breath, sat down flat in the middle of the raft 
 and held fast. They floated over the falls 
 right-side up, and glided gracefully away down 
 the stream until overtaken and drawn ashore 
 by Peter. 
 
 The boys rallied Elizabeth a long time for 
 the disastrous voyage. But, after all, she had 
 bravely tried; the experiment, far from being 
 a total failure, had brought out some thrilling 
 features new even to the boys; and Peter had 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 61 
 
 saved her, and showed her how to do better 
 next time. She was doing a little to batter 
 down the assumption of superiority on the 
 part of her male friends. Her friendship with 
 the negro, "the only being, visible or invisible, 
 of whom we had no fear,' ' was an essential ele- 
 ment in her success. These simple relations 
 engraved themselves deeply on the girl's mind. 
 And, as she said long after, in her memoirs, 
 "Who can estimate the power of a child's sur- 
 roundings in its earliest years, the effect of 
 some passing word or sight on one, that makes 
 no impression on another?' 
 
 At the age of eleven, Elizabeth passed 
 through an ordeal the results of which can be 
 traced very definitely. Her only brother died. 
 The father, whose fondest hopes crumbled with 
 the taking off of his male heir, could not be 
 comforted. When Elizabeth climbed upon his 
 knee, to attempt a word of solace, he sighed 
 and said, "0, my daughter, I wish you were a 
 boy!" Then she threw her arms about his 
 neck and cried, "I will try to be all my brother 
 was!" 
 
 And try she did. The chief things to be 
 done to equal a boy, she thought, were to ac- 
 quire proficiency in Greek and horsemanship. 
 Hastening to her pastor, she confided to him 
 her resolve, and he fell in with it so far as to 
 teach her Greek. Mr. Cady himself, perhaps 
 unaware of her peculiar ambition, taught her 
 to drive, and to hurdle a fence or ditch on 
 horseback. But in spite of her progress, the 
 
62 HEKOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 hoped-for, "Well, a girl is as good as a boy 
 after all" from her father was never spoken. 
 His only response to the minister's praise was 
 to pace the room and sigh and Elizabeth knew 
 what he was thinking. In the Johnstown Acad- 
 emy, she carried off a prize a Greek Testa- 
 ment in rivalry with a class of boys much 
 older than herself. "Now," she said, "my 
 father will be satisfied with me. ' ' She bounded 
 into his office exclaiming, "There, I got it!' 
 "He took up the book, asked me some ques- 
 tions about the class, the teachers, the spec- 
 tators, and, evidently pleased, handed it back 
 to me. Then while I stood waiting for him to 
 say something which would show that he 
 recognized the equality of the daughter with 
 the son, he kissed me on the forehead and ex- 
 claimed, with a sigh, * Ah, you should have been 
 a boy!' " 
 
 There was no means, apparently, by which 
 she could better her low condition. No and 
 all women were branded with the same iron. 
 Out of school hours Elizabeth liked to loiter 
 about her father's office. There she heard the 
 clients state their cases mothers who, by the 
 will of their deceased husbands, were left de- 
 pendent on the bounty of a son ; daughters who 
 lived by the charity of an elder brother, the 
 heir of the family estates; wives who at mar- 
 riage signed over their property, and indeed 
 themselves as part of it, to the groom and 
 who, all of them, mothers, sisters and wives 
 had been victims of the neglect or malice of 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 63 
 
 the men. Why, queried the girl, did the males 
 of the race have this unjust mastery? They 
 did not earn it by their exceptional talents ; had 
 she not demonstrated that already in riding 
 and study and countless other ways? 
 
 The students in Mr. Cady's office said 
 woman's disabilities were imposed by law. 
 They cited certain of the most odious statutes, 
 and showed her where they were written in her 
 father's books. She delved further on her 
 own account. The unhappy legal status of her 
 sex perplexed and angered her. She must cor- 
 rect it, straightway. She would mark the un- 
 just pages and at the first opportunity cut 
 every one of them out of the books, for she 
 supposed this mutilation of her father's library 
 would extinguish the laws. 
 
 Mr. Cady fortunately got wind of the in- 
 tended massacre and averted it by explaining 
 that the laws would continue just the same if 
 he and all his books together were sacrificed 
 to knife or fire. But "when you are grown up, 
 and able to prepare a speech," he said, "you 
 must go down to Albany and talk to the legis- 
 lators. ... If you can persuade them to 
 pass new laws, the old ones will become a dead 
 letter." 
 
 At this point Elizabeth Cady 's mind was fully 
 illuminated as to the cause of the gloom on the 
 day of her sister's birth. Women might out- 
 strip men in any or all physical and intel- 
 lectual feats; yet still their subjection was de- 
 creed by law; and since they had not a jot of 
 
64 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PROGEESS 
 
 influence in the enactment or revision of laws, 
 how could they ever hope for justice! The 
 girl made the second big resolution of her life. 
 Or rather, she reaffirmed, with slight changes, 
 the one she had uttered at her brother's death. 
 She would "be everything her brother was,' 
 not in muscular or mental prowess only, but in 
 the general estimation of society as reflected in 
 the legal guarantee of rights. 
 
 In 1830, when fifteen years old, Miss Eliza- 
 beth was sent to the Young Ladies 7 Seminary 
 at Troy. This school, under the principalship 
 of Mrs. Emma Willard, was then among the 
 leading institutions in America for the higher 
 education of women. But to one so jealous for 
 the rights of her sex, its advantages were cast in 
 shadow because she was debarred from Union, 
 the college of her boy friends, where the 
 scholarship was still more advanced. Besides, 
 she was already versed in all the studies 
 offered at Troy, except French, music and 
 dancing. She employed most of her time 
 wishing she were somewhere else, or in hatch- 
 ing up mischief. So she carried away from 
 her two seminary years little of value save a 
 settled belief that girls ought to have the same 
 education as boys, in the best of their colleges 
 perhaps even co-education. 
 
 The next years, up to 1840, were spent de- 
 lightfully at home. Miss Cady was still a 
 lively and rather a mischievous girl. She par- 
 ticipated, with her friends, in games and prac- 
 tical jokes often in a spirit of wild hilarity. 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 65 
 
 Once, armed with sprinkling pots, she and her 
 Cousin Lizzie battled for two hours against two 
 other girls whose weapons were large syringes 
 charged with milk. The contest was ended 
 only when "Cousin Charlie,' whom they had 
 ambushed and showered with both water and 
 milk, turned at bay with a bottle of liquid 
 blacking, and forced them all to beg for 
 quarter. 
 
 At the same time, the opportunity for self 
 improvement in these years at home was not 
 slighted. Miss Cady would emulate boys in 
 all good exercises, but she would not scout the 
 traditional arts of her own sex. She now 
 wrestled with all the domestic arts as zealously 
 as she ever had with Greek. To the value of 
 cooking, she brings this whimsical proof: "We 
 read in the Scriptures that Abraham prepared 
 cakes of fine meal and a calf tender and good, 
 which, with butter and milk, he set before the 
 three angels in the plains of Mamre. . . . 
 I would like to call the attention of my readers 
 to the dignity of this profession, which some 
 young women affect to despise. The fact that 
 angels eat shows that we may be called upon 
 in the next sphere to cook even for cherubim 
 and seraphim. How important, then, to cul- 
 tivate one's gifts in that direction!" 
 
 In fact, the business of being a girl so ab- 
 sorbed her that she might have forgotten en- 
 tirely her rather uncertain call to become a re- 
 former. But through a family friendship with 
 Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, she was swept into 
 
66 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 the current of national politics and thence into 
 another kind of politics peculiarly her own. 
 
 Mr. Smith was a generous host and a pro- 
 gressive thinker, and the radicals of every re- 
 form constantly hovered about his home for 
 a chance to air their heresies. He was an 
 abolitionist and his mansion a station on 
 the " underground railroad.' Upon frequent 
 visits with his family, Miss Cady heard and 
 discussed the rousing themes there broached. 
 On one occasion, Mr. Smith led her and a bevy 
 of her companions, under a pledge of secrecy, 
 to a locked room in the third story, where sat 
 a fugitive quadroon girl. "Harriet," he said, 
 addressing the girl, "I have brought all my 
 young cousins to see you. I want you to make 
 good abolitionists of them by telling them the 
 history of your life. ' 
 
 The girls had never before seen a slave face 
 to face. For two hours they questioned her 
 about what she had undergone in slavery. 
 Her answers only vivified what they had al- 
 ready heard but that was enough. "We all 
 wept together as she talked, and when Cousin 
 Gerrit returned to summon us away, we needed 
 no further education to make us earnest abo- 
 litionists.' 
 
 Now the abolition theory had one direct cor- 
 ollary that a person of Miss Cady's stamp 
 would be quick to see. The Constitution of the 
 United States guaranteed the franchise to all 
 persons except negroes, idiots, lunatics, crimi- 
 nals and women. It naturally hurt the pride 
 

 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 67 
 
 of some women to be classed with negroes, not 
 to say with, lunatics and felons. But if the 
 colored people were to be freed in recognition 
 of their sense and their humanity, what should 
 be done with the women? Should the finest 
 types of our civilization daughters, wives and 
 mothers be left, without even the black man 
 for company, in a class with the mentally and 
 morally diseased? Miss Cady saw that aboli- 
 tion and woman's rights went together. And 
 like thousands all over the country, her open 
 faith in one cause little by little strengthened 
 her secret hope for the other. 
 
 This abolition fever first spurred Miss Cady's 
 interest in Henry B. Stanton, a young anti- 
 slavery orator who was sometimes a guest at 
 the Smiths'. He later proved to have many 
 [personal charms also and she as many for 
 him. They became engaged, and in 1840 were 
 married. But Miss Cady held that a man with 
 his zeal for freedom should not, even in form, 
 enslave a woman; and they agreed to omit the 
 word "obey" from the ceremony. 
 
 Thus a champion of negro rights and one 
 who was at least a passive enemy of woman's 
 wrongs were logically mated. In May, 1840, 
 they took passage to London as delegates to a 
 world's anti-slavery convention. And there, 
 as it fell out, the young wife was made to dis- 
 avow the cause borrowed from her husband, 
 and to return, with quickened ardor, to her 
 own. 
 
 The organizers of the convention had in- 
 
68 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 vited delegates from all the anti-slavery so- 
 cieties in the civilized world. They were not 
 aware that women composed many such so- 
 cieties in America and were accustomed to 
 speak and vote. When the odd contingent of 
 women arrived, therefore, it was denied en- 
 trance to the hall. A hot debate on the ques- 
 tion occupied an entire day. No woman was 
 allowed the floor. Scripture, ancient history 
 and English custom were liberally quoted to 
 prove the impropriety of the presence of 
 women in such an assembly. Though the argu- 
 ments were feeble and easily brushed aside, 
 the tradition behind them was impregnable. 
 The women were shut out; they could get only 
 permission to sit in a curtained loft. There, 
 for twelve days, they listened to abolitionists 
 who, "while eloquently defending the natural 
 rights of slaves, denied freedom of speech to 
 one-half the people of their own race.' 
 
 It was no wonder that before the convention 
 adjourned the words were flying about every- 
 where, "It is about time some demand was 
 made for new liberties for women.' Mrs. 
 Stanton walked to her hotel arm in arm with 
 Lucretia Mott, the Quakeress. Her brain was 
 awhirl with indignant thoughts. Why did cus- 
 tom make it a tragedy to be born a girl ? Why 
 did the laws throw women upon the kindness 
 of men, who were too often unkind? Why 
 were the best women of America excluded 
 from the discussion of this subject on which 
 they knew as much as any men! It was a bar- 
 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 69 
 
 baric tyranny of sex, and could be endured no 
 longer. 
 
 Mrs. Stanton once more revised and enun- 
 ciated her childish resolution to be all her 
 brother had been. As soon as she returned 
 home, she declared she would form a society to 
 advocate the rights of women. This time her 
 purpose was definite, and it would stand. 
 
 Nevertheless, her proposed rebellion had for 
 some years to be postponed. For, as she says, 
 "The puzzling questions . . . that had oc- 
 cupied so much of my thoughts, now gave place 
 to the practical one, 'What to do with a 
 baby. 7 " 
 
 At the birth of her first child, Mrs. Stanton 
 promptly dropped out of public affairs in or- 
 der to school herself in the profession of 
 motherhood. It was an office too much neg- 
 lected, she thought, and too much debased by 
 the ignorance of those who performed it. 
 She would regard it in another way! So she 
 pored over books new and old and carefully 
 observed the behavior of her own baby, and 
 others and gradually evolved a scientific 
 regimen. The kind of superstitions she had 
 to combat and the way she did it may be shown 
 by the dispute with the nurse who bandaged 
 the child. 
 
 "Can you give me one good reason, nurse, 
 why a child should be bandaged! 7 
 
 "Yes, ? she said emphatically, "I can give 
 you a dozen." 
 
 "I only asked for one," the mother replied. 
 
70 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 "Well," said the nurse, "the bones of a new 
 born infant are soft, like cartilage, and, unless 
 you pin them up snugly, there is danger of 
 their falling apart. " 
 
 "It is very remarkable, " retorted Mrs. Stan- 
 ton, "that kittens and puppies should be so 
 well put together that they need no artificial 
 bracing, and the human family left wholly to 
 the mercy of a bandage. Now I think this 
 child will remain intact without a bandage, and 
 if I am willing to take the risk, why should you 
 complain ? ' ' 
 
 The nurse was unconvinced. She washed 
 her hands of the new fangled notion. Every 
 morning she bandaged the child, and as regu- 
 larly the mother took the bandage off. "It 
 has been proved since,' comments Mrs. Stan- 
 ton with satisfaction, "to be as useless an ap- 
 pendage as the vermiform.' 
 
 At her home in Chelsea, Massachusetts, Mr. 
 Stanton practiced law in Boston, just across 
 the river, the young mother delighted as 
 freshly in all other branches of housekeeping. 
 "I felt the same ambition to excel in all de- 
 partments of the culinary art that I did at 
 school in the different branches of learning. 
 My love of order and cleanliness was carried 
 throughout, from parlor to kitchen. ... I 
 put my soul into everything and hence enjoyed 
 it. ... There is such a struggle among 
 women to become artists that I really wish 
 some of their gifts could be illustrated in clean, 
 orderly, beautiful homes." 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 71 
 
 Add to this preoccupation with domestic con- 
 cerns the freedom of good society, of lectures, 
 concerts and other diversions in Boston, and 
 it can be guessed why for eight years Mrs. 
 Stanton forgot "women's woes," or at least 
 forsook the idea of tilting against them in per- 
 son. But in 1847 the family moved to Seneca 
 Falls, New York. There the tranquil beauty 
 of her existence was roughly overthrown. 
 
 She had an increasing number of children, 
 and the care of them nursing, clothing and 
 teaching them, taking them to school, to the 
 shoemaker's and the dentist's taxed her en- 
 durance to the danger limit. Her large hous-e 
 and grounds were hard to keep in order; and 
 since the novelty of housekeeping had worn 
 away and reliable servants could not be had, 
 her once attractive duties became a weary bur- 
 den. Her residence, furthermore, stood on the 
 outskirts of town and she was virtually im- 
 prisoned there by muddy roads. Accustomed 
 as she had been to the brilliant intercourse of 
 Boston, this confinement irked her grievously. 
 
 "I suffered with mental hunger which, like 
 an empty stomach, is very depressing. I 
 had books, but no stimulating companion- 
 ship. . . . Cleanliness, order, the love of 
 the beautiful and artistic, all faded away in the 
 struggle to accomplish what was absolutely 
 necessary from hour to hour. ... I now 
 fully understood the practical difficulties most 
 women had to contend with in the isolated 
 household, and the impossibility of woman's 
 
72 HEEOINES OF MODEKN PKOGEESS 
 
 best development if in contact, the chief part 
 of her life, with servants and children. " And 
 this understanding stung her to open protest. 
 
 "The general discontent I felt with woman 's 
 portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physician 
 and spiritual guide, . . . and the wearied, 
 anxious look of most women, impressed me 
 with a strong feeling that some active meas- 
 ures should be taken. . . . My experience 
 at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, all I 
 had read of the legal status of women, and the 
 oppression I saw everywhere, together swept 
 across my soul, intensified now by many per- 
 sonal experiences. ... I could not see 
 what to do, or where to begin my only 
 thought was a public meeting for protest and 
 discussion ! ' ' 
 
 While in this tumult of mind, she happened 
 upon Lucretia Mott again at a friend's house. 
 She poured out the story of her griefs. Some- 
 one suggested "the propriety of holding a 
 woman's convention,' ' as they had long ago in 
 London talked of doing. The little company 
 all gave assent, and next morning, July 14, 
 1848, the Seneca County Courier announced a 
 convention "to discuss the social, civil and 
 religious condition and rights of women.' 
 
 The meeting took place July nineteenth and 
 twentieth in the Wesleyan Church at Seneca 
 Falls. The women meanwhile, mistrustful of 
 their own invention, had "resigned themselves 
 to the faithful perusal of various masculine 
 productions/' and had pitched upon the Decla- 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 73 
 
 ration of Independence for the model of their 
 protest. With still greater modesty, they had 
 resorted to libraries of law, church usage, and 
 social custom to find their eighteen grievances. 
 On the basis of these they had draughted a set 
 of twelve resolutions. 
 
 Several friendly men were present at the 
 little chapel on the opening day, and one, 
 James Mott, took the chair. The object and 
 necessity of the meeting was stated by Lu- 
 cretia Mott, and others. Then Mrs. Stanton 
 read her celebrated " Declaration of Senti- 
 ments." 
 
 It began with "When in the course of hu- 
 man events' and, with a few substitutions, 
 copied the preamble of the historic document 
 of 1776. It held that all men and women are 
 created equal. But "the history of mankind is 
 a history of repeated injuries and usurpations 
 on the parts6f man toward woman, having in 
 direct object the establishment of an absolute 
 tyranny over her.' To prove this, the eight- 
 een facts were "submitted to a candid world, " 
 beginning with "He has never permitted her to 
 exercise her inalienable right to the elective 
 franchise." He had denied her, the indict- 
 ment went on, an equal right in the universi- 
 ties, the trades and professions; a share in 
 political offices and honors; equality in mar- 
 riage, and the possession of children ; the right 
 to hold property or to receive just wages; the 
 right to make contracts, sue and be sued, and 
 to testify in courts of justice. And, in view of 
 
74 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 this degradation, it was insisted that women 
 "have immediate admission to all the rights 
 and privileges which belong to them as citizens 
 of the United States. ' ' 
 
 The twelve resolutions were unanimously ap- 
 proved hy the assembly, all but one. That one 
 read, "It is the duty of the women of this coun- 
 try to secure to themselves their sacred right 
 to the elective franchise." Some women 
 feared this would defeat their more conserva- 
 tive demands. Lucretia Mott cautioned, "Liz- 
 zie, thee will make the movement ridiculous.'' 
 But Mrs Stanton said, "No!" The right to 
 choose rulers and legislators preceded all the 
 others in importance, for through it all others 
 could be secured ; without it, women could only 
 gain ground through the tardy generosity of 
 men. She had learned that truth unforgettably 
 in her father's law office! So, with Frederick 
 Douglass, she argued and plead for the resolu- 
 tion until the convention let it go through with 
 the rest. 
 
 This was the first open and formal plea for 
 woman suffrage in the United States. It was 
 the direct outgrowth of a young girl's sense of 
 inequality with boys, and her determination 
 somehow to be equal. And her private in- 
 juries and longings must have been connected, 
 in a sympathetic way, with a general condition 
 in the four corners of the nation. For it was 
 said that this was "the most momentous re- 
 form that had yet been launched on the world 
 the first organized protest against the injus- 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 75 
 
 tice which had brooded for ages over the char- 
 acter and destiny of one-half the human race." 
 The proceedings of the convention were no 
 sooner blown abroad than the press and pulpit 
 made haste to ridicule and satirize it. The 
 public in general feared what the poem said : 
 
 Confusion has seized us and all things go wrong, 
 The women have leaped from ' their spheres/ 
 
 And, instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along, 
 And are setting the world by the ears! 
 
 In courses erratic they're wheeling through space 
 In brainless confusion and meaningless chase. 
 
 The authors of the Declaration were de- 
 nounced and jeered as "sour old maids,' 
 "childless women," and "divorced wives" 
 though as a matter of fact most of them an- 
 swered to none of these epithets. A majority 
 of those who had signed the document lost heart 
 under the persecution and crossed out their 
 names. But Mrs. Stanton did not believe the 
 movement portended "widespread and per- 
 manent injury" to the female character, nor to 
 the ultimate happiness of men. If she tam- 
 pered with her signature at all, it was to under- 
 score it. 
 
 She soon began to speak, on request, at vari- 
 ous points in the neighborhood. When a min- 
 ister or an editor criticised her "meaningless 
 chase," she would reply from the platform or 
 in some friendly paper. Law, science, his- 
 tory and philosophy lent her arguments, and 
 
76 HEROINES OF MODEKN PROGRESS 
 
 she made a doughty and a winning defense. 
 For example, at a Quaker meeting-house where 
 she had spoken, a man with a broad-brimmed 
 hat arose and in a tone not unlike a rooster's 
 remarked, "All I have to say is, if a hen can 
 crow, let her crow." A second New York con- 
 vention was called, one month after the first, 
 at Eochester ; and Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts 
 and Pennsylvania followed in quick succession. 
 Mrs. Stanton saw, with no little surprise, that 
 her firebrand had kindled the heaped-up tinder 
 in all the states; and soon might not the 
 blaze defy control? 
 
 In 1851, Mrs. Stanton met Susan B. Anthony, 
 a Quakeress about her own age. Miss Anthony 
 had kept school until the questions of anti- 
 slavery and temperance caught her notice. At 
 first she had laughed at the Woman's Declara- 
 tion; yet, says Mrs. Stanton, "I liked her thor- 
 oughly from the beginning. . . . There she 
 stood with her good, earnest face and genial 
 smile, . . . the perfection of neatness and 
 sobriety.' And, in a few conversations, Mrs. 
 Stanton quite reversed the other's thoughts, 
 and clasped hands with her in an eternal part- 
 nership. It was a lucky union; for Miss An- 
 thony, though not so able a writer as her friend, 
 was a better executive; and, being more tem- 
 perate, she was able to fire with better effect 
 the thunderbolts that the latter forged. She 
 would soon lay down her temperance banner 
 to become the "Napoleon" of woman suffrage. 
 The two women were destined to stand shoul- 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 77 
 
 der to shoulder for the next forty-five years, 
 goading each other always to more daring and 
 tireless efforts. Mrs. Stanton had won a faith- 
 ful ally one who would in some respects be- 
 come her trusted leader. 
 
 During the next few years the campaign was 
 directed from Mrs. Stanton 's residence. There, 
 harried usually by domestic trifles, the women 
 wrote their fiery articles, protests and petitions, 
 and from there they went out, full armed, to 
 speak, whenever occasion offered. They can- 
 vassed the state in every way their brains could 
 devise. 'Usually their acts were caustically 
 compared to "the wit of the clown in the cir- 
 cus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on 
 fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with 
 blackened faces." But the vigor of the opposi- 
 tion was to them a sign that their blows were 
 cutting the quick. Miss Anthony invaded the 
 state conventions of teachers, and within a dec- 
 ade won equality there for women. In 1854, 
 Mrs. Stanton, over hopeful, perhaps, made shift 
 to address the New York Legislature, in behalf 
 of equal rights. The speech failed of its 
 avowed object; it could not do otherwise. But 
 it was widely read and evoked much favorable 
 comment. Judge Cady asked in amazement 
 how one so tenderly reared could have learned 
 the wrongs of her sex. 
 
 "Here in your office," she told him, "listen- 
 ing to the complaints women made to you.' 
 
 "I think,' he said, "I can find even more 
 cruel laws than those you have quoted." 
 
78 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 He did find them, and she incorporated them 
 in her speeches. It looked as though the 
 woman was gaining from him a small measure 
 of the approbation she had yearned for as a 
 child. And knowing him no easy convert, she 
 had faith that others were being, and had been, 
 won over in the same way. 
 
 In 1861, the plea of women for the ballot was 
 drowned in the rising thunders of the Civil 
 War. Political parties in the North now 
 begged Mrs. Stanton and her friends to let 
 their agitation sleep until the affair with the 
 South was settled. They acceded, and for five 
 years lent their forces to help emancipate the 
 negro. 
 
 This did not mean, however, that she had 
 laid down her arms. She knew, what some 
 women did not, that the war meant more than 
 the pitting of Northern men against Southern 
 men, and the suppression of a rebellion; and 
 she did not clamor, like them, for sewing and 
 preserving and such practical charities for the 
 army in the field. She knew the political issues 
 of the struggle ; knew they all turned, first and 
 last, on slavery. The main thing to ensure in 
 the war was not victory of arms for any one 
 section but freedom for the negroes! Could 
 that be accomplished? She hoped so. For a 
 tnegro freed would be a negro enfranchised. 
 From the low estate he had held he would as- 
 cend to full citizenship and seize the vote. And 
 perhaps, argued Mrs. Stanton, with that prece- 
 dent women could rise too. Once the door of 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 79 
 
 privilege was opened, perhaps women could 
 crowd through also, and separate themselves 
 from the insane and the criminal. 
 
 So she helped form the National Loyal 
 League, "to impress on the nation's conscience 
 that freedom for the slaves was the only way 
 to victory." This league convened in New 
 York, May 14, 1861, and passed two significant 
 resolutions : 
 
 "That the women of the Eevolution were not 
 wanting in heroism and self-sacrifice, and we, 
 their daughters, are ready in this war, to 
 pledge our time, our means, our talents, and 
 our lives, if need be, to secure the final and 
 complete consecration of America to freedom.' 
 "That never can be a true peace in this Re- 
 public until the civil and political rights of all 
 citizens of African descent and all women are 
 practically established. ' 
 
 In the years that followed, however, the 
 mention of "women" was tactfully omitted. 
 Mrs. Stanton and her supporters pushed for- 
 ward the negro, both for his own sake, and to 
 make him a stalking horse. They scattered 
 tracts, "thick as snow flakes," from Maine to 
 Texas. They called meetings where the policy 
 of the government was discussed. They cir- 
 culated petitions which were endorsed by three 
 hundred thousand persons. The Republican 
 and Abolition parties praised their wisdom 
 in restricting their efforts to one subject, and 
 called them "wise, loyal, and clear sighted.' 
 When at last the slave was emancipated, and 
 
80 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PKOGEESS 
 
 Congress began trying to frame a fourteenth 
 amendment to enfranchise him, the women 
 peeped out from behind their stalking horse. 
 But they had been deluded. They were still 
 outside the city. 
 
 The amendment could not be written with- 
 out the word "male"; for that would enfran- 
 chise not only white women but the colored 
 women of the South. l ' Suffrage for black men 
 will be all the strain the Eepublican party can 
 stand,' said a senator, "without extending it 
 to i wenches.' " So the white women had to be 
 shut out with the black. While striving for the 
 freedom of the slaves, a measure countenanced 
 by the Eepublican party, they had been lauded 
 to the skies. But now when they asked for the 
 franchise along with "their only respectable 
 compeer' under the constitution, their tran- 
 scendent virtues vanished, says Mrs. Stanton, 
 "like dew before the morning sun." The 
 national legislators were not yet ready for uni- 
 versal suffrage. The word "male" was re- 
 tained. 
 
 Mrs. Stanton was now fully committed to 
 suffrage, whether in New York, the nation at 
 large, or in any part of the nation. The battle 
 had opened, once for all; and she was alert to 
 seize every advantage and to force the strong- 
 holds of the enemy. Since no party would own 
 her, she conceived the idea of launching a 
 new party! In 1868 she nominated herself 
 for the national House of Eepresentatives. 
 She may have been surprised, but was cer- 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 81 
 
 tainly not dismayed when out of twenty-three 
 thousand votes she polled only two dozen. 
 She wished, she said cheerfully, that she could 
 have procured the photographs of her twenty- 
 four unknown friends. 
 
 In the summer of 1867 she had hurried to the 
 West, for hopeful signs were reported there. 
 Kansas was about to vote on a constitution 
 which extended the franchise to negroes and 
 the "less muscular sex," an event that, 
 whether it succeeded or not, might truly bo 
 said to mark an epoch. Mrs. Stanton and Miss 
 Anthony stumped the state. The returns 
 showed one-third of the votes favorable to 
 them. The nation wondered, for no politician 
 had seriously looked for such strength in the 
 women. 
 
 But Mrs. Stanton exulted. The opposition 
 was beginning to weaken. Furthermore, it 
 occurred to her that the one-third vote in 
 Kansas might have been a majority vote, but 
 for one thing. The people were uninformed. 
 Isolated as they were, with few trains and 
 muddy roads, few of them had heard the mes- 
 sage of the campaigners. And the papers, such 
 as the people took, uniformly derided woman 
 suffrage. Should there not, asked Mrs. Stan- 
 ton, be a publication dedicated to women and 
 equality ? 
 
 Others before her had nursed the same idea ; 
 and Lucy Stone had said, "We must have a 
 paper, and dear, brave, sensible Mrs. Stanton 
 must be the editor." Mrs. Stanton had a 
 
82 HEEOINES OF MODERN PEOGEESS 
 
 house and a large family to oversee, and did 
 not hunger for the regular duties of a news- 
 paper office. But before she reached New 
 York, money had been offered for a weekly 
 publication to be called the Revolution if only 
 she, with Parker Pillsbury, would edit it. The 
 business management was to rest in Miss 
 Anthony's hands. The editor could therefore 
 write most of her articles at home and not be 
 forced to neglect her housekeeping. The com- 
 bination suited her exactly, and she accepted. 
 
 For two years and a half now she spoke her 
 mind plainly and fully. "She so abounds in 
 metaphors and pithy phrases,' wrote an ad- 
 miring friend, "that a characteristic article 
 from her pen is like a Chinese jar of chow-chow 
 filled with little lumps of citron, apricot, and 
 ginger, all swimming in a sweet and biting 
 syrup. 7 She hit right and left, as one paper 
 said, at everybody and everything that op- 
 posed the granting of suffrage to females as 
 well as males. "Eadical and defiant in tone," 
 was her own estimate, "it awoke friends and 
 foes alike to action. Some denounced it, some 
 ridiculed it, but all read it.' The friends it 
 awoke, however, were not heavy advertisers; 
 and for want of money from that source the 
 Revolution finally died. 
 
 But Mrs. Stanton was not thereby thrown 
 out of employment. Already in 1865 the Na- 
 tional Woman's Suffrage Association had been 
 formed with her as president. The same year, 
 in furtherance of the work, she went on the 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 83 
 
 lyceum platform. For twelve years, now, 
 eight months in the year, she fared up and 
 down the land. She had a lecture on ' ' Mother- 
 hood " and one on " Woman,' and many, va- 
 riously styled, on suffrage. Wherever in Cali- 
 fornia, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska or 
 any state, her favorite doctrine was made a 
 political issue, thither she and Miss Anthony 
 hurried with speech and pamphlet. 
 
 They had often to utter their message under 
 the most trying circumstances. Once, in 
 Michigan, they happened in at a deaf and 
 dumb institution. Mrs. Stanton had just said, 
 " There is one comfort in visiting this place; 
 we shall not be asked to speak,' when the 
 superintendent came up with, "Ladies, the 
 pupils are assembled in the chapel ready to 
 hear you!" They spoke, while the superin- 
 tendent repeated in sign language what was 
 said. At another time their boat was ice- 
 bound in the middle of the Mississippi Eiver. 
 Someone shouted, "Speech on woman suf- 
 frage!" They rose to the occasion and there 
 at midnight had the pleasure of making several 
 new allies. In Kansas, Mrs. Stanton one night 
 was refused lodgings in a house, and ensconced 
 herself in the carriage. "I had just fallen into 
 a gentle slumber, when a chorus of pronounced 
 grunts and a spasmodic shaking of the carriage 
 revealed to me the fact that I was surrounded 
 by those long-nosed black pigs, so celebrated 
 for their courage and pertinacity. They had 
 discovered that the iron steps of the car- 
 
84 HEEOINES OF MODEKN PROGRESS 
 
 riage made most satisfactory scratching posts. 
 Alas! thought I, before morning I shall be 
 devoured." She plied the whip upon them, 
 but without effect; so she went to sleep and 
 let them scratch at their pleasure. "I had 
 a sad night of it, and never tried the carriage 
 again, though I had many equally miserable 
 experiences within four walls.' 7 
 
 All these material trials could have been 
 cheerfully borne but not so cheerfully the 
 obloquy that went with the title of suffragist. 
 While friends were numerous and on the in- 
 crease, the majority of both sexes still stig- 
 matized her reform as that of women "strong 
 minded/ brazen and unfeminine. 
 
 The press ridiculed and slandered her. "No 
 woman/ said a New York paper, "can con- 
 vert herself into a feminine Knight of the Rue- 
 ful Visage and ride about the country attempt- 
 ing to redress imaginary wrongs without leav- 
 ing her own household in a neglected condition 
 that must be an eloquent witness against her." 
 The accusation hurt none the less because it 
 was false. 
 
 The halls in which she spoke were frequently 
 packed with the hostile, who hissed and jeered, 
 and cut short her discourse by burning cayenne 
 pepper on the stove. Insulting letters were a 
 regular portion of her morning mail. Old 
 friendships grew cold, and some people she 
 would have liked for friends refused her hand. 
 As president of the National Association she 
 was constantly opposed by rising leaders who 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 85 
 
 thought they could run the society better; and 
 but for Miss Anthony's cry, ".0, how I have 
 agonized over my utter failure to make you 
 feel and see the importance of standing fast 
 and holding the helm of our good ship to the 
 end of the storm 77 she would, more than once, 
 have resigned. It took courage to be a suf- 
 fragist in 1870. But Mrs. Stanton had the 
 courage, the courage of conviction; because if 
 she had lacked the conviction she would not 
 have been Mrs. Stanton. 
 
 Mrs. Stanton held the executive chair of the 
 national society up to 1893, and presided grace- 
 fully at its stormy meetings. In that year she 
 resigned, retaining, however, the title of honor- 
 ary president until her death in 1902. She still 
 occasionally spoke from the platform, with 
 arguments as keen, witty and logical as ever. 
 
 The principal labor of her later years was 
 the writing of the "History of Woman Suf- 
 frage,' in collaboration with Miss Anthony 
 and Miss Gage. Into these three heavy vol- 
 umes she gathered the facts about the first 
 forty years of the struggle, and made them as 
 readable as a story meant for amusement. In 
 1898 she brought out her "Eighty Years And 
 More,' ' which, in the sprightliness of its narra- 
 tion, affirmed her independence of time. 
 
 Mrs. Stanton, meanwhile, had always proudly 
 sustained her record as a housekeeper, and had 
 reared seven children in a highly creditable 
 manner. She never lost sight of the impor- 
 tance of wise and devoted parenthood. The 
 
86 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 theme was on her lips as often as that of suf- 
 frage. In all her travels, it seems, she was a 
 tireless friend to the ignorant parents of weep- 
 ing babes. In one case, unable to finish her 
 instructions, she telegraphed them, to the huge 
 amusement of operators along the wire, "Give 
 the baby water six times a day/ "Imagine 
 me/ she wrote, after she had become famous 
 as an agitator, "day in and day out, watch- 
 ing, bathing, dressing, nursing and prome- 
 nading the precious contents of a little crib in 
 the corner of my room. . . . Come here 
 and I will do what I can to help you with your 
 address, if you will hold the baby and make 
 the puddings.' Even in the office of the 
 Revolution she looked less the editor than the 
 mother. "The short, substantial figure, with 
 its handsome black dress arid crown of curls, 
 is sufficiently interesting. The fresh, girlish 
 complexion, the laughing blue eyes and jolly 
 voice are yet more so. Beside her stands her 
 sixteen year old daughter. "We study Cady 
 Stanton's handsome face as she talks on 
 rapidly and facetiously. Nothing little or mean 
 in that face; no line of distrust or irony; 
 neither are there wrinkles of care life has 
 been pleasant to this woman.' 
 
 Yet for all her preaching on motherhood, she 
 held it barbarous that woman should be con- 
 fined strictly to the sphere of the home. 
 Woman, she said, can refine and elevate poli- 
 tics as she has missions, schools, literature and 
 general society. On the other hand, she needs 
 
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 87 
 
 the ballot for her own protection; and she 
 needs its broadening influence the same as she 
 needs that of school and society. Association 
 with children and servants the affairs of 
 motherhood do not occupy and nourish the 
 whole woman any more than fatherhood occu- 
 pies and nourishes the whole man. 
 
 Mrs. Stanton's last words on the suffrage 
 were brave and hopeful; but they were barbed 
 also with a sharp reproof to the women of her 
 day. The reform had moved very slowly, she 
 admitted. The majority of women even yet 
 did not want it. And so, she said, were the 
 majority of Chinese women content with band- 
 aged feet; but did that make the custom right? 
 Eeforms were always inaugurated by a small, 
 despised minority. "That a majority of the 
 women of the United States accept, without 
 protest, the disabilities which grow out of their 
 disfranchisement is simply an evidence of their 
 ignorance and cowardice, while the minority 
 who demand a higher political status clearly 
 prove their superior intelligence and wisdom.' 
 
 Her own intelligence and wisdom both as a 
 domestic woman and a reformer were splen- 
 didly honored on her eightieth birthday, No- 
 vember 12, 1895. The Woman's Council, com- 
 posed of twenty national societies, many of 
 them unconnected with suffrage, tendered her 
 a celebration at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
 New York. Theodore Tilton, in a letter de- 
 clared, "Every woman who seeks the legal 
 custody of her children or the legal con- 
 
88 HEROINES OF MODEBN PEOGEESS 
 
 trol of her property; every woman who finds 
 the door of a college or a university open- 
 ing to her; every woman who administers a 
 post office or a public library; every woman 
 who enters upon a career of medicine, law or 
 theology; every woman who teaches a school, 
 or tills a farm, or keeps a shop; every woman 
 who drives a horse, rides a bicycle, skates at a 
 rink ... or even snaps a kodak; every 
 such woman owes her liberty largely to your- 
 self and to your earliest and bravest co- 
 workers. ' 
 
 If one looks back he will note that practically 
 all these rights were demanded by Mrs. Stan- 
 ton in her Declaration of 1848. And in 1896, 
 when Idaho, following the example of Colo- 
 rado, Utah and Wyoming, enfranchised its 
 women, she might be pardoned for boasting 
 that her one-time " grave mistake " was gen- 
 erally called "a great step in progress. " 
 
HAEBIET BEECHEE STOWE 
 
 WHEN one of Harriet Beecher's pets died 
 she interred it with impressive cere- 
 monies and on its gravestone inscribed this 
 "epithet": 
 
 Here lies our kit 
 Who had a fit 
 
 And acted queer; 
 Shot with a gun, 
 Her race is run, 
 
 And she lies here. 
 
 The incident is typical, for Harriet as a child 
 was always in close companionship with the 
 dumb members of the household. She enter- 
 tained herself not only with the animals, but 
 with the flowers and trees, the lakes and hills, the 
 invigorating winds and all the wild out-of-doors 
 of her native Connecticut. Summer and win- 
 ter she ran free, a happy country lass, garden- 
 ing, carrying wood, and tramping over the hills 
 with her brothers. "I was educated first and 
 foremost by nature, " she afterward said, 
 " wonderful, beautiful, ever-changing as she is 
 in that cloudland, Litchfield.' 
 
 Yet nature in the shape of Harriet's parents, 
 
 89 
 
90 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 had even a stronger influence, both early and 
 late. The mother, with her last breath, had 
 called her six sons about her, and prayed that 
 all might embrace the Christian faith and be- 
 come preachers of the gospel, like their father. 
 The memory of that prayer and of the pious 
 woman who made it deterred the young girl 
 from evil and incited her to good, like the pres- 
 ence of the living person; perhaps, despite 
 the belief of the age that women should keep 
 silence in meeting it disposed her also to 
 some kind of religious profession. Be that as 
 it may, the trend that she took from her father 
 was unmistakable. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Beecher was a Congrega- 
 tional minister in Litchfield, Conn., where 
 Harriet was born, June 14, 1811. He em- 
 phasized the harsher side of religion the 
 " strong doctrine" and the punishment for sin. 
 Not content with catechising his offspring out- 
 of-book, he taught them to argue and to prove 
 their own sinfulness ! by taking himself the 
 weaker side of a question and leading them 
 along until they tripped him up. 
 
 As Mr. Beecher was Harriet's chosen coun- 
 selor, so his library was her favorite retreat. 
 Here the minister would sit, turning the leaves 
 of his Bible and Concordance, writing, mutter- 
 ing to himself, and oblivious of all the world. 
 Secure in his presence, Harriet would rifle the 
 shelves and curl up in a corner with her books 
 around her astonishing books they were, 
 
HAEEIET BEECHEE STOWE 91 
 
 sometimes, with theological titles, such as 
 "Toplady on Predestination." "Pilgrim's 
 Progress" was there; and after upsetting a 
 barrel or two of sermons in the attic, Harriet 
 uncovered a copy of the ' ' Arabian Nights, ' ' and 
 a fragment of "The Tempest.' On these and 
 Mather's "Magnolia," she formed her literary 
 taste. 
 
 The minister's library naturally was rich in 
 other things than books. It was the principal 
 theater of the intellectual life of the town. 
 Thither came neighboring ministers to debate 
 hotly on theological matters and Harriet lis- 
 tened eagerly to their wisdom. There, too, a 
 sea-faring uncle, Captain Foote, spun his fab- 
 ulous yarns, and, in a spirit of mischief, as- 
 serted that Catholics were well-intentioned 
 folk on the whole, and that some Turks were 
 as honest as some Christians. There an aunt, 
 once a resident of the West Indies, dwelt with 
 loathing upon the cruelties of the slavery sys- 
 tem. Harriet often heard her tell how she sat 
 by her window in the still, tropical night and 
 wished "the island might sink in the ocean, 
 with all its sin and misery, and that she might 
 sink with it." 
 
 Mr. Beecher frowned upon the uncle's here- 
 sies, but he fervently shared the ideas of the 
 aunt. "I remember his prayers, morning and 
 evening, in the family, for 'poor, oppressed, 
 bleeding Africa,' wrote his daughter, "that 
 the time of her deliverance might come ; prayers 
 
92 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 offered with strong crying and tears, prayers 
 that indelibly impressed my heart, and made 
 me, what I am, the enemy of all slavery.' 
 
 Harriet dutifully attended the church in 
 which her father preached. Sometimes she 
 had a merry day of it, as when Dr. Beecher 
 exchanged pulpits with Reverend Mills. As 
 Father Mills rose up and began to read the 
 opening hymn, "Sing to the Lord aloud, 7 Trip, 
 the Beechers' dog, who had stolen into church, 
 broke into a dismal howl. 
 
 "Father Mills went on to give directions to 
 the deacons to remove the dog in the same tone 
 in which he read the hymn, so that the effect 
 of the whole performance was somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 
 
 Sing to the Lord aloud, 
 Please put that dog out ! 
 And make a joyful noise. 
 
 "We youngsters . . . sank in waves and 
 billows of hysterical giggles while Trip was put 
 out, and the choir did its best at making a 
 * joyful noise.' 
 
 For the most part, however, people in the 
 Litchfield church wore looks of deep sobriety. 
 Dr. Beecher was an earnest man, and he 
 prayed and preached from his heart out. His 
 discourses on slavery drew tears down the 
 hardest faces of the farmers of his congrega- 
 tion. His sermons on sin neither young nor 
 old could withstand. Under him Harriet her- 
 
HAEEIET BEECHEE STOWE 93 
 
 self was converted, at about twelve years of 
 
 age. 
 
 Meantime Harriet was going to school and 
 learning the common branches. What was of 
 more consequence, she was learning to express 
 the ideas generated at home. From the first 
 she took delight in writing compositions; and 
 when she was twelve her essay, with three 
 others, was read at the school exhibition. 
 
 The subject of the essay, not unnaturally, 
 was, "Can the Immortality of the Soul be 
 proved by the Light of Nature ! ' ' She handled 
 it with the gravity and the success of a col- 
 lege student. Her father hearing it, "bright- 
 ened and looked interested," and at the close 
 she heard him ask, "Who wrote that composi- 
 tion!" "Your daughter, sir,' was the an- 
 swer. Long after the girl had grown to be a 
 woman and knew something of fame, she could 
 look back upon this scene and say, "It was the 
 proudest moment of my life.' 
 
 For the next six years Miss Harriet was tor- 
 mented by great mental uneasiness. Upon 
 her father's removing to Boston, she went to 
 Hartford to the school conducted there by her 
 sister Catherine. For the term of her resi- 
 dence she transferred her church letter to Hart- 
 ford. Now, although a member of her father's 
 congregation, the girl had really never fath- 
 omed his doctrines, or "been under convic- 
 tion"; she was living contentedly in a religion 
 of simple faith and trust. But the Hartford 
 minister gave her a severe check. 
 
94 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 "Harriet," lie asked, "do you feel that 
 if the universe should be destroyed (awful 
 pause) you could be happy with God 
 alone I" 
 
 The girl was terrified at the thought. But 
 she stammered out, "Yes, sir." 
 
 "You realize, I trust," went on the pastor, 
 "in some measure, at least, the deceitfulness of 
 your heart and that in punishment for your 
 sins God might justly leave you to make your- 
 self as miserable as you have made yourself 
 sinful?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," stammered the child again. And 
 with that her torture began. She had been 
 taught at home to examine herself daily for any 
 taint of sin. From now on she did so with re- 
 doubled zeal. 
 
 "My whole life is one continued struggle,' 
 she wrote to her brother. "I do nothing right. 
 I yield to temptation almost as soon as it as- 
 sails me. ... I am beset behind and be- 
 fore, and my sins take away all my happiness.' 
 While at home one summer she confessed in a 
 letter to her sister, "I don't know as I am fit 
 for anything, and I have thought that I could 
 wish to die young . . . rather than live, as 
 I fear I do, a trouble to everyone. You don't 
 know how perfectly wretched I often feel: so 
 useless, so weak, so destitute of all energy. 
 Mamma often tells me that I am a strange, in- 
 consistent being. Sometimes I could not sleep 
 and have groaned and cried till midnight, while 
 in the daytime I tried to appear cheerful and 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 95 
 
 succeeded so well that papa reproved me for 
 laughing so much." 
 
 Even while this despondency was deepest, 
 however, the external things of her life were 
 calculated to dispel it. The sister Catherine 
 and the brother Edward had both attained a 
 somewhat more genial view of religion. Their 
 God was not angry, but loving, patient and 
 kind. And for five years they tried in speech 
 and writing to transmit this view to the girl, 
 so bowed down by the consciousness of sin. 
 
 Her relations in Hartford, too, were of the 
 pleasantest. She boarded with a family who 
 had in turn sent a daughter to board with her 
 parents, and she was mothered as graciously 
 as she could have been at home. The lessons 
 in school fascinated her the arithmetic, the 
 Latin and French, the painting; and she must 
 have studied faithfully, for she assisted the 
 teacher, in charge of pupils as old as herself. 
 She formed warm attachments with girls of her 
 own age, too, and joined in their amusements. 
 With all, it would be an obstinate melancholy 
 indeed that did not in time yield to such treat- 
 ment. In fact, before long, in writing to her 
 brother, she reveals a profound change in her 
 religious state. "I have never been so happy 
 as this summer (1830). I began it in more suf- 
 fering than I ever before have felt, but there 
 is One whom I daily thank for all that suffering, 
 since I hope that it has brought me at last to 
 rest entirely in Him. ... I love to look on 
 Christ as my teacher, as one who, knowing the 
 
96 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 utmost of my sinfulness, . . . can still 
 have patience; can reform, purify, and daily 
 make me more like Himself." 
 
 Finally, after all her spiritual worries were 
 set aside, she wrote out her simple creed. 
 "Well, there is a heaven, a heaven, a world 
 of love, and love after all is the life blood, the 
 existence, the all in all of mind.' 
 
 By the time she was twenty, then, the minis- 
 ter's daughter, after long disquiet, had avowed 
 a faith and a working principle suitable to her 
 inheritance, and worthy, to say more of a 
 large hearted woman. The love of God and 
 the love of man, as prescribed in the Christian 
 religion, she believed were the most pleasant 
 and profitable things in the world. So far 
 as she could, she meant to regulate her life in 
 accordance with that belief. 
 
 She immediately began to make her good 
 works tally with her faith. In her previous 
 morbid state her first inquiry on meeting people 
 had been, "Have they such and such a char- 
 acter, or have they anything that might possi- 
 bly be of use or harm to me?' But now she 
 swung right about. She cultivated a general 
 spirit of kindliness. She did not shrink from 
 people, but formed incidental acquaintances at 
 every chance. She tells of going to a little 
 party and "zealously talking all the evening.' 
 "The kind looks and words and smiles I call 
 forth by looking and smiling are not much by 
 themselves, but they form a very pretty flower 
 border to the way of life," she said. "They 
 
HARRIET BEECHEE STOWE 97 
 
 embellish the day or the hour as it passes, and 
 when they fade they only do just what you ex- 
 pected they would. " 
 
 In her writing, too, for her pen was always 
 busy she embodied this same Christian ex- 
 perience. Her dream of the period was to 
 be a poet. She began a drama whose theme 
 was the conversion, after long searching, of 
 Cleon, a Greek nobleman at the court of Nero. 
 She filled blank book after blank book with this 
 ambitious effort. "It filled my thoughts, 
 sleeping and waking, " she tells us. 
 
 Doubtless she fancied herself another So- 
 phocles. But one day, alas, her sister Cath- 
 erine pounced down upon her and said she 
 must not "waste her time' writing poetry! 
 So her religious drama had to lie over for a 
 while. When she did write it the hero would 
 be decidedly of a different color and a different 
 clime from the Greek lord in the court of 
 Nero. 
 
 In 1832 Dr. Beecher was called to Cincinnati 
 to guide the fortunes of the Lane Theological 
 Seminary, a college that promised to become 
 the feeder of the pulpits of all the West. The 
 greater part of his family must needs accom- 
 pany him. Catherine and Harriet were loath 
 to leave their school in Hartford. But, if they 
 could not preach, they could teach; and teach- 
 ing, they believed, was scarcely less a mission 
 than the one that had fallen to the lot of their 
 father. They soberly determined to "turn 
 over the West by means of model schools in this, 
 
98 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 its capital/ The work of teaching would 
 never be rightly done, they said, until it passed 
 into female hands. For men had not the tact 
 or talent of communicating knowledge, nor the 
 patience and gentleness " necessary to super- 
 intend the formation of character. We intend 
 to make these principles understood and our- 
 selves to set the example of what females can 
 do in this way." 
 
 Accordingly, the New England family trans- 
 planted itself to the Ohio river town. They 
 settled at Walnut Hills, two miles from the 
 city, in a beautiful spot so healthful that it 
 was said people had to leave there to be 
 sick. 
 
 With towering hopes the sisters opened their 
 school, the "Female Institute, " to "turn over 
 the West. ' The West trustingly presented it- 
 self to be turned. But Harriet, in fixing upon 
 her " mission, " had reckoned without her own 
 temperament; very likely she just reasoned in 
 harmony with Catherine, who had conceived 
 and was engineering the project. At all events 
 school teaching afforded her but a very shal- 
 low and uncertain enjoyment. She was too 
 emotional, had too many ups and downs, and 
 could not bear up under the strict routine. 
 Her health drooped in spite of the medicinal 
 atmosphere of Walnut Hills. About half the 
 time she was "scarcely alive, and a greater 
 part of the rest, the slave and sport of morbid 
 feeling and unreasonable prejudice.' 
 
 To dissipate this mood she tried various di- 
 
HAERIET BEECHER STOWE 99 
 
 versions. In 1833, she made an excursion into 
 Kentucky to see a southern plantation. One 
 who was with her said she appeared not to 
 notice anything about the way the farm was 
 run, but sat as though abstracted in thought. 
 "When the negroes did funny things and cut 
 up capers, she did not seem to pay the slightest 
 attention to them." Yet the young teacher 
 must have paid rather close attention; for 
 nearly twenty years later the identical scenes 
 were to be reproduced in a book. 
 
 Miss Beecher also taught a mission Sunday 
 , school for negroes. One of her pupils she 
 quizzed somewhat to the following effect: 
 
 "Have you ever heard anything about 
 God?" 
 
 The child only grinned in bewilderment. 
 
 "Do you know who made you?' 
 
 "Nobody, as I knows on," said the child. 
 Her eyes twinkled, and she added, "I 'spect I 
 growed; nobody never made me.' 
 
 This incident, also, Miss Beecher stored 
 away in her memory for a use she could not 
 anticipate. 
 
 As a further offset to her teaching, she pre- 
 pared a school geography, she contributed pa- 
 pers to the "Semi-Colon," a club of literary 
 people, and she wrote, from time to time, short 
 stories, one of which won a prize of fifty dol- 
 lars. But she had little leisure or strength 
 apart from her regular duties ; and no amount 
 of travel, mission work, or writing, however 
 pleasant in themselves, could reconcile her to 
 
100 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 the unloved profession. So, when her sister 
 failed in health and at last disbanded the school, 
 she gave it up without regret. 
 
 She was now free to take up some occupa- 
 tion more to her taste; and one occupation 
 romance, was already inviting her. One of her 
 dearest girl friends had married Calvin E. 
 Stowe, Professor of Biblical Literature in Lane 
 Seminary. The young wife died within a 
 year. What followed is set forth by Harriet's 
 biographer all too briefly. "Her death left 
 Professor Stowe a childless widower, and his 
 forlorn condition greatly excited the sympathy 
 of her who had been his wife's most intimate 
 friend. It was easy for sympathy to ripen into 
 love, and after a short engagement, Harriet E. 
 Beecher became the wife of Professor Calvin E. 
 Stowe. " 
 
 The next fourteen years in Cincinnati were 
 for the young wife crowded full of the joys 
 and cares of family life. All her seven chil- 
 dren save one were born there ; and in rearing 
 them she found perfect content. 
 
 "I must say I think myself a fortunate 
 woman both in husband and children,' she 
 wrote to a friend, "My children I would not 
 change for all the ease, pleasure and leisure 
 I could have without them.' And again, in 
 1848, "I am thirty-seven years old! I am glad 
 of it. I like to grow old and have six children 
 and cares endless. I wish you could see me 
 with my flock all around me. They sum up my 
 cares, and were they gone, I should ask myself, 
 
 
HAKRIET BEECHEft STOWE 101 
 
 What now remains to be done? They are my 
 work over which I fear and tremble.' 
 
 A woman so engrossed with domestic inter- 
 ests might seem unlikely ever to do anything 
 of import to the public. Furthermore, Pro- 
 fessor Stowe, though rich in Biblical learning, 
 was ill provided with property or money ; then 
 his college some years paid only half his sal- 
 ary; and the young mother, with her growing 
 family, was pressed into household drudgery. 
 
 When the couple went to housekeeping they 
 bought their entire stock of china for kitchen 
 and parlor for eleven dollars. A little later, 
 when embarrassed by guests, they acquired a 
 tea set at an outlay of ten dollars more and 
 this comprised their whole outfit for many 
 years. But in fact there were times when a 
 full set of dishes would have been a mockery 
 because the housewife had so little to serve in 
 them. In 1839, for example, salt, sugar, po- 
 tatoes, rice and coffee went up to famine prices. 
 The Stowes did without such things and sub- 
 sisted cheerfully if not comfortably on a diet 
 of bread and bacon. 
 
 Without money, capable servants could not 
 be had, and all the bothersome trifles of child 
 raising were heaped upon Mrs. Stowe. From 
 early morning when the first child woke to be 
 dressed until evening when the last one had 
 been tucked in bed, they required her constant 
 care. This was sometimes difficult to give, 
 when, at the same time, meals had to be cooked, 
 the house swept and clothes sewn or mended. 
 
102 HEKOINES OF MODEEN PKOGBESS 
 
 " Of such details as these, " she says, "are 
 all my days made up. Indeed, my dear, I am a 
 mere drudge, with few ideas beyond babies and 
 housekeeping." 
 
 Two or three circumstances, it is true, were 
 all this time tending to divert her interest from 
 things personal and confirm her in a character 
 other than that of housewife. The first of 
 these was slavery. 
 
 The system of slave labor in the southern 
 half of the United States had begun to menace 
 the national health. The South generally re- 
 garded it as an economic necessity to the 
 whites, and a moral benefit to the negroes; 
 while many in the North retorted that indus- 
 trially the system was a mere makeshift which 
 grew worse every year and that ethically it 
 damaged both the whites and those whom they 
 held in bondage. A numerous party of "abo- 
 litionists" had arisen in the North which hotly 
 demanded that the slave be freed at once. The 
 southern planters were of course aghast at a 
 measure which would in a moment annihilate 
 all their wealth, and they cried shame at the 
 North for attempting such a tyranny. Since 
 1800, this debate had been waxing yearly more 
 feverish. Cincinnati, being just on the border 
 between the slave states and the free, heard it 
 at its hottest. 
 
 Now the girl Harriet Beecher in her youth 
 had been biased against slavery by the senti- 
 ments of her aunt and her father. As a 
 teacher, again, she had inspected a Kentucky 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 103 
 
 plantation, and had led a mission Sunday 
 school class, where the ignorance and irre- 
 ligion of the blacks outraged her northern soul. 
 And during her married life the old convic- 
 tions took deeper and deeper root. 
 
 Lane Theological Seminary was a center of 
 the liveliest controversy and naturally Mrs. 
 Stowe heard much of it. The friends of slav- 
 ery in Cincinnati at one time came together in 
 a mob, wrecked an abolition press, and threw 
 it into the river, demolished the office, and pro- 
 ceeded to tear down the houses of inoffensive 
 blacks. Henry Beecher, then editing another 
 newspaper which stood out for freedom, car- 
 ried pistols which he grimly said were "to kill 
 men with." And Mrs. Stowe, writing of Mr. 
 Birney, the abolition editor, said, "I hope he 
 will stand his ground and assert his rights. 
 The office is fireproof and enclosed by high 
 walls. I wish he would man it with armed 
 men. ... If I were a man I would go for 
 one, and take good care of at least one win- 
 dow." 
 
 Certain incidents of the slave trouble came 
 yet more closely home to Mrs. Stowe. One 
 day a negro girl servant of hers ran to the 
 house in fright; her old master was in town 
 and would capture her and force her into serv- 
 itude again; but Mr. Stowe and Henry 
 Beecher carted the girl away at night through 
 the storm to a station of the underground rail- 
 way. Another servant described to Mrs. 
 Stowe the horrors of plantation life. Her 
 
104 HEROINES OF MODEKN PEOGBESS 
 
 brother Charles wrote from New Orleans of 
 an overseer who showed his fist, boasting that 
 it was "hard as iron knocking down niggers, 
 and that he didn't bother about sick niggers, 
 but worked his in with the crop." Every- 
 where she saw fugitive slaves recaptured and 
 dragged back in irons to their owners, and saw 
 children torn from their mothers and "sold 
 south.' This last offended her, as a mother, 
 most of all. Her eyes were opened to the real 
 enormity of the custom. "No one can have 
 the system of slavery brought before him with- 
 out an irrepressible desire to do something," 
 she declared, "and what is there to be done?" 
 What indeed for a woman with six children 
 and endless household cares? 
 
 There was another subject, too, that lured 
 her ambition that of writing. After her first 
 success with "Uncle Lot," she contributed oc- 
 casional articles and stories to the papers. 
 Her husband and friends urged her to give 
 more time to literature, more especially be- 
 cause she could profit financially thereby. In 
 fact, whenever a new carpet was needed or the 
 accounts failed to balance up, she did write an 
 article or a story to sell. But the difficulties 
 tinder which she composed were prodigious. 
 The sister Catherine, for example, would some- 
 times take dictation in the Stowe kitchen. Of 
 one such effort she gives an amusing account: 
 
 "Harriet brushed the flour off her apron and 
 sat down for a moment in a muse. Then she 
 dictated as follows: 
 
HAEBIET BEECHER STOWE 105 
 
 " 'I know my duty to my children. I see the 
 hour must come. You must take them, Henry ; 
 they are my last earthly comfort!' 
 
 " 'Ma'am, what shall I do with these egg 
 shells?' interrupted Mina, the servant. 
 
 " 'Put them in the pail by you,' answered 
 Harriet. 
 
 " 'They are my last earthly comfort,' said 
 I. 'What next?' 
 
 " 'You must take them away. It may be 
 perhaps it must be that I shall soon follow, 
 but the breaking heart of a wife still pleads, 
 'A little longer, a little longer.' 
 
 " 'How much longer must the ginger-bread 
 stay in?' asked Mina. 
 
 " 'Five minutes,' said Harriet. 
 
 " 'A little longer, a little longer,' I re- 
 peated, in a dolorous tone, and we burst out 
 into a laugh." 
 
 It is no wonder that, with these hindrances, 
 Mrs. Stowe wrote only to keep the pot boil- 
 ing, nor that, when forty years of age, she had 
 published nothing of consequence. Nor is it 
 remarkable that she had not bestirred herself 
 about slavery except to shield her own servants 
 and print a few sketches in her brother's 
 paper. 
 
 On the one hand she delighted in the privi- 
 leges of motherhood; on the other, she was all 
 too often forespent with its burdens. Then 
 she broke down in health, and believed she 
 could not live long. In that mood she declared, 
 "A work is put into my hands which I must 
 
106 HEEOINES OF MODERN PEOGRESS 
 
 be in earnest to finish shortly. It is nothing 
 great or brilliant in the world's eye; it lies in 
 one small family circle, of which I am called 
 to be the central point." 
 
 In short, she was truly and devotedly a 
 mother. Whatever other ambitions she had 
 she subordinated to that. The religion that to 
 her meant love, and the love that was "the all 
 in all of mind, ' ' she could expend almost wholly 
 upon her own small group of children. In the 
 nature of things there was no reason why she 
 should not round out her life within the com- 
 pass of motherhood, and call it a very good 
 life, too. 
 
 N'ow, however, a momentous change took 
 place. The cholera descended upon Cincinnati. 
 Hundreds died every day and there was scarce 
 a house in that city but paid toll to the plague. 
 Mr. Stowe was from home, and the mother 
 alone watched her flock with sharpening ap- 
 prehensions. Then the child Charley, her 
 youngest and dearest, sickened. A few days 
 she struggled for his life. He lingered a brief 
 while without hope. Then he died. 
 
 This was the first death in Mrs. Stowe 's 
 family. She grieved as though no woman but 
 she had suffered bereavement. She knew now 
 what loss was. Her mother's privilege had 
 been abrogated; her mother's cares made all 
 for naught. Hence her narrow contentment 
 with her family, and her comparative apathy 
 toward the sorrows of the world at large 
 were suddenly shattered. Before her eyes 
 
HAREIET BEECHEE STOWE 107 
 
 unrolled the record of griefs occasioned by 
 slavery the fugitives arrested, the weak 
 and delinquent whipped, the mothers bereft 
 of their children. She saw that these in- 
 cidents reproduced on a large scale her own 
 experience; that many slave mothers endured 
 many like bereavements, not at the hand of 
 death, but at that of her own race. "It was 
 my only prayer to God," she says, "that such 
 anguish might not be suffered in vain. . . . 
 I felt that I could never be consoled for it, un- 
 less this crushing of my own heart might en- 
 able me to work out some great good to 
 others." Thus in bitter sorrow Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe was braced for a new essay in 
 life. 
 
 About this time Mr. Stowe accepted a pro- 
 fessorship in Bowdoin College. The family 
 moved to the Maine town. There, with a larger 
 salary, the hardships they had borne for seven- 
 teen years were somewhat lightened. The 
 mother at last had a little leisure to think and 
 to write. And the subject for her exertions 
 was already over-ripe. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Law had just been 
 passed. This not only gave Southern owners 
 the right to pursue their escaped slaves in the 
 free states, but forced the people of those 
 states to assist in the business. The law was 
 interpreted so that a claimant need not prove 
 his unconditional ownership. Negroes who 
 had long been legally free and had become re- 
 spectable, self-supporting citizens, with fami- 
 
108 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 lies, could be seized. The outrage, in some 
 places, equaled the scene of the original ab- 
 duction in Africa. The hunted negroes, such 
 as were not taken at the first raid, were flee- 
 ing by night from all the Northern states like 
 mice rooted out of their warrens. The con- 
 science of the North revolted at the atrocity. 
 Boston, that had been one of the most hospita- 
 ble refuges of the black men, now became the 
 chief place of their torment. 
 
 Mrs. Stowe in her Maine home heard the de- 
 tails from a brother and his wife residing in 
 Boston. "To me it is incredible, amazing, 
 mournful,' she cried. "I feel as if I should 
 be willing to sink with it, were all this sin and 
 misery to sink into the sea.' "My heart was 
 bursting . . . , " so she wrote later to a son 
 who was then an infant, "and praying God to 
 let me do a little and to cause my cry for the 
 slaves to be heard. I remember many a night 
 weeping over you as you lay sleeping beside 
 me, and I thought of the slave mothers whose 
 babies were torn from them.' 
 
 Then one day the sister-in-law in Boston 
 wrote, "Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as 
 you can, I would write something that would 
 make this whole nation feel what an accursed 
 thing slavery is. ' 
 
 On reading the letter Mrs. Stowe rose from 
 her chair, crushed the sheets in her hand and 
 exclaimed, "God helping me, I will write some- 
 thing. I will if I live.' 
 
 Then one Sunday at communion service in 
 
HAEEIET BEECHEE STOWE 109 
 
 the college church, she forgot the scenes around 
 her and vividly on her mind there flashed the 
 picture of a persecuted negro dying in the 
 Christian faith. That afternoon she locked 
 her door and wrote out the incident as she had 
 seen it. As her custom was, she read the 
 story to her family. The children were over- 
 come; and one of them through his tears, 
 sobbed out, "Oh, mamma, slavery is the most 
 cruel thing in the world I" 
 
 The title of this little story was "The Death 
 of Uncle Tom." 
 
 Soon after, at the suggestion of her husband, 
 she decided to write for the National Era, I 
 an abolition paper in Washington, a continued / 
 story of which the climax should be "The 
 Death of Uncle Tom." The first chapter was 
 published June 5th, 1851; the last, April 1st, 
 1852. "The story is to show how Jesus Christ, 
 who liveth and was dead, and now is alive and 
 forevermore, has still a mother's love for the 
 poor and lowly, and that no man can sink so 
 low but that Jesus Christ will stoop to take his 
 hand." 
 
 The title of this completed novel was, 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the 
 Lowly. ' ' 
 
 Before the last chapter of the serial appeared, 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came off the press in 
 book form. The author reasoned that the un- 
 popular subject and the name of a woman on 
 the title page would probably preclude a large 
 sale. Mr. Stowe, with all his personal admira- 
 
110 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 tion for the story, thought himself sanguine 
 when he hoped the proceeds would buy his wife 
 a new silk dress. 
 
 What was their amazement, then, when three 
 thousand copies were sold the very first day! 
 Eight presses, running day and night, could 
 not keep pace with the demand. Within a 
 year three hundred thousand copies had been 
 sold in this country alone; and these figures 
 were more than trebled in England and were 
 rivaled in France and Germany. The royal- 
 ties of the first four months not only enriched 
 the author with a new silk gown, but left her 
 the sum of $10,000 besides. The book was 
 apparently read by almost every one who 
 could spell out the words, and it exploded 
 on the world a sensation which has prob- 
 ably never been equaled anywhere in literary 
 annals. 
 
 From fhftSpnffr arose a hurricane of denial 
 and abuse. The daily papers featured column 
 after column of minute criticism which 
 seemed to leave the book in tatters; its facts 
 were false, its art contemptible, its moral 
 slanderous and anti-Christian. Articles, sto- 
 ries and books streamed from the press to 
 celebrate the brighter side of slavery. Most 
 of them lay dead on the market, however; of 
 one a critic cuttingly said, "The editor might 
 have saved himself being writ down an ass by 
 the public if he had withheld his nonsense.' 
 To Mrs. Stowe personally there poured in 
 thousands of angry and abusive letters. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 111 
 
 Friends addressing her from some parts of 
 the South dared not write her name on the 
 outside of their missives. 
 
 In the North a large element condemned the 
 book no less severely. Those who thought 
 slavery just, or who feared civil strife, in 
 general those who had contended against the 
 abolitionists left all their former antipathies 
 to rail at Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 
 On the whole, however, the .North accepted 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin' as a fair indictment of 
 the national sin, and as a sermon to them on 
 their part in it. The author who had lost her 
 child had written to them of slave mothers and 
 of sundered homes; written with the emotion 
 of a mother who knows her children are being 
 scarred by the driver's whip; and written so 
 vividly that her readers felt the bitterness of 
 it all as keenly as she. The North realized 
 the terribleness of slavery as never before; in- 
 deed they saw it worse than it was, for the 
 book, as Southerners said, did not include the 
 whole picture. The poet Whittier exclaimed, 
 1 1 What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe 
 has wrought. Thanks for the Fugitive Slave 
 Law ! Better would it be for slavery if that law 
 had never been enacted ; for it gave occasion for 
 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' " This was true. For 
 the book made it forever impossible that the 
 law should be enforced; and escaped slaves 
 were smuggled into Canada in greater and 
 greater numbers. A statesman predicted that 
 the book would convert two million people to 
 
112 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 the abolition point of view. How nearly that 
 is true cannot be known. At any rate it fixed 
 the North more firmly in hostility to the slave 
 business, and strongly reinforced the side of 
 freedom; and it hastened, perhaps by years, 
 the " irrepressible conflict " that was already 
 threatening. 
 
 Abroad, " Uncle Tom's Cabin" was read al- 
 most as much as at home. Among the poor 
 of France it revived the study of the Bible, and 
 
 'H'Nijili, "* 
 
 led them, it was said, to Christianity. It 
 doubtless did no less among the forty races 
 into whose languages it was soon translated. 
 Of even more consequence was the effect in 
 England. The sympathies of that country for 
 economic reasons had always wavered between 
 the North and the South. Now the_m_oral issue 
 was clearly defined, and jmti-slavery sentiment 
 ran high. Six "thousand English women of 
 eveTy^Fank set their signatures, in twenty-six 
 volumes, to an "affectionate and Christian ad- 
 dress to the women of America, ' ' which begged 
 that slavery and its horrors be done away with 
 immediately. 
 
 The author of so mighty a book would not 
 herself remain in obscurity. Mrs. Stowe was 
 lionized both at home and abroad. The name 
 of the poor professor's wife was suddenly on 
 all tongues; her every word was listened for 
 with earnest attention. In Europe she formed 
 warm friendships with Mrs. Browning, George 
 Eliot and many other distinguished literary 
 people, and receptions awaited her from Land's 
 
HABRIET BEECHEK STOWE 113 
 
 End to Orkney. This was surely enough fame 
 for one woman. 
 
 Fame, of course, was not a new experience 
 in the Beecher family. Charles, as pastor and 
 writer, had received recognition; Edward, for 
 many years president of Illinois College, and 
 Catherine, had already attained prominence as 
 educators; while the powerful preaching of 
 Henry Ward Beecher was flooding New York, 
 and thence all the nation, with a gospel of 
 sweet and far-reaching optimism. Like her 
 brothers, Mrs. Stowe did not allow fame to 
 turn her head. To be sure she enjoyed it in her 
 quiet way, but she took all the encomiums with 
 a self -amused wink, as much as to say, "Look 
 what they're doing to poor little me!" As for 
 personal vanity, shortly after the publication 
 of "Uncle Tom," she described herself thus: 
 * ' I am a little bit of a woman, somewhat more 
 than forty, just as thin and dry as a pinch of 
 snuff; not very much to look at in my best 
 days, and looking like a used-up article now.' 
 
 In fact, since fame was not what she had 
 written for, it did not dizzy her when it came. 
 She had written because she had to; because 
 of her experience, and her religion and the 
 maternal affection that had been robbed of its 
 object. These were not yet spent, nor was the 
 wrong that had given them occasion to speak. 
 Slavery was not yet abolished. And Mrs. 
 Stowe used her fame only as a vantage ground 
 from which to prosecute her work. 
 
 From now on till her death in 1896, Mrs. 
 
114 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGEESS 
 
 Stowe brought out a book nearly every year. 
 The second, "Dred," returned to the negro ques- 
 tion, and many critics pronounced it superior 
 to " Uncle Tom's Cabin." In the later books 
 she delineated New England life; and "The 
 Minister's Wooing" was by some rated as the 
 truest, if not the freshest, of all her works. 
 She might have grown wealthy had she not 
 been so generous. Her renown literally filled 
 all the earth, until Holmes could justly say: 
 
 If every tongue that speaks her praise 
 For whom I shape my tinkling phrase 
 Were summoned to the table, 
 The vocal chorus that would meet 
 Of mingling accents harsh or sweet, 
 From every land and tribe, would beat 
 The polyglots of Babel. 
 
 These later books, while very good art, were 
 flung to the world almost as much from inner 
 necessity as her first. "The Minister's Woo- 
 ing" "taught the kinship of the love, of man 
 below and God above.' The woman's interest 
 in bereaved humanity, and her compassion for 
 it, and her intense faith that Christian love 
 could compensate for all, still spoke out. And 
 it is characteristic of Mrs. Stowe that this 
 literary portrayal and preaching did not wholly 
 release her from the sense of duty undone. 
 She had been a woman of action many years 
 before she became a writer, and the instinct 
 was still strong to do something helpful with 
 
HAEEIET BEECHEE STOWE 115 
 
 her own hands. The most interesting side of 
 her later life is the way she wrought out in 
 practice the gospel she had preached. 
 
 In 1852, she met an old negro woman who 
 was begging money to ransom her two slave 
 children. Moved by the story Mrs. Stowe said, 
 "If I can't raise the money otherwise, I will 
 pay it myself." Though she did raise the 
 money that time, the appeals that followed 
 were not always answered by the same method. 
 One deaf old negress told of her five sons in 
 bondage for whom she must lament all day on 
 Sunday, because she did not work and could 
 not hear preaching. "I shall search out and 
 redeem those children," Mrs. Stowe exclaimed. 
 " Every sorrow I have, every lesson on the 
 sacredness of family love, makes me more de- 
 termined to resist to the last this dreadful evil 
 that makes so many mothers so much deeper 
 mourners than I ever can be.' So for ten 
 years preceding the war Mrs. Stowe used her 
 money and influence in obtaining freedom, edu- 
 cation and comforts for the slave mothers and 
 their children. 
 
 During the Civil War a yet heavier sacrifice 
 was required of her. At President Lincoln's 
 first call, her son Fred volunteered for the 
 army. She tried to dissuade him. But he 
 cried, "I should be ashamed to look my fel- 
 low men in the face if I did not enlist. People 
 shall never say, ' Harriet Beecher's Stowe 's 
 son is a coward.' She bravely consented; 
 for she believed it to be God's will that the 
 
116 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 nation from end to end should suffer for the 
 sin it had done, and that the slave mothers, 
 " whose tears nobody regarded, should have 
 with them a great company of weepers, North 
 and South.' She sent her son to the war. 
 He was wounded at Gettysburg, came home, 
 and never again regained his health. Mrs. 
 Stowe had joined the army of weepers against 
 her will, when her first son died in Cincinnati. 
 She now joined it again of her own choice, that 
 she might do her full share in atoning for her 
 country's fault. 
 
 Her chief public act during the war was her 
 reply to the ' ' Christian address ' ' of the women 
 of England. The English had everything to 
 gain economically from peace, if not from in- 
 dependence in the cotton states. Lately they 
 had been led to believe that the North was war- 
 ring to oppress the South merely, and not to 
 liberate the slaves; they were therefore in- 
 clined to side with the South and to abandon 
 their neutral policy. Mrs. Stowe wrote a pas- 
 sionate address which set matters in a true 
 light. It covered the English people with 
 shame. They met spontaneously in towns all 
 over the kingdom to pass resolutions in favor 
 of the Union. The press took the matter up, 
 and parliament, to the joy of the North, was 
 affected favorably. Thus Mrs. Stowe helped 
 to avert English interference at a time when 
 such interference might have meant the tri- 
 umph of secession. 
 
 After the war, Mrs. Stowe lived much in 
 
HAEEIET BEECHEE STOWE 117 
 
 the South. In Florida she owned first a cotton 
 plantation, then an orange grove. In these en- 
 terprises again, her object was unworldly; and 
 in fact, in a worldly sense they failed. Her 
 object was, first, to hire emancipated negroes 
 as free laborers and, second, to make a begin- 
 ning of schools and churches among them. "1 
 long to be at this work," she said, "and cannot 
 think of it without my heart burning within me. 
 Still I leave all with my God, and only hope He 
 will open the way for me to do all that I want 
 to for this poor people.' It is plain that she 
 longed only to finish the work she had begun 
 with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," to free slaves and 
 then to discipline the freedmen as worthy citi- 
 zens and Christians. 
 
 She built with her own money a schoolhouse 
 and church at Mandarin, Florida. Here she 
 taught a Sunday school class of colored chil- 
 dren, and Professor Stowe preached. And here 
 they remained for the greater part of twenty 
 years, acting as ministers to the people, and in 
 general doing any friendly service that came 
 in their way. In their old age they had the 
 comfort of knowing that the colored men were 
 rapidly progressing. The former slaves were 
 now self-supporting and self-respecting; they 
 observed the law and they gloried in religion. 
 "Let us never doubt,' wrote Mrs. Stowe, 
 "everything that ought to happen is going to 
 happen." 
 
 Of course, compared to the influence of her 
 books, these personal ministrations were triv- 
 
118 HEKOINES OF MODEKN PROGRESS 
 
 ial. But it is the more honor to her that, hav- 
 ing called into existence the imaginary Uncle 
 Tom, she considered her mission still unful- 
 filled and strove by direct contact to upraise 
 the Uncle Tom of real life. It affirmed once 
 for all the character and purpose of her writ- 
 ling. She did not work for art's sake, nor to 
 cater to public amusement; nor did she write 
 with those aims. She wrote as she worked,- 
 to express her religion, and her human sym- 
 pathy and love. 
 
 Mrs. Stowe's claim to a place in the history 
 of modern progress rests upon her labors 
 against slavery. It may seem curious that of 
 all women she did the most, when until after 
 her fortieth year she was so little stirred by the 
 cause. The explanation is that, even in its 
 widest sweep, her work was religious and per- 
 sonal. All those forty years she had been un- 
 consciously preparing in private for the dra- 
 matic blow that at last staggered the nation. 
 She had been trained up as a minister's child; 
 in young maidenhood she had found a gospel of 
 love and kindness ; and as a wife and mother 
 rearing her offspring and seeing them die she 
 had learned by dear experience the quality of 
 the grief her country was inflicting upon a 
 whole unfortunate race. When that grief in 
 due time was brought. home to her with full 
 force, her training, her religion, her family af- 
 fection all personal as they were could not 
 help speaking vehemently for the race. 
 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 119 
 
 One who knew Mrs. Stowe said she summed 
 up her own character in the words, "I love 
 you/ And that love had a purpose. By it 
 everything that was "going to happen" was 
 helped to happen at the earliest possible mo- 
 ment. 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 
 
 FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE, when a 
 child, had a large family of dolls. One 
 day when she was entertaining them at a gar- 
 den party on her father's estate in Derbyshire, 
 her dog seized one in his teeth and scur- 
 ried away for a romp with it. Florence res- 
 cued the doll a few minutes later. Sawdust 
 was pouring out of a large rip in the side. 
 But she did not mourn over the mishap; nor 
 did she throw the tattered playmate away 
 and ask her parents for another to fill its 
 place. She stuffed fresh sawdust into the 
 doll, until it was as plump as ever, and then 
 bound her handkerchief neatly over the hole. 
 And thereafter this doll, from all the large 
 family, was the girl's favorite. 
 
 This was in Derbyshire, England, a hundred 
 years ago. The shire was then a picturesque 
 country devoted mainly to grazing. The 
 shepherd population, in their thatch-roofed 
 cottages, lived quiet and often solitary lives. 
 Their condition varied from well-off to poor, 
 there were a good many poor and, with the 
 minimum education, they were generally much 
 simpler than country folk of our own day. 
 
 In the midst of such a countryside was born 
 Florence Nightingale, in the year 1820. She 
 was not precisely in it, however, but above it. 
 
 Her father, William Shore Nightingale, was a 
 
 120 
 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 121 
 
 wealthy land owner and a country gentleman 
 of the old style, known as ' l squire. ' His sum- 
 mer residence at Lea Hurst comprised a fine 
 manorial house and estate, in which money had 
 been spent without stint to produce comfort 
 and elegance. Both parents, moreover, were 
 cultured and refined. So, Florence Nightin- 
 gale was born into riches and'position, and re- 
 finement. She was born a lady, in fact. 
 Every avenue to social eminence was open to 
 her. And even the simplicity and poverty 
 round about might easily have set her up in a 
 narrow class pride, and made her all the more 
 a "lady." 
 
 She seems to have profited well by her herit- 
 age in the way of personal comforts and edu- 
 cation. As a very young girl she took her 
 pleasures with dolls, in the manner described 
 above. A little later she learned to ride horse- 
 back, and galloped daily over the downs in 
 company with her father, or her father's 
 friend, the vicar. Her education in modern 
 languages went on, meanwhile, under the 
 charge of a governess. Her father instructed 
 her in mathematics and classic literature; and 
 from her mother she learned to play, to draw 
 and to sew. But this was the conventional 
 training for a squire's daughter of the period. 
 And if Florence Nightingale had been limited 
 to it, she might never have been heard of, any 
 more than a thousand other squire's daughters 
 who werf* o-^- g U p j n England at the 
 time. 
 
HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 Squire Nightingale and his wife were people 
 of singularly broad, sympathetic minds. Rid- 
 ing over the downs one day, the father noticed 
 a peculiar flower blossoming among the weeds. 
 He dismounted, with the girl, to examine it. 
 He pronounced it a species very rare in Derby- 
 shire, and suggested that Florence transplant 
 it to her own garden. She did so, and by care- 
 ful tending soon had a bed of the strange 
 plants growing near the manor house. From 
 this incident and others like it, the girl devel- 
 oped a curious interest in all kinds of plants 
 that were having a hard time to live. In her 
 garden at home she had raised peonies, pan- 
 sies, forgetmenots and mignonette. These 
 were easily grown, and they flowered as beau- 
 tifully as the girl could desire. But one day 
 her father saw her going into the meadow and 
 followed her. She stooped by a bunch of cow- 
 slips and began to dig up the weeds that choked 
 its growth. Then she found a marigold that 
 had been bruised by a passing cart wheel ; this 
 she reset in a safe place farther from the road. 
 Finally she uprooted a wild lily plant, wrapped 
 it in paper, and set off for home with it. The 
 squire saw that his daughter was a born gar- 
 dener, but of a peculiar stamp : her concern was 
 not in the garden so much as in the flowers that 
 needed a garden's protection. That trait 
 pleased the squire, and he did everything he 
 could to foster it. 
 
 The same trait revealed itself in the child's 
 care of animals. She had her squirrels, of 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 123 
 
 course, and her pony and her dog, and she 
 never tired of playing with them. But her 
 keenest interest in these was awakened when 
 they met with an accident. At least one may 
 infer as much from one incident. 
 
 Florence was riding home with the vicar to 
 tea. On the way they passed a herd of sheep, 
 in wild commotion. The old shepherd, Eoger, 
 could do nothing to control them. 
 
 " What is the matter, Eoger !" called the 
 vicar, "where is your dog?" 
 
 "The boys have been throwing stones at 
 him, sir," replied the shepherd. "They have 
 broken his leg, and he will never be good for 
 anything again. I shall have to take a bit of 
 cord and put an end to his misery." 
 
 "Oh!' cried Florence, who overheard the 
 story. "Poor Cap! Are you sure his leg is 
 broken!" 
 
 "Yes, miss, it's broke sure enough. He 
 hasn't set foot to the ground since, and no one 
 can't go nigh him. Best put him out of his 
 pains, I says." 
 
 But the vicar and the girl knew Cap. He 
 was an intelligent and useful dog, and they 
 were sorry to think of his dying. Riding on, 
 they stopped at the cottage where he lay. 
 Florence petted the cringing beast vhile the 
 clergyman examined his injury. "Is it 
 broken?' she called anxiously. 
 
 "No," said the vicar. "No bones are 
 broken. There is no reason why Cap should 
 not recover; all he needs is care and nursing." 
 
124 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 "What shall I do first?" asked the girl 
 quickly, accepting the duty as hers. 
 
 The vicar he had studied medicine in his 
 day prescribed a hot compress. The fire 
 was lighted, and the kettle put over. But no 
 cloth was to be found until, looking all about 
 the room, Florence saw the shepherd's extra 
 smock hanging on the wall. 
 
 "This will do!" she cried. "Mamma will 
 give him another." 
 
 So she tore the smock into strips, and bathed 
 the dog's limb until the inflammation was gone. 
 The injury healed, and the dog served his 
 master many a year afterward. But that was 
 not the only result of the incident, nor the 
 main one. It first disclosed to the girl what 
 her natural tastes were, and determined her 
 to follow them. 
 
 It is not wise to emphasize the incident 
 over much, however, for there were plenty of 
 others that would turn her mind in the same 
 direction. If her father was interested in 
 flowers, he was more interested in people. 
 There were a good many middle class and poor 
 around him, as was said, and he, with his 
 wealth and culture, took their welfare to heart. 
 Often he flung open the gates of his estate and 
 gave the village children food and presents and 
 let them dance on his lawn. He had a benevo- 
 lent care, too, for families that came upon hard 
 times due to sickness or the failure of crops. 
 To these he sent food and clothing and medi- 
 cine; and often it was Florence who conveyed 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 125 
 
 the gift, riding on her pony. Thus the child, 
 so favored personally by fortune, grew famil- 
 iar with the wants of others less fortunate. 
 
 Many of her errands were done in company 
 with the vicar. He spoke words of cheer to 
 the sick and bereaved, advised them as to the 
 use of the foods and medicines the girl 
 brought, and dropped a few hints about nurs- 
 ing and hygiene. So the girl learned how to 
 do the most practical good to people in need, 
 how to lessen suffering not alone by gifts and 
 personal sympathy, but by the means a physi- 
 cian uses. She was daily welcomed in some 
 poor cottage. Slight, graceful, with a fine, 
 oval, delicate face, gray-blue eyes, and 
 smoothly parted brown hair, she must have 
 exercised a remarkable charm upon the sick 
 rooms she entered. She read to the patients, 
 measured out their medicine, prepared dainty 
 foods, and turned her hand to any useful task. 
 People called her a little " Angel of Mercy." 
 And they spoke better than they knew. For 
 in these visits with the vicar the strongest 
 bent was given to the girl's nature. And the 
 name bestowed by her simple admirers was 
 also a prophecy. 
 
 As Florence grew to young womanhood, her 
 character as the daughter of an opulent 
 English squire continued to expand in a 
 normal way. 
 
 She still rode horseback, in a habit that 
 swept the ground, and a large hat trimmed 
 with ostrich plumes; or performed social 
 
126 HEBOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 duties in a stylish frock with full skirts and 
 sleeves and a collar of lace ; or visited in a full 
 plaited jacket with a belt and a "coal scuttle " 
 bonnet. She "entered society,' 7 and played a 
 conspicuous part in the parties, dances and 
 other country gayeties. Moreover, she went 
 to London for the "season" as a lady of her 
 rank must, was presented to Queen Victoria, 
 and shone among the best in court circles. 
 She traveled on the continent, too, explored the 
 galleries of Germany, France and Italy, and 
 acquired a facile speaking knowledge of the 
 languages of those countries. 
 
 From all this, however, her interest carried 
 her back to the sick and the poor about Lea 
 Hurst and Embly. She still ministered to 
 these, and with such growing intelligence that 
 she was nothing less than an unpaid country 
 doctor. At seventeen, too, she conducted a 
 Bible class at Lea Hurst for the girls em- 
 ployed in the hosiery mills. In short, with all 
 her education and social success she could not 
 forget the dependent people around her child- 
 hood home ; and, whatever might be her amuse- 
 ment, it was her earnest vocation to make the 
 lives of those people easier and brighter. 
 
 Then, somewhere in this period, the realiza- 
 tion came to her that she was unfit for so great 
 a task. She had not strength to do so much 
 alone; there were cases of sickness where she 
 did not know what to prescribe. un- 
 
 trained mothers and daughters lire, 
 
 who helped her, were too dull ard 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 127 
 
 to carry out what small behests she gave. 
 Such facts were true of Lea Hurst and Embly 
 Park, and it saddened the young woman to 
 think of them. But then she discovered that 
 what was true of her home was equally true of 
 all England. 
 
 In London she had seen the slum people 
 poorer and sicker than they ever could be in 
 rural Derbyshire. She looked about to see 
 what help they had, corresponding to that she 
 had volunteered for her own people; and she 
 found, precisely nothing. Or worse than 
 nothing ! 
 
 In the homes the most barbaric ignorance 
 prevailed as to the simple matters of ventila- 
 tion, cleanliness, light and food. This was a 
 great shock to one who knew that every woman 
 is a nurse, at some time in her life 1 1 has charge 
 of the personal health of somebody," and ought 
 to know the essentials of every day sanitation 
 and nursing. On top of that there was no one 
 to go about and dispense free riedicine and ad- 
 vice as she had done at home. And, as the 
 key to the whole tale of neglect and misery 
 there was no place where competent nurses 
 could be trained. 
 
 Many of those sick with contagious diseases 
 were gathered into great public hospitals and 
 there tended by professional nurses. These 
 inv" K/q Miss Nightingale thought, ought to 
 be ted A a model way; and the treatment 
 of it to provide a model training for 
 
 a : it the very opposite was true. 
 
128 HEEOINES OF MODEKN PROGRESS 
 
 The hospitals of London were as dirty and un- 
 sanitary as the slum homes. Nursing, as she 
 says, "was largely in the hands of the coarsest 
 type of women, not only untrained, but callous 
 in feeling,' and often of low character. Peo- 
 ple believed "that it requires nothing but a 
 disappointment in love, the want of an object, 
 a general disgust or incapacity for other things 
 to turn a woman into a good nurse.' "This 
 reminds one of the parish where a stupid old 
 man was set to be schoolmaster because he 
 was past keeping the pigs." 
 
 The hospital nurses did, in fact, keep their 
 patients "like pigs.' And therein Florence 
 Nightingale perceived the root of all the sick 
 misery of England. And she determined 
 just where or how can never be known to see 
 what could be done to reform the hospitals. 
 That was to be her life work. She was about 
 twenty-one years old when she definitely set- 
 tled upon it. 
 
 The decision required courage. Nursing 
 was a base profession, not much above that of 
 barmaid ; and Florence Nightingale was a lady 
 born and a lady bred. She had to have the 
 confidence that she could preserve herself from 
 contamination while she elevated the profes- 
 sion. And it was a prodigious undertaking. 
 But she was not without inspiring examples. 
 She laid her case before Elizabeth Fry, who 
 had renovated the prisons of Europe, and was, 
 of course, encouraged to go ahead. Then the 
 Catholic hospitals on the Continent were 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 129 
 
 sensibly constructed and the Sisters of 
 Mercy in charge were generally capable 
 women. Yet her strongest inducement was 
 not these examples, but her knowledge of the 
 shocking need for intelligent nursing. It was, 
 above all, her own leaning toward that humane 
 occupation. For that was the woman's 
 natural bent she who had healed Cap, and 
 read consolation to her rheumatic neighbors. 
 She did not lack the courage. 
 
 So for thirteen years more she was most of 
 the time under the roofs of hospitals. She 
 visited, apparently, every such institution in 
 England, from the great wards of London to 
 the county infirmaries; all the hospitals of 
 Paris, where she studied with the Sisters of 
 Charity; and those of Berlin, Brussels, Kome, 
 Constantinople and Alexandria; and the war 
 hospitals of the French and Sardinians. 
 
 Most of her study on the Continent was with 
 the Catholic sisters, who were so far ahead of 
 their time. Miss Nightingale well knew, how- 
 ever, that they and their system could never 
 be transferred to Protestant England. If she 
 was to produce nurses in England, they must 
 be Protestant nurses. Hence when she dis- 
 covered a solitary Lutheran deaconess hospi- 
 tal at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine, she attached 
 herself to it for serious study. There she was 
 thoror-ghly drilled in every department of 
 nursing. " Never," she says, "have I met 
 with a higher love and a purer devotion than 
 there. " And a sister nurse said of her, "She 
 
130 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 was only a few months there, but they so long 
 to see her again. Such a loving and lovely 
 womanly character, hers must be;" 
 
 From Germany, finally^ she came home, and, 
 after nearly twelve years, her preparation was 
 finished. Twelve years is rather a long period 
 for study, modern graduate nurses may think. 
 But she had to pick up the science in little bits, 
 here and there, and the hardest part was not 
 learning the facts, but separating the false 
 from the true. And then, even for a twelve- 
 year student, she was exceptionally well pre- 
 pared as will soon appear. 
 
 Miss Nightingale had not been long at home 
 when an occasion came to apply her learning. 
 A hospital for poor, broken down governesses 
 in London was in straits. The management 
 had failed, the philanthropic supporters had 
 withdrawn their funds, and the home was 
 about to be closed. That would have been a 
 great calamity, as great as if an old soldiers r 
 home were on short notice to turn all its board- 
 ers out of doors. In this crisis, Miss Nightin- 
 gale was called to be superintendent of the 
 Harley Street Home, 
 
 Probably here was forced upon the young 
 woman the real test of her life. Heretofore 
 she had been a student; now she was to face 
 realities. The question now was would she 
 wo rk in hospitals, would she give her life to 
 them? "Was she willing at the crucial time to 
 relinquish her place as a lady and actually dwell 
 among the poor and the sick to serve them? 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 131 
 
 Florence Nightingale was willing. She took 
 up residence on Harley Street among a swarm 
 of ailing and despondent women, when she 
 might have been attending balls at Bucking- 
 ham Palace. She gave money. She encour- 
 aged old friends and new to subscribe. With 
 her own hands she swept and made beds and 
 spooned out medicine for these invalids whom 
 she had never seen and for whom no one in 
 the world cared a stiver. It was an obscure 
 and a humble assignment. Few but her 
 friends knew she was doing it, and many of 
 them disapproved. But her work finally 
 showed that she wanted not only to study nurs- 
 ing, but to nurse. She had chosen her career 
 and she was fairly launched upon it. 
 
 She toiled so hard at Harley Street that she 
 herself fell ill, and retired to her home for a 
 rest. It was there, while still pondering the 
 problems of her quiet London task, that she 
 was suddenly summoned to another task, as 
 spectacular and momentous as had ever been 
 thrown into the hands of a woman. 
 
 The Crimean war was in progress, France 
 and England being allied to defend Turkey 
 against Eussian aggression. The British 
 army had sailed to a strange climate with 
 shamefully poor commissary and medical 
 st weather was stormy and the sol- 
 
 di ttle shelter against it. Said a cor- 
 
 r< of the London Times, "It is now 
 
 p n, the skies are black as ink, the 
 
 \v 7ling over the staggering tents, the 
 
132 HEBOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 trenches are turned into dykes; in the tents 
 the water is sometimes a foot deep; our men 
 have not either warm or waterproof clothing; 
 they are out for twelve hours at a time in the 
 trenches" and so on without end. 
 
 Plenty of food and clothing had been 
 shipped from England, but they never reached 
 their destination. Some vessels were delayed; 
 in some the stores were packed at the bottom 
 of the hold and could not be raised ; some hove 
 in with the wrong goods at the wrong port 
 and, on one, the consignment of boots proved 
 to be all for the left foot ! But the most crim- 
 inal point of mismanagement was this: food, 
 clothing 1 and medicine might be stored in a 
 warehouse within easy reach of the army; but 
 the official with authority to deal them out 
 would be absent, and, so stringent were the 
 army rules that no one dared so much as 
 point at them! The rigid system was infi- 
 nitely worse than no system. And the soldiers 
 were starving in the midst of plenty, and 
 freezing under the shadow of mountains of 
 good woolen clothing. 
 
 Now, to come at once to the worst, imagine 
 these conditions transferred to the military 
 hospitals. In the great Barrack Hospital a 
 Scutari lay two thousand sorely wounded men, 
 and hundreds more were coming in every day. 
 The wards were crowded to twice their capac- 
 ity the sick lay side by side on mattresses 
 that touched each other. The floors and walls 
 and ceilings were wet and filthy. There was 
 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 133 
 
 no ventilation. Eats and vermin swarmed 
 everywhere. The men lay "in their uniforms, 
 stiff with gore and covered with filth to a de- 
 gree and of a kind no one could write about." 
 It was a " dreadful den of dirt, pestilence and 
 death. 
 
 This might have been remedied by an ade- 
 quate medical staff. But the doctors were 
 few. They were hampered in their profes- 
 sional duties by administrative ones. And 
 they had to trust the actual nursing to order- 
 lies who had never seen sickness in their lives. 
 Then, there was the same lack of supplies due 
 to mismanagement. There "were no vessels 
 for water or utensils of any kind; no soap, 
 towels or cloths, no hospital clothes. " "The 
 sheets were of canvas and so coarse that the 
 wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. 
 There was no bedroom furniture of any kind, 
 and only beer or wine bottles for candlesticks !' ? 
 It is difficult to imagine a scene of worse dis- 
 order and misery. The proportion of deaths 
 to the whole army, from disease alone ma- 
 laria and cholera was sixty per cent. Seventy 
 died in the hospital in one night. There was 
 danger that the entire army would be wiped 
 out, most of it without ever receiving a 
 scratch from the enemy's weapons. 
 
 It was in this extremity that the British na- 
 tion appealed to Florence Nightingale to save 
 the sick and wounded men, an army of twen^- 
 ty-eight thousand as helpless as children 
 before the ravages of disease and to save the 
 
134 HEKOINES OF MODEKN PKOGEESS 
 
 war. Was ever a bigger task put upon a 
 woman? 
 
 And was ever a bigger honor? Female 
 nurses had never before been admitted to 
 English military hospitals, because English 
 nurses anywhere had been something of a nui- 
 sance. This woman must have proved that she 
 was not a nuisance. For the minister of war 
 requested her to organize a band of nurses for 
 Scutari and gave her power to draw upon the 
 government to any extent. 
 
 Miss Nightingale at the time was thirty-four 
 years old. An acquaintance described her 
 thus: "Simple, intellectual, sweet, full of love 
 and benevolence, she is a fascinating and per- 
 fect woman. She is tall and pale. Her face 
 is exceedingly lovely. But better than all is 
 the soul's glory that shines through every fea- 
 ture so exultingly. Nothing can be sweeter 
 than her smile. It is like a sunny day in sum- 
 mer.' Again, "young (about the age of our 
 Queen) graceful, feminine, rich, popular, she 
 holds a singularly gentle and persuasive influ- 
 ence over all with whom she comes in contact. 
 Her friends and acquaintances are of all classes 
 and persuasions, but her happiest place is at 
 home in the center of a very large band of ac- 
 complished relatives, and in simplest obedience 
 to her admiring parents.' 
 
 Nevertheless Scutari needed her. She was 
 ready for Scutari. It was that for which she 
 had been unconsciously preparing since a girl. 
 She was ready, and she went. 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 135 
 
 "Within six days from the time she accepted 
 the post, Miss Nightingale had selected thirty- 
 eight nurses, and departed for the seat of war. 
 She arrived at Scutari November 4, 1854, and 
 walked the length of the barracks, viewing her 
 two miles of patients. And next day before 
 she could form any plans, the fresh victims of 
 another battle began to arrive. There was not 
 space for them within the walls and hundreds 
 had to repose, with what comfort they could, 
 in the mud outside. One of the nurses wrote, 
 "Many died immediately after being brought 
 in their moans would pierce the heart and 
 the look of agony on those poor dying faces 
 will never leave my heart." A terrible situa- 
 tion to face ; and all England depending on her ! 
 
 But the nurse did not hesitate. She ordered 
 the patients brought in, and directed where to 
 lay them, and what attention they should have. 
 She was up and around twenty hours that day, 
 and as many the next, until a place had been 
 found for every man, even in the corridors and 
 on the landings of the stair. As leader of the 
 nurses she might have confined herself to ad- 
 ministrative tasks of which there were 
 enough for any woman and stayed in the of- 
 fice. But no. She shrank from the sight of 
 no operation. Many men, indeed, whose cases 
 the surgeons thought hopeless, she nursed back 
 to health. A visitor saw her one morning at 
 two o'clock at the bedside of a dying soldier, 
 lamp in hand. She was writing down his last 
 message to the home folks; and for them, too, 
 
136 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PBOOBESS 
 
 she took in charge his watch and trinkets 
 and then soothed him in his last moments. 
 And this was but one case in thousands. "She 
 is a ministering angel, without any exaggera- 
 tion, in these hospitals, " wrote a correspondent 
 of the London Times, ' ' and as the slender form 
 glides quietly along each corridor, every poor 
 fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight 
 of her. When all the medical officers have re- 
 tired for the night, and silence and darkness 
 have settled down upon the miles of prostrate 
 sick, she may be observed alone, with lamp in 
 hand, making her solitary rounds." 
 
 One soldier said, "I can't help crying when 
 I see them. Only think of Englishwomen com- 
 ing out here to nurse us; it is so homely and 
 comfortable.' He probably did not cry alone. 
 And one wrote to his people, ' i She would speak 
 to one and another and nod and smile to many 
 more; but she could not do it to all, you know, 
 for we lay there by hundreds ; but we could kiss 
 her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on our 
 pillows again content!' It was of this inci- 
 dent that Longfellow wrote in his "Lady with 
 the lamp": 
 
 And slow, as in a dream of bliss, 
 The speechless sufferer turns to kiss 
 Her shadow as it falls 
 Upon the darkening walls. 
 
 In a place like Scutari, however, this kind of 
 feminine tenderness alone would avail little. 
 
FLOEENCE NIGHTINGALE 137 
 
 Science was needed; the most perfect skill in 
 scientific nursing. The windows were few, 
 and the few were mostly locked; and where 
 one was opened the odors of decaying animals 
 came in to pollute still more the foul air of the 
 wards. 
 
 The food for the whole hospital for those 
 sick of fever, cholera, wounds and what not, as 
 well as for those in health was cooked, like 
 an " Irish stew,' in big kettles. Vegetables 
 and meats were dumped in together, and when 
 any one felt hungry he could dip for himself. 
 Naturally some got food overdone, and some 
 got it raw; the luckiest got a mess that was 
 scarcely palatable; and the sick could gener- 
 ally not eat at all. As for other matters, it 
 has been shown how unclean the barrack wards 
 were, how "only seven shirts' had been laun- 
 dered in all those wretched weeks, and how the 
 infected bed linen of all classes of patients was 
 thrown, unsorted, into one general wash. 
 
 But Florence Nightingale had spent twelve 
 years in the hospitals of Europe to learn 
 how to conquer just such situations as this. 
 She had the waste and pollution outside the 
 walls cleared away. Then she threw up the 
 windows, and set a carpenter to make more. 
 Within ten days she had established a diet 
 kitchen and was feeding the men each on the 
 food his particular case demanded. She set 
 up a laundry, too, where the garments of the 
 sick could be cleansed in a sanitary way. All 
 this was the easier to do. because with wise 
 
138 HEKOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 foresight she had brought the necessary arti- 
 cles with her on the Victus from England. 
 The ship gave up chicken, jelly, and all manner 
 of delicacies; and, on a single day, "a thousand 
 shirts, besides other clothing.' In two weeks 
 that "dreadful den of dirt, pestilence and 
 death '' had vanished; and in its place stood a 
 building, light and well aired throughout, 
 where patients lay on spotless cots, ate appe- 
 tizing food from clean dishes, had their baths 
 and their medicine at regular intervals, and 
 never for an hour lacked any attention that 
 would help their recovery. 
 
 But after all is said of Florence Nightin- 
 gale's sympathy and her science, she owed her 
 final triumph in the Crimea to a rarer talent, 
 that of tactful organizing and executive power. 
 Why was she not tethered by the system and 
 the red tape that rendered ineffectual the best 
 efforts of the medical men? Most things 
 needful were in store not far from the bar- 
 racks hospital. But the regular physicians 
 could not get at them. Why could she? 
 
 In the first place she had tact enough not to 
 offend the system. The minister of war had 
 warned her, "a number of sentimental enthus- 
 iastic ladies turned loose into the hospital at 
 Scutari would probably after a few days be 
 'mises a la porte 9 by those whose business 
 they would interrupt and whose authority they 
 would dispute." Florence Nightingale did 
 not at first interrupt or dispute anybody. She 
 began by doing the .neglected minor things, 
 
FLOKENCE NIGHTINGALE 139 
 
 the things that no one else had time for. She 
 opened windows. She scrubbed floors and 
 walls. She laundered shirts. She peeled 
 potatoes and boiled soup. She bathed the pa- 
 tients, dosed them with medicine while the 
 worn-out surgeons were asleep, read to them, 
 and wrote letters for them. In these activities 
 she asked not even supplies from the system, 
 but procured them from her own ship. 
 
 The hidebound officials were even then slow 
 to concur. Perhaps they were jealous to see 
 their own incompetence exposed. And there 
 was one case, just one where she came to 
 blows with them. The hospital inmates were 
 in desperate want, and the articles for their re- 
 lief were nearby in a warehouse, but the stores 
 could not be disturbed until after inspection. 
 Miss Nightingale tried to hasten the inspection. 
 Failing of that, she tried to get them distrib- 
 uted without inspection. That also failed. 
 "My soldiers are dying,' she said. "I must 
 have those stores.' Whereupon, she called 
 two soldiers, marched them to the warehouse, 
 and bade them burst open the doors ! 
 
 That was the kind of firm hand she could 
 use. More often, though, she attained her 
 ends in a peaceful way. Only a little feminine 
 tact was necessary to bring together the dila- 
 tory members of a board and get them to un- 
 lock a storehouse. She was soon able to lay 
 her hands on an abundance of anything the 
 situation demanded. Then, besides her own 
 small band of nurses, a large number of order- 
 
140 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 lies and common soldiers were, after a time, 
 detailed to work under her direction. 
 " Never,' she says, "came from them one 
 word or one look which a gentleman would not 
 have used;' and many of them became at- 
 tached to her with an almost slavish affection. 
 More than that, she was, for the English at 
 home, the one commanding figure, and her hos- 
 pital office, the headquarters of the Crimean 
 campaign. The Times collected a big fund 
 and placed it at her disposal. And all over 
 England women were making clothing ship- 
 loads of it which they addressed to the sol- 
 diers in her care. "The English Nobility 
 must have emptied their wardrobes and linen 
 stores,' said a nurse, "to send out bandages 
 for the wounded. There was the most beau- 
 tiful underclothing and the finest cambric 
 sheets, with merely a scissors run here and 
 there through them to insure their being used 
 for no other purpose, some from the Queen's 
 palace, with the royal monogram beautifully 
 worked. ' ' 
 
 In a word, Florence Nightingale became, 
 through her wonderful executive talent, the 
 trusted agent of the whole British people, as 
 powerful in the work of nursing as the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the army was in fighting. 
 Some one called her the lady-in-chief. There 
 is perhaps not a better designation. 
 
 And the result of her efforts justified this 
 faith. When she arrived the death rate was 
 sixty per cent. She reduced it in a few weeks 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 141 
 
 to one per cent. Nine of her nurses died on 
 duty; others were invalided home; she herself 
 was long fever sick and near to death. But 
 for two years she battled against disease, 
 always in a winning fight. She conquered dis- 
 ease. And it is not too much to say that she 
 conquered the Eussian army, and saved the 
 war for the allies. No wonder England wel- 
 comed her home as one of the greatest heroines 
 in all her history. 
 
 Florence Nightingale returned home in 1856. 
 It was soon noised about that she was not only 
 the heroine but the martyr of Crimea. The 
 strain of those terrible years and the fever had 
 broken her health, and she was to live, there- 
 after, a house-ridden invalid. Although still a 
 young woman, it might be assumed that her 
 usefulness was ended. On the contrary, dur- 
 ing the fifty odd years that remained to her, 
 she carried on from her London home a great 
 reform. To mankind and the world in general 
 that reform is, in fact, so great that the Scutari 
 experience becomes a mere incident in its his- 
 tory. 
 
 The English people had desired to present 
 her some testimonial on her return. Rich and 
 poor all over the kingdom eagerly subscribed 
 every soldier in the service giving a day's 
 pay and fifty thousand pounds were raised. 
 But the woman who had modestly slipped 
 home by a secret route to avoid bell ringing 
 and processions in her honor would be not 
 likely to care for a gift of money. Her heart 
 
142 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 was still in her work. She had learned much 
 at Scutari that she wished to preserve. So 
 she accepted the money on condition that she 
 might use it to found a hospital ! 
 
 The St. Thomas Hospital in London was 
 accordingly opened. This was nothing more 
 or less than a high-class school for nurses. A 
 student had to bring a good character and a 
 fair education. She was taught habits of 
 punctuality, quietness, and personal neatness; 
 how to dress wounds, and apply bandages; 
 how to make beds and cook for, move and feed, 
 and observe the symptoms of patients. Some 
 might think this knowledge intuitive in women, 
 said Miss Nightingale in the prospectus. 
 "Send us as many such geniuses as you can, 
 for we are sorely in need of them." 
 
 She knew the knowledge was not intuitive. 
 Had it been so, she need never have toiled at 
 Harley Street, never doctored and fed her poor 
 neighbors at home. This school was the reply, 
 to the ignorance she had seen in those places. 
 It was the goal of her study in the Kaiser- 
 werth and the Catholic hospitals. It was the 
 thing she had aimed at from the first' and 
 would, perhaps, have realized sooner or later. 
 But the accidental call to Crimea gave her, in t 
 a brief time, prestige and ripe experience and 
 money. And these she hastened to use for the 
 project that had been simmering in her mind 
 since a girl. Now at last she had her desire. 
 She would reform the hospitals of England. 
 She would fill them with nurses who brought 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 143 
 
 something more to their calling than a "dis- 
 appointment in love." 
 
 But this was not all. The hospitals were 
 mostly reserved for contagious cases. And in 
 the London slums were thousands of sick, in 
 their homes, who could pay very little for a 
 doctor's service, and who did not know the 
 bare essentials of nursing. There were many 
 such all over England. Yes, even at Lea 
 Hurst! Had not their presence at Lea Hurst 
 been the thing that first set her to thinking on 
 the whole subject of hospitals and nurses? 
 Well, then, she must do something for those 
 sick poor at home ! 
 
 In 1861 a training school for nurses was, at 
 her suggestion, opened at Liverpool. The 
 graduates of this school nursed the neglected 
 sick in pauper institutions. Then in 1874 the 
 
 1 National Nursing Association announced that 
 it was ready to provide skilled nurses for the 
 sick poor in their own homes. These, said 
 Miss Nightingale, would keep families from 
 pauperism by charming the bread winners back 
 to life. And they would so "raise the homes 
 that they would never fall back again into dirt 
 and disorder.' That this result might be the 
 more certain, the school was at first recruited 
 only from "gentlewomen" who would have a 
 refining influence over the homes. With Miss 
 Nightingale's example, women of the better 
 class were quick to enroll. They went into the 
 slums of London, wherever sickness was re- 
 
 , ported, and nursed the sick, and taught both 
 
144 HEBOINES OF MODEEN PKOGRESS 
 
 the sick and the well. In 1877 the jubilee fund 
 of seventy thousand pounds was set aside to 
 extend the work. It quickly- spread all over 
 England. In her later years Miss Nightingale 
 had the satisfaction of seeing set right the con- 
 ditions that had first aroused her sympathy. 
 And the half playful pastime of her child- 
 hood had become a skilled profession, known as 
 "district nursing." 
 
 Miss Nightingale also wrote books of great 
 value to her profession. "Notes on Nursing' 
 is a little classic as packed with common 
 sense and science as it is with inspiration 
 which any woman or man can read with pleas- 
 ure. By these means by directing her own 
 hospital, by agitating for others, by scattering 
 knowledge broadcast in her books, Florence 
 Nightingale turned her Crimean experience 
 into a general reform. Now there are hos- 
 pitals perfectly equipped in every city pri- 
 vate hospitals for the rich, public hospitals 
 where one may pay much, or little, according 
 to his means. District nurses go everywhere, 
 tending the sick, and showing the well how to 
 keep well by clean and temperate living. 
 Nurses examine children in the schools. They 
 are ready for service in the great stores. 
 Scarce a country doctor anywhere attempts a 
 case of typhoid without calling a school- 
 trained woman to assist him. And these 
 nurses not only have skill which Florence 
 Nightingale proved necessary; they rightly en- 
 joy the respect and admiration of every other 
 
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 145 
 
 class for Florence Nightingale made nursing 
 the fashion. All this is of infinitely more im- 
 portance than the two years' labor when she 
 healed a few thousand soldiers. For thous- 
 ands are healed now every day in all walks of 
 life. She affected all modern history, but 
 just because her influence was so wide her his- 
 tory cannot here be written. 
 
 .She lived until August 13, 1910. She was 
 always very retiring, and details of her pri- 
 vate life are very scant. As with the testi- 
 monial, she always avoided public honors. 
 Nevertheless, she had a greater honor than any 
 monument, in that she was revered every day 
 in the year by all who knew her name. This 
 pleasing anecdote is told of a regiment that 
 had suffered at Scutari. The officer heard of 
 a bust just completed by a sculptor. He ob- 
 tained permission to march his squad into the 
 studio they not knowing why. When the 
 bust was unveiled, the men instantly broke out 
 in a cry "Miss Nightingale," and with hats 
 off cheered loud and long the image of their 
 nurse. Another time a vote was taken at a 
 banquet on who of the Crimean workers would 
 be longest remembered. And every slip read 
 Florence Nightingale. 
 
 She accomplished one of the greatest and 
 most characteristic reforms of modern times. 
 It is well that she was recognized and honored 
 for it. And. some will say that she deserved 
 all the more glory because she did it as a 
 woman. But this she herself denied. With 
 
146 HEKCINES OF MODEEN PROGKESS 
 
 her the work was the main thing. She would 
 take no honor for herself and she would take 
 none for her sex. Where work is to be done 
 she would efface all distinctions among those 
 who may do it. 
 
 "Surely," she said, " woman should bring 
 the best she has, whatever that is, to the work 
 of God's world, without attending to either of 
 these cries. It does not make a thing good 
 that it is remarkable that a woman should have 
 been able to do it, neither does it make a thing 
 bad, which would have been good had a man 
 done it, that it has been done by a woman.' 
 "0, leave these jargons and go your way 
 straight to God's work, in simplicity and sin- 
 gleness of heart!" She herself had gone in 
 singleness of heart. For the work was indeed 
 to her " God's work.' " Nursing,' she said, 
 "is an art; and if it is to be made an art re- 
 quires as exclusive a devotion as any painter's 
 or sculptor's work; for what is the having to 
 do with dead canvas or cold marble compared 
 with having to do with the living body, the 
 temple of God's spirit? Nursing is one of the 
 fine arts; I had almost said the finest of the 
 fine arts." 
 
CLARA BARTON 
 
CLARA BARTON 
 
 EVEEY year at Christmas the United 
 States mail is full of letters, packages 
 and boxes to which Bed Cross stamps have 
 been affixed; from the sale of the stamps, 
 money is derived for the prevention of tuber- 
 culosis. Their presence is largely due to the 
 influence of a woman named Clara Barton. 
 She was born on Christmas day; she founded 
 the Bed Cross in America; and whatever dis- 
 ease or misfortune beset her people, it was her 
 enemy, and she led in the fight against it. 
 
 Clara Barton was born near Oxford, Wor- 
 cester County, Massachusetts, in 1821. Her 
 father had fought under Mad Anthony, and still 
 possessed a store of military tales ; but to Clara 
 he was known only as a hero long retired, and 
 the present owner of a lean hill farm. The 
 girl's early experience was that of an ordinary 
 American farm child. 
 
 She never played with dolls, but, from the 
 first with living animals ducks, dogs, and 
 horses. She was an outdoor child, healthy and 
 athletic. In summer she scampered free 
 through the woods and meadows and in winter 
 coasted on her toboggan down the snowy hill- 
 sides. As early as her fifth year, her brother 
 David would fling her astride of a tall, bare- 
 backed horse, leap on another himself and, 
 
 147 
 
148 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PKOGEESS 
 
 leading her mount, dash away at a mad gallop 
 through the pasture, while she hung onto the 
 mane for dear life. The exercise was to good 
 purpose, for she wrote long afterward, as a 
 woman of seventy-seven, i i To this day my seat 
 on a saddle or on the back of a horse is as 
 secure and tireless as in a rocking chair, and 
 far more pleasurable. " 
 
 Clara was just as precocious at country 
 / work as she was at country play*. The young- 
 est, by a dozen years, of a family of two boys 
 and two girls, many duties, too small for 
 stronger muscles, were shifted upon her shoul- 
 ders. She brought home the cows, and milked, 
 and wearied her small arms on the dasher of 
 the churn. She dropped potatoes while her 
 father covered, weeded the onion beds, and 
 picked the berries for pies. Though she be- 
 came adept in all the countless tasks of the 
 farm and the farmhouse, it is not recorded 
 that she had special aptitude for any particu- 
 lar one. Like any country girl, she did them 
 all because they were there to be done, turning 
 with ready interest and deft hand now to one, 
 and now to another. 
 
 Clara's training in school subjects was as 
 varied and as thorough as her training in farm 
 work. The relation of the rest of the family 
 to her was naturally that of mature, serious- 
 minded teachers. As David taught her horse- 
 manship, so her older brother led her into the 
 mysteries of mathematics, her two sisters- 
 already teachers in the public schools inter- 
 
CLAKA BAKTON 149 
 
 ested her in literature, and her father drilled 
 her in history and politics. 
 
 These seeds of book learning fell also upon 
 fertile soil. The sisters probably wished it a 
 little less fertile when she woke them up, be- 
 fore light of a cold winter morning, to find 
 places on the map by the flare of a tallow 
 candle. And the teacher must have wrinkled 
 his brows over the new prodigy on her first 
 day in school. "I was seated,' writes Miss 
 Barton, "on one of the low benches and sat 
 very still. At length the majestic school- 
 master seated himself, and, taking a primer, 
 called the class of little ones to him. He 
 pointed the letters to each. I named them all, 
 and was asked to spell some little words, 'dog,' 
 'cat,' etc., whereupon, I hesitatingly informed 
 him that I ' did not spell there. ' 'Where do you 
 spell r 'I spell in artichoke,' that being the 
 leading word in the three syllable column in 
 my speller.. He good-naturedly conformed to 
 my suggestion, and I was put into the 'arti- 
 choke' class to bear my part for the winter, 
 and read and 'spell for the head.' " 
 
 The indications, so far, were that Clara Bar- 
 ton would make her mark in any field where 
 fortune might cast her. But while she was 
 still quite young there appeared a single un- 
 fortunate trait that threatened to spoil all the 
 others and to clog her every step. With all 
 her courage displayed in hardy outdoor sports, 
 she was painfully bashful and timid in the 
 presence of people. She could not bring her- 
 
150 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 self to mention her personal needs to her very 
 mother. One Sunday morning, she joined the 
 church-going party with bare hands. Asked 
 where her gloves were, she hesitatingly replied 
 that she had none. They were worn out. 
 When her mother asked her why she had not 
 spoken of the fact, so that new gloves could be 
 bought, the sensitive girl burst into tears and 
 fled from the room. 
 
 A young person of such excessive modesty 
 would obviously not succeed in strange parts. 
 The parents, thinking that perhaps contact 
 with strangers would overcome the vexatious 
 trait, sent her away, in her tenth year, to high 
 school. But she was afraid of her teacher and 
 schoolmates, afraid to recite, afraid to eat. 
 At last she became dangerously ill, from 
 nothing at all but timidity, and was packed off 
 home again in haste. Believing herself a fail- 
 ure, she settled once more into the routine of 
 farm life. Handy as she was at any trick, 
 mental or physical, playful or serious, her 
 bashfulness stood ever in her way, and it 
 seemed thai' only in the seclusion and solitude 
 of the farm could she be happy and useful. 
 
 When she was eleven years of age, however, 
 a memorable accident occurred. Her brother 
 David, her riding master and childhood's idol, 
 sustained an injury from a fall and later came 
 down with a fever. The physicians of the re- 
 gion knew little of therapeutics beyond blister- 
 ing and blood-letting. They were frankly baf- 
 fled by this mysterious case of "settled 
 
CLARA BAETON 151 
 
 fever;" and by their desperate applications of 
 knife and plaster, and leech, they succeeded in 
 keeping the poor fellow at death's door for 
 nearly two years. 
 
 David, in his miserable state, clung help- 
 lessly to the child Clara. She was stricken 
 with grief at his misfortune. For hours at a 
 time she sat by his bedside, and could not be 
 taken away except by compulsion. With a 
 boldness unnatural to her, she insisted on at- 
 tending to his every want. From an outdoor 
 girl she was transformed into one who for 
 two years "almost forgot that there was an 
 outside to the house." She learned to handle 
 the leeches and dress the blisters and to "take 
 all directions for his medicines from his phy- 
 sician and to administer them.' In the in- 
 tensity of her affection she became so confident 
 and bold that she virtually banished the older 
 members of the family from the room. 
 
 By the time David recovered, the girl of 
 thirteen was well grounded in the valuable art 
 of nursing. And those who watched her be- 
 gan dimly to discern something else. From 
 all the activities possible to one of her gifts, 
 there might be some that her timidity would 
 not impede. 
 
 For the present, however, her prospects 
 seemed very slender. Her occupation of two 
 years was gone. At the same time the round 
 of serious duties to which she had been hard- 
 ened gave her a premature sense of the value 
 of the passing hour and the necessity of being 
 
152 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 usefully employed; but on the other hand, 
 when she issued from her seclusion, she was, 
 in the face of the strange world, more diffident 
 and retiring fhan ever. Unless some idolized 
 relative were again stretched on the sick bed, 
 to what could she devote her gifts and her 
 energy? Clara grew restless, then despondent, 
 then feverishly anxious for something to do. 
 She resumed her home studies under the tuition 
 of her brother S-P ac sisters. She tramped a 
 mile and a half 10 school through the snow 
 but to little purpose, for the teachers were less 
 advanced than she. Once, for two weeks, she 
 operated a loom in her brother's mill, until, as 
 the joke went, her too rapid motions produced 
 combustion and set the building on fire. But 
 still she was oppressed with a sense of idleness ; 
 and still her nature shrank when she would 
 have struck out into any suitable labor. Then, 
 in the nick of time, there came one to reassure 
 and direct her. 
 
 In Clara Barton's youth, the now discredited 
 "science" of phrenology was very popular and 
 influential. Mr. Fowler, a professor of the 
 "science," lectured one winter at Oxford, and 
 boarded, during the time, with the Bartons. 
 With him, the mother discussed the case of 
 her "peculiar" daughter. The professor un- 
 dertook, by a study of the bumps, to ascertain 
 for what the girl was destined. "She will 
 never assert herself for herself," he announced. 
 "She will suffer wrong first but for others she 
 will be perfectly fearless. Throw responsibility 
 
CLARA BARTON 153 
 
 upon her. She has all the qualifications of a 
 teacher. As soon as her age will permit, give 
 her a school to teach." 
 
 It was so decided. At sixteen years of age, 
 Miss Clara took charge of District School Num- 
 ber Nine. Strangely enough, the predictions of 
 the "scientist" were fulfilled. Too frightened, 
 on the opening day, to look her pupils in the 
 face, the girl had to fasten her eyes upon her 
 Bible and read aloud to thein itil she gained 
 composure. She soon observed, however, that 
 they respected and even stood in awe of her. 
 That was a totally new experience that anyone 
 should feel abashed before her. The timid 
 girl's warm sympathy flowed out to those who 
 were also timid ; and almost in a day her weak- 
 ness had been transmuted into a teacher's most 
 golden attributes sympathetic understanding 
 and kindness. 
 
 One day some of the younger pupils were be- 
 ing bullied, by the older ones on the playground. 
 Miss Barton rushed out to calm the strife. She 
 took a part in the game and while protecting 
 the weak she proved herself, both in athletic 
 skill and in judgment, the superior of the 
 strong. That was precisely what the phrenol- 
 ogist had said: devotion to the weak could 
 make her strong. And the man need not have 
 based his statement on the evidence of cran- 
 ial bumps alone, for the girl had borne wit- 
 ness to the same truth in the care of her 
 brother. Shrewdness of mind and hand that 
 might excel in almost any endeavor she un- 
 
154 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 doubtedly possessed, but generally her personal 
 fears crippled her effort. When serving others, 
 however, as nurse, as teacher perhaps in any 
 capacity she could forget herself, and then 
 her versatile talents came into free play. 
 
 In discipline, Miss Barton's school ranked 
 first in the town. On the publication of this 
 news, she was invited to teach in several dis- 
 tricts where discipline was needed. She no 
 longer disliked the occupation, since it called 
 out her finest powers. So for nearly eight 
 consecutive years she followed it, excepting 
 only a brief period when she studied at Clin- 
 ton, New York. The quality of her teaching 
 may be inferred from a single instance. In 
 Bordentown, New Jersey, a number of relig- 
 ions were contending one against another, and 
 the partisans of each sect undertook to educate 
 their own children in denominational schools. 
 As a matter of fact, a great many children be- 
 longed to none of these institutions. No free 
 public school was in existence. Three times 
 one had been started, but each time opposition 
 had crushed it, or weak management had let it 
 die. As a result, the brightest boys ran un- 
 taught on the streets, and Bordentown 's fu- 
 ture citizens threatened to be disgracefully 
 ignorant and criminal. 
 
 Into this town went Clara Barton to found 
 a public school. The citizens told her it could 
 not be done. She said she hoped to convince 
 them it could; and she assumed responsibility 
 for three months at her own expense! They 
 
CLAEA BARTON 155 
 
 loaned her a tumble-down building and she 
 began with six pupils. In four weeks the 
 room overflowed and another had to be an- 
 nexed. The following year a new building was 
 erected with seats for the five hundred pupils 
 who desired admission. The authorities will- 
 ingly voted their teacher the salary she had 
 agreed to do without. 
 
 Ill health in 1854 forced Miss Barton to re- 
 sign from the Bordentown position and, as it 
 chanced, from her profession. While on a 
 visit to Washington the same year she learned 
 of certain scandals in the Patent Office. The 
 clerks were betraying the ideas of inventors 
 who had filed patents. In these defrauded in- 
 ventors, Miss Barton saw another class of 
 weak or undefended people, like the boys of 
 Bordentown, like her invalid brother. Her 
 temper was aroused. She thought she could 
 help. Though the farm had been her principal 
 school, and teaching her only profession, she 
 felt that she could adapt her strength to any 
 task, so long as the task, as the phrenologist 
 said, was "for others.'' Just here Miss Bar- 
 ton did a rather curious thing, but a thing that, 
 as time went on, would in her seem less curi- 
 ous. She deliberately forsook one profession 
 and took up another. 
 
 Through a relative in Congress, she was ap- 
 pointed head clerk in the Patent Office. As the 
 first woman employee of the department, the 
 clerks resented her intrusion. They ranged 
 themselves along the walls of the corridor 
 
156 HEEOINES OF MODEBN PROGRESS 
 
 through which she had to walk and stared at 
 her and whistled softly as she passed. They 
 meant to drive her out. Kudeness failing, 
 they tried slander; and, after that, disobedi- 
 ence. But the woman was undaunted. She 
 discharged some clerks and by reproof and by 
 example instilled into the rest a new sense of 
 honor. She remained at her post three years. 
 By 1857 when she was removed for alleged 
 anti-slavery sentiments, she had thoroughly 
 reformed the office. 
 
 The next few years were uneventful. Miss 
 Barton lived at her home in Massachusetts 
 keeping house and doing clerical work for her 
 brothers. Meanwhile the premonitory rum- 
 blings of the Civil War had begun to shake the 
 land. The friends of peace and unity were 
 everywhere distraught. And Clara Barton 
 the daughter of a soldier did not pass those 
 quiet years without much grim thinking and 
 resolving. A friend reports this conversation 
 with her: 
 
 ' ' She had saved a little in time of peace and 
 she intended to devote it and herself to the 
 services of her country and of humanity. If 
 war must be she neither expected nor desired 
 to come out of it with a dollar. If she sur- 
 vived she could no doubt earn a living; and if 
 she did not, it was no matter.' 
 
 Through the winter of 1860-61, she resided 
 at Washington and there on April 19 came 
 an event which again definitely altered the 
 course of her life. The practical farm girl 
 
CLARA BAKTON 157 
 
 and child-nurse, the kind but forceful teacher, 
 and the methodical, conscientious clerk were 
 dismissed into her past; or, rather, she com- 
 bined them all in a new and stronger character 
 for her new and greater work. 
 
 One day a train rolled into Washington from 
 Baltimore, and from it alighted not the usual 
 throng of cheerful travelers, but a horde of 
 torn and muddy soldiers. Some of them were 
 limping, some had arms trussed up, and some 
 were borne on stretchers. These fellows had 
 been in a battle. Clara Barton was at the sta- 
 tion and saw them detrained. She recognized 
 them as the Sixth Massachusetts militia and 
 recognized, too, some of her own friends from 
 home and her former pupils! 
 
 The wounded men were hurried to the in- 
 firmary; the uninjured were quartered in the 
 Capitol. But forty fresh patients, arriving all 
 at once, disturbed the arrangements of a quiet, 
 peace-time hospital. The place was overtaxed 
 and thrown almost into a panic. Miss Barton 
 had come with a crowd in the wake of the am- 
 bulance. She saw the confusion the dearth 
 of cots, the scarcity of nurses, the pain of the 
 soldiers who lay unattended. What better 
 chance to serve "her country and humanity! 7 
 She was something of a nurse herself, and 
 knew where to take hold. So she quietly put 
 on her apron and with ready adroitness busied 
 herself in the wards, helping dress the boys' 
 wounds, reading them the news, and writing 
 letters to their parents. 
 
158 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 Later, she went to the Capitol. She found 
 the soldiers there half famished, for they were 
 unexpected guests, and the military authorities 
 had not unpacked their stores. The men were 
 not starved only; they were discouraged and 
 pessimistic, and to their minds the American 
 nation was crashing down to ruin. Clara Bar- 
 ton thereupon made a trip to the market, 
 bought baskets of food and had them carried 
 to the Capitol. While the grateful soldiers 
 feasted, she mounted the Speaker's platform 
 and made them forget their gloom by reading 
 newspaper accounts of their impressive prog- 
 ress toward the front. 
 
 This was the beginning. And now, "as if 
 by magic the peaceful North became one vast 
 camp." Soldiers poured into Washington 
 from all quarters, bound for the South. A 
 good many of them had been taken ill on the 
 way and were consigned to hospitals where as 
 yet there was insufficient provision for them. 
 Miss Barton was on the watch and went to the 
 aid of the unfortunates. They wrote home 
 about her, and one morning she awoke to find 
 herself not famous yet but useful to the full 
 extent of her powers. 
 
 That morning the postman handed her a 
 great bundle of letters. She tore one open. 
 The mother of one of her Bordentown pupils 
 enclosed a letter to him and begged Miss Bar- 
 ton to deliver it. She opened another. A girl 
 from Oxford asked her to be sure a certain ail- 
 ing brother did not want for medicine. She 
 
CLAEA BAETON 159 
 
 opened another but before she could digest 
 the fifty, an express wagon rattled up with a 
 load of boxes and barrels addressed to Clara 
 Barton! Here was a crate of jellies from 
 some family she knew, here a case of cordials 
 from a sewing circle, here a barrel of food to 
 entice bed-ridden soldiers, or of bandages to 
 bind up their wounds. All these things Miss 
 Barton was asked to parcel out some to cer- 
 tain designated persons, the rest, according to 
 her wisdom, wherever the nation's men could 
 use it. 
 
 This was the second step. The next fol- 
 lowed soon. Before long Miss Barton's room, 
 as well as several warerooms that she had 
 leased, was overflowing with supplies. But 
 meanwhile need of them abated, for the hos- 
 pitals and commissaries had got into working 
 order. Washington was no longer the place 
 for Clara Barton. As she once said, she 
 wanted "something to do that no one else 
 would do; something that no one else had 
 thought of doing. " 
 
 For some time she had assisted at the 
 wharves where the bloody and dying men, 
 brought up the Potomac on transports, were 
 unloaded. The poor fellows, on whom the mud 
 and gore of battle was "baked hard like the 
 shell of turtles," got no relief till they were 
 lodged in the hospitals. Disgraceful! Clara 
 Barton could not permit that. She boarded 
 one of those transports with restoratives and 
 food, and went down the river to where the suf- 
 
160 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGRESS 
 
 ferers were received from the battlefield, and 
 tended them during the return voyage. But 
 even that would not suffice. Some of the vic- 
 tims did not reach the boat until long, weary 
 days after their misfortune. Miss Barton 'saw 
 that much pain could be alleviated by a nurse 
 present on the actual field of battle. Here was 
 at last "something no one else had thought of 
 doing. ' ' 
 
 "Clara Barton had never nursed behind the 
 firing line. It is doubtful if she had ever 
 heard of a woman's doing it though Florence 
 Nightingale, a few years earlier, had made 
 bold to go to the Crimean hospitals, and 
 thousands of American women under the 
 "Sanitary and Christian Commission' were 
 even now hastening to the front. She had 
 only taught school and kept books; but she 
 believed that she could also do this new and 
 greater work. She took stock of her talents 
 and fearlessly made her third lightning change 
 from one occupation to another. 
 
 Miss Barton applied for a pass beyond the 
 army lines, and, after many rebuffs, was 
 granted one. No department of the Govern- 
 ment employed her, -however, nor did she ever 
 attach herself to the Sanitary and Christian 
 Commission. She was subject to no one; she 
 had authority over no one. She was simply an 
 American woman, free to stay if she would, 
 free to go if she could. Yet she was encour- 
 aged from the first by individual officers. Fi- 
 nally, after Culpepper Court House, and Cedar 
 
CLARA BABTON 161 
 
 Mountain, where, under fire for hours, she 
 helped the surgeons in the field hospitals and 
 asserted her practical sense in portioning out 
 the food and medicine from her own wagons, 
 the quartermaster granted her requisitions 
 from the government stores and ample means 
 for transportation. Thus was perfected the 
 famous army nurse. From now on, she fol- 
 lowed the Union forces and was just behind 
 the battle line at many of the most deadly con- 
 flicts. 
 
 At Antietam, when the fighting began, her 
 muleteers drove their wagons through a field 
 of tall corn to an old homestead. The shot 
 whizzed thick around them. "In the barnyard 
 and among the corn lay torn and bleeding men 
 the worst cases just brought from the places 
 where they had fallen/ The army medical 
 supplies had not yet arrived, and the surgeons 
 were trying to make bandages of corn husks! 
 To them Clara Barton opened her own stock. 
 Then she hurried among the wounded to re- 
 vive them with bread steeped in wine. When 
 her bread gave out, she took meal from her 
 wagons and mixed gruel which was carried 
 along the line for miles in buckets. Though 
 the operating had begun in the morning, the 
 fields at nightfall were still strewn with 
 wounded soldiers. Then the distracted sur- 
 geons confessed that they had no candles, and 
 could not stir till daylight. Hundreds of men 
 would perish unattended. At that, Clara Bar- 
 ton ran to her wagons and returned with bush- 
 
162 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 els of candles and thirty lanterns to burn them 
 in. The operating proceeded all night, and 
 all next day. And only on the third day did 
 the regular army supplies arrive. 
 
 Miss Barton's courage is well illustrated in 
 an episode at Fredericksburg. In a division 
 of the army across the river from the city, she 
 was watching over an injured rebel when a 
 message arrived with the request that she 
 come into the city to organize a diet kitchen. 
 Hearing the message, the dying soldier whis- 
 pered to her, "Lady, you have been kind to 
 me. . . . Every street and lane of the city 
 is covered by our cannon. When your entire 
 army has reached the other side of the Rappa- 
 hannock, they will find Fredericksburg only 
 slaughter pen. Not a regiment will escape. 
 Do not go over, for you will go to certain 
 death." Miss Barton merely soothed her 
 friend until in spite of all her efforts he died; 
 then, in the face of his advice, she crossed the 
 river into the threatened town. But this in- 
 stance of the woman's daring is only one in 
 many. She was constantly in danger. Her 
 clothing was often pierced by bullets and her 
 face blackened by the powder smoke. At An- 
 tietam, when stooping to raise a fallen lad, a 
 ball passed between her arm and her body, en- 
 tered the soldier's breast and killed him. 
 
 Not less heroic was her patient endurance on 
 Morris Island, when the Federals were holding 
 it. No vegetation, not even a weed, grew on 
 the island. The sun was blistering hot, and 
 
CLAEA BARTON 163 
 
 ocean gales swept the sand, driving it into the 
 eyes and nostrils of the defenders. Light, 
 floorless tents, which the wind sometimes up- 
 set, were the only protection. Yet Clara Bar- 
 ton was on duty here for an entire summer. 
 Sheltered in the lea of a sand hill, with three 
 or four men to help her, she toiled through the 
 long days, boiling water, washing wounds, and 
 preparing tea and coffee and delicate foods. 
 Living on soldiers' rations herself, she more 
 than once broke down. But she arose in a few 
 days as determined, if not as vigorous, as ever. 
 "The other ladies," so she commented, 
 "thought they could not endure the climate, 
 and, as I knew somebody must take care of the 
 soldiers, I went." 
 
 Clara Barton would not accept any comforts 
 that were not common to all, or that were ob- 
 tained at the expense of non-combatant South- 
 erners. Once some soldiers brought her a 
 costly and elegant carpet. 
 
 "What is this for?" she asked. "It is for 
 you," they said. "You have been so good to 
 us that we wanted to bring you something." 
 
 "Where did you get it?" 
 
 "We confiscated it." 
 
 "No, no," cried the woman, "that will never 
 do. Governments confiscate. Soldiers, when 
 they take such things, steal." 
 
 And she made them carry the carpet back 
 to the deserted house from which they had 
 taken it. 
 
 Thus for four years Miss Barton hovered on 
 
164 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 the bloody trail of war. By her ingenious 
 practicality, she was able to foresee what 
 things would be necessary in any emergency; 
 by her business acumen, she was able to obtain 
 them beforehand and rush them to the field. 
 In this manner she rendered invaluable aid to 
 the overworked and ill-equipped surgeons. 
 She gave the relief corps of the armies an ob- 
 ject lesson in efficiency which they would not 
 be slow to improve. Of greater consequence, 
 however, she found a new profession for 
 woman : that of going in person behind the 
 battle lines, to nurse the men who were shot 
 in her country's fight. It was a discovery 
 worthy of one who could be fearless only for 
 others, and who wanted to do what no one else 
 had thought of doing. 
 
 So much was pure patriotism. Yet here and 
 there she gave tokens of a passion still larger. 
 She respected scrupulously the property rights 
 of the Southerners. And where she could, she 
 nursed her stricken foes as well as her friends. 
 That was the purest humanity, and in that lay 
 the promise of her future. 
 
 While on the field, Miss Barton had com- 
 piled hospital and burial lists. After the war, 
 other lists were put into her hands. The 
 friends of missing soldiers began to inquire 
 where such and such men of such and such 
 regiments were buried, that a stone might be 
 set up over their graves. The government 
 had no bureau to answer such inquiries. Here 
 was another opening for the ever-ready Miss 
 
CLAEA BAETON 165 
 
 Barton. From an office in Washington, she 
 superintended a vast correspondence and 
 traced over thirty thousand men, living and 
 dead. This service was undertaken at her own 
 risk, without pay. But later the government 
 reimbursed her. 
 
 From 1867 to 1869, Miss Barton lectured 
 through the North on the lyceum circuit. In 
 1869, she went to Europe for a rest. Her na- 
 tion was now at peace. Her patriotism was 
 spent. She might have thought her greatest, 
 if not her whole life work, was completed. 
 But in Europe, unexpectedly, there opened a 
 new phase of her career in which all the others 
 culminated. 
 
 While resting and sight-seeing in Geneva, 
 Miss Barton was called on one day by a gen- 
 tleman who said he "represented the Interna- 
 tional Committee of the Red Cross." 
 "What," demanded Miss Barton, "was the 
 Red Cross?' The visitor explained that the 
 Red Cross was a society founded six years 
 before, in 1863, by M. Henri Durant of Gen- 
 eva. Its purpose supported by a treaty 
 which nearly all the nations of Europe had rat- 
 ified was to exempt from capture those car- 
 ing for the wounded on battlefields. Among 
 the wounded it recognized no difference of 
 nation or cause, but only the fact that they 
 were human, and in trouble. Thus the very 
 armies that were shooti each other down, 
 would at the same time co-operate through 
 their medical staffs to s^vor victims of 
 
166 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 either side. The society had circulated its 
 leaflets in America. Was it possible Miss 
 Barton had read none of them? 
 
 Miss Barton had to reply that she did not 
 read French easily. Moreover, she had been 
 too busy, both during and since the war, to 
 occupy herself with pamphlets in a foreign 
 tongue. However, she did heartily approve of 
 the principles of the society. In fact, she had 
 acted on that principle herself, and for doing 
 so had been accused of disloyalty to the na- 
 tional cause. 
 
 They had heard as much, said the man. She 
 recognized, as they did, that the cause of 
 humanity was greater than the cause of any 
 nation. That was the very reason why he was 
 addressing her now. The society had been 
 trying to get the United States to sign its 
 treaty; but the United States had, like herself, 
 been too busy and too uninformed to think 
 about it. In short, would she represent them 
 in laying the matter before her government? 
 
 Miss Barton was impressed by the argument 
 and promised the International Committee of 
 the Eed Cross to do as they desired.^ Her en- 
 thusiasm was rather cool, however, for issues 
 more urgent were- upon "her. In 1870 the 
 Franco-German war broke out. Men were 
 being killed ; the horrors of our own Civil War 
 would be repeated, with no one there to miti- 
 gate them. Should the woman who of all peo- 
 ple in the world probably knew best how to 
 nurse on the battlefield flee the country in 
 
CLAKA BAKTON 167 
 
 order to advocate a treaty in a peaceful land 
 beyond the sea? No Miss Barton's rule was 
 to do the thing that lay nearest at hand. 
 
 She set out in the path of the German army, 
 to duplicate her deeds of the American war. 
 She performed a splendid service, especially 
 at Strashurg and Paris, where, advancing 
 private funds, she not only doctored the sick, 
 but fed, clothed and employed the needy. But 
 while she labored independently as she had at 
 home^ her relief was everywhere aided and 
 sometimes forestalled. If she arrived a half 
 hour after a battle commenced, she found that 
 in some shady place behind a hill there had 
 sprung up already a village of little white 
 tents. From far and near came squads of men 
 bearing stretchers and on every man's arm 
 was strapped a bright red cross. They car- 
 ried their burdens inside the tents. There 
 stood long, low tables, with heaps of shining 
 instruments and clean lint. And surgeons 
 with deft fingers turned hastily to their mourn- 
 ful but humane work. 
 
 The numbers of the men and the speed with 
 which they moved were a revelation to Clara 
 Barton. Of what use were her feeble efforts? 
 The ministrations of a solitary neutral woman 
 on the battlefield was, indeed, but a clumsy and 
 antique device. The profession she had vir- 
 tually originated was snatched from her! A 
 smooth-working organization had assumed it. 
 
 -Clara Barton, however, was not disconcerted. 
 The organization would be the thing of the 
 
168 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 future; that was proved. So this woman of 
 quick adjustments shifted her ground, turned 
 about, and calmly and wisely put her hand to 
 the helm of that organization! 
 
 "As I saw the work of these Red Cross 
 Societies in the field,' she writes, "accom- 
 plishing in four months under their systematic 
 organization what we failed to accomplish in 
 four years without it, no mistakes, no need- 
 less suffering, no waste, no confusion, but 
 order, plenty, cleanliness and comfort wher- 
 ever that little flag made its way as I saw all 
 this and joined and worked in it, you will not 
 wonder that I said to myself, 'If I live to re- 
 turn to my country, I will make my people 
 understand the Red Cross and that treaty.' " 
 
 Her resolution, however, had to be deferred 
 for some years on account of illness. Mean- 
 time, Dr. Bellows, of the Sanitary and Chris- 
 tian Commission, had tried to perpetuate that 
 society and had actually founded a Red Cross 
 branch in New York. The branch was dis- 
 solved, however, mainly because it could not 
 secure recognition from the government at 
 Washington. The government was still "too 
 busy." It might persist in that condition for- 
 ever unless some one stubbornly demanded a 
 few moments of its precious time. Clara Bar- 
 ton went to Washington in 1877 prepared to 
 act with the necessary persistence. 
 
 There for five years she hammered at the 
 gates of legislation. She bore letters to the 
 President. She published leaflets for distribu- 
 
 
CLAEA BAETON 169 
 
 tion among the senators. She lectured and 
 wrote, to spread her novel idea among the 
 people. She lobbied in Congress, winning 
 over influential friends one by one. At last, 
 in 1882 under President Arthur, the conven- 
 tion was signed, and an American branch of 
 the Eed Cross was established with Clara 
 Barton as its first president. 
 
 It had been a remarkable transition from 
 the timid little girl of Oxford to the world- 
 famous woman worrying Congress into an in- 
 ternational treaty. Nevertheless, her last 
 achievement was not in nature different from 
 her earliest when she nursed her crippled 
 brother. She still, as from the first, was for 
 others "absolutely fearless." "Soldiers do 
 not die painless deaths," she declared, "the 
 sum of all human agony finds its equivalent 
 on the battlefield, in the hospital, by the weary 
 wayside, and in the prison/ Though still 
 somewhat timid in the presence of others, and 
 averse to public speaking, the woman, when the 
 occasion arose, could face and convince the 
 most august body of men in the nation. 
 
 The "American National Association of the 
 Eed Cross' as first established in accordance 
 with the treaty of Geneva was a very simple 
 affair. It was not a branch of the government 
 and subsidized as such, but an ordinary benev- 
 olent society composed of men and women who 
 cared to walk up and sign the constitution. 
 It had no income except what someone might 
 contribute. Miss Barton appointed her own 
 
170 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 officers, who, like herself, were tmsalaried. 
 
 But now when the woman stopped to con- 
 sider what she had done, her heart probably 
 sank within her. To all appearances she had 
 squandered five years for nothing at all. She 
 had her Red Cross safe and sound. But what 
 could the Red Cross do? Our nation had set- 
 tled its civil quarrel and, on account of its 
 isolated position, would seldom go to war with 
 foreign powers. The new society would con- 
 sequently become a mere name with a paper 
 existence. This threatened inertness did not 
 suit the taste of the energetic leader. Here- 
 tofore, when a great emergency pressed upon 
 her, she had simply chosen for herself an office 
 in which she could do the casual and tempor- 
 ary work. Now she was officially seated in an 
 office, a high office; but there was not a duty 
 anywhere in sight. The solution was charac- 
 teristic of her. She created duties for the 
 office. 
 
 "War," she said, "although the most tragic 
 is not the only evil that assails humanity.' 
 Almost daily, in times of peace the papers told 
 of distress in some part of the country, as 
 widespread and almost as acute as that in 
 times of strife. It was no powder or sword 
 that had caused the suffering. A river had 
 overflowed its valley, a fire had ravaged a for- 
 est, a cyclone had turned a city upside down; 
 and the people were houseless, hungry, 
 wounded just as after Antietam or Freder- 
 icksburg. Why could not the Red Cross treat 
 
CLARA BARTON 171 
 
 the scene of these calamities like a field of 
 battle f 
 
 To make a long story short, Clara Barton 
 amended the Geneva treaty to provide for Red 
 Cross aid in time of peace. Of all her prac- 
 tical adjustments, this was the cleverest. She 
 who had always adapted herself to new duties 
 as they pressed in upon her, now made shift to 
 discover new duties that would beseem her 
 office and her taste. It was also her last ad- 
 justment, for this time she had a work that 
 would never be done. 
 
 The society now took as its motto, "People's 
 help for national needs." Yet no " people " be- 
 longed to it; and the nation of people did not 
 acknowledge its right to meddle with their 
 needs. As a matter of fact, comparatively few 
 of them had given it a moment's thought. It 
 remained to be seen whether the president 
 could induce them to do so. 
 
 Now Miss Barton was residing at the time 
 at a sanitarium in Dansville, New York. The 
 citizens of the town, "desirous of paying a 
 compliment to her, and at the same time of 
 doing an honor to themselves, conceived the 
 idea of organizing in their town the first local 
 society of the Red Cross in the United States." 
 A meeting was called "attended by citizens 
 generally, including nearly all the religious 
 denominations with their respective pastors." 
 Miss Barton addressed them. A constitution 
 was presented and signed and officers elected. 
 
 Almost immediately a terrible forest fire 
 
172 HEKOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 was reported in Michigan. "So sweeping has 
 been the destruction/ read one account, "that 
 there is not food left in its track for a rabbit 
 to eat, and indeed, no rabbit to eat it if there 
 were." 
 
 Miss Barton's hour had come. She issued 
 a prompt call to action. The young society 
 rented rooms and unfurled its white banner 
 with the scarlet cross. Men, women and chil- 
 dren instantly flocked to the rooms bearing 
 gifts of clothing and food. A band of women 
 inspected the articles, stamped them with the 
 red cross, packed them, and dispatched them 
 to the relief committee in Michigan. Money, 
 too, was deposited; and that this might be 
 wisely used, a special agent went out to ob- 
 serve the condition of the sufferers. Mean- 
 while, the neighboring city of Eochester, hear- 
 ing of Dansville's activity, hastened to form a 
 similar society, and to send money and a 
 judicious agent to the field. 
 
 A little later a cyclone occurred in Louisi- 
 ana. More local branches sprang up. Then 
 came the Ohio river floods, and still more 
 branches. Miss Barton visited the scene in 
 person. She telegraphed to the societies 
 where her headquarters would be and there the 
 contributions came by the trainload. She 
 chartered a steamboat, took on volunteer as- 
 sistants, and "amid surging waters and crash- 
 ing ice, the floating wrecks of towns and vil- 
 lages, great uprooted giants of the forest 
 plunging madly to the sea," she herself super- 
 
CLARA BARTON 173 
 
 intended the distribution of fuel and clothing. 
 
 Thus the peace society of the Bed Cross was 
 started, and thus it continued to grow. Before 
 long there were local branches all over the 
 country. Even then the national association 
 remained essentially the same as on the day of 
 its first inception. There was no firm organi- 
 zation. When a disaster befell, Miss Barton 
 rushed to the scene or sent a reliable deputy. 
 The actual state of things was announced to the 
 country through the press. The local branches 
 everywhere forwarded their provisions and 
 money, as did also many other-named charit- 
 able societies and individuals. Clara Barton 
 or her aides, with volunteer help, dispensed the 
 benefactions. They made report directly to 
 each contributor, but not to the public. The 
 surplus funds were put in the bank for a start 
 in the next emergency. 
 
 The Red. Cross society was present at the 
 Johnstown flood, at the Charlestown earth- 
 quake, at Galveston, and on a hundred other 
 fields of sudden disaster. It gave food, cloth- 
 ing, medicine, lumber for houses, tools to build 
 them with, seed to sow in the ground and 
 even lessons in agriculture. Thus 1 it helped 
 thousands not only with fare for the day, but 
 with the means of sustaining themselves in 
 permanence. In 1896 it crossed the sea to 
 Armenia which had been laid waste by the 
 Turks, obtained a permit from the Turkish 
 government, and rescued great districts of the 
 country from starvation and disease. 
 
 
174 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 By this time the founder of the Red Cross 
 in America and the originator of the peace 
 service must have forgotten that the society 
 was ever intended as an adjunct in war. 
 Floods, fires, and hurricanes had kept her 
 reasonably busy, while no American army had 
 taken the field in good earnest for over thirty 
 years. But at last, in 1898, as if to crown her 
 career, a war did break out, in Cuba. 
 
 At the President's request, Miss Barton and 
 her helpers had gone to the island to work 
 among the women and children of the recon- 
 centradoes. When hostilities were declared, 
 they took possession of the relief ship, State of 
 Texas. Soon came news of a battle. "It is 
 the Rough Riders we go to, ' wrote Miss Bar- 
 ton in her diary, "and the relief may be also 
 rough, but it will be ready.' They proceeded 
 to Siboney, put in order both the Cuban and 
 American hospitals, hoisted over them the Red 
 Cross flag and turned to for duty in the oper- 
 ating tents. 
 
 Then on the second day of the battle of San 
 Juan came a message from General Shafter, 
 "Send food, medicines, anything. 7 Wagons 
 were loaded from the State of Texas, during 
 the night, and driven to the field. "The sight 
 that met us on going into the so-called hospital 
 grounds," says Miss Barton, "was something 
 indescribable. ... A few little dog tents 
 not much larger than could have been made of 
 an ordinary table cloth thrown over a short 
 rail, and under these lay huddled together the 
 
 
CLARA BARTON 175 
 
 men fresh from the field or from the operating 
 tables, with no covering over them . . . 
 and in the majority of cases, no blanket under 
 them.' There they lay, now scorched by the 
 sun, now drenched with the rain, aching from 
 wounds, and with little or nothing to eat and 
 drink. 
 
 But the Red Cross nurses tore up some bolts 
 of cotton for blankets. Then they built a fire- 
 place, put on the kettles, and began mixing 
 gruel. "I had not thought to ever make gruel 
 again over a camp fire," said Miss Barton. 
 "I cannot say how far it carried me back in 
 the lapse of time, or really where, or who I 
 felt that I was. ... It did not seem me, 
 and still I seemed to know how to do it." 
 She did know, right well; and there she 
 stayed all night, and the days following, un- 
 til the patients could be removed to Sibo- 
 ney. 
 
 Miss Barton later carried relief to the fever 
 camp at Siboney. When Santiago was occu- 
 pied, the State of Texas, by Admiral Samp- 
 son's permission, was the first American ship 
 to steam into the harbor. There Miss Barton 
 and her company ended the Cuban war by 
 stamping out the yellow fever among the na- 
 tives. President McKinley, in his message of 
 1908, speaks "in terms of cordial apprecia- 
 tion' of the "timely and useful work of the 
 American Red Cross . . . under the able 
 and experienced leadership of the president of 
 the society, Miss Clara Barton." 
 
176 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 Throughout the war, the Eed Cross acted as 
 a department of the government, as it really 
 was. But, the war over and peace activities 
 resumed, this relation was again forgotten. 
 
 Clara Barton remained president. She was, 
 to be exact, a great deal more than president. 
 She was the Eed Cross ; and the Eed Cross was 
 neither more nor less than Clara Barton. 
 Outside of her it had only a vaporous exist- 
 ence. It was "her child, ' as she said, and 
 she "naturally and willingly provided for it.' 
 She furnished space for its headquarters in 
 her own home at Washington. From there 
 she received and dispensed the charities of a 
 nation, amounting to hundreds of thousands of 
 dollars, without even being requested to pub- 
 lish her accounts, an example of personal 
 leadership almost unparalleled. 
 
 Toward the last the effectiveness of her 
 business methods was questioned. And on her 
 retirement in 1904, the society reorganized and 
 elected Secretary of War Taft, its president. 
 So the Eed Cross of Peace, like the Eed Cross 
 of War, passed directly under government 
 patronage. Miss Barton's "child," at her 
 death in 1912, was the adopted child of the na- 
 tion. Her personal devotion, however, had 
 already planted the idea of it in the hearts of 
 the people better than any official bureau could 
 do. 
 
 Thus the little girl who had nursed her 
 brother became at last the nurse of the nation ; 
 the young woman who had protected her weak- 
 
 
CLAEA BAETON 177 
 
 ling pupils, succored the unfortunates of all 
 the world. 
 
 She had not aimed so high when she began, 
 for had she been so visionary she would prob- 
 ably have arrived nowhere at all! She at- 
 tacked practical issues always. 
 
 "I have no mission," she says. "I have 
 never had a mission. But I have always had 
 more work than I could do lying around my 
 feet and I try hard to get it out of the way so 
 as to go on and do the next." 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 SOMETIME in the twenties of the nine- 
 teenth century, a woman was walking on 
 the beach at Newport, when she met the Wards, 
 a wealthy and aristocratic family from New 
 York City. The daughter Julia, seven or eight 
 years old, was not bathing, or frisking up and 
 down the level sand, or basking in the sun. 
 She walked along sedately, her hand tucked in 
 that of her father; and her head was envel- 
 oped in a thick, green worsted veil. 
 
 "Little Julia has another freckle to-day,' 
 the woman was told. The dreadful blemish 
 had appeared on the "delicate ivory complex- 
 ion" the day before. But, "It was not her 
 fault; the nurse forgot her veil.' 
 
 As she was veiled against the impertinence 
 of the sun, so Julia or Miss Ward, as the 
 servants respectfully called her was relieved 
 of the necessity of physical exertion. For 
 recreation she walked with her mother in the 
 garden, and every afernoon at three o'clock 
 entered the big yellow family coach for a drive 
 behind fat horses. Her nurse occasionally led 
 her out to where she could see the young girls 
 of the neighborhood skipping rope; but it i 
 not recorded that she herself ever "ran 
 through" or even so much as "turned.' 
 
 For Miss Ward had to be reared according 
 
 178 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 179 
 
 to her station, and her station was high. She 
 was born May 27, 1819, in the city of New 
 York. Her father was a Wall Street banker. 
 Both he and the mother came of distinguished 
 families, and they were courted by the most 
 exclusive society. 
 
 Julia did not, however, blossom freely in a 
 social way during her early years. The mother 
 died, and the father, feeling that he must exer- 
 cise the vigilance of two parents at once, grew 
 cautious to a fault. 
 
 "He dreaded for his children the dissipa- 
 tions of fashionable society, and even the risks 
 of general intercourse with the unsanctified 
 many,' wrote the daughter long afterward. 
 He was so careful in selecting her associates 
 that often she had none at all. And since her 
 sisters were much younger, and her brothers 
 absent at boarding school, there was left to her 
 just one course to become a student of books. 
 
 Julia was taught at home up to the age of 
 nine, when, not from preference, but because 
 no governess gave satisfaction, her father sent 
 her to a private school. Education at that time 
 consisted mainly in memorizing from the text; 
 and since Julia was endowed with a quick and 
 retentive memory, she made rapid headway. 
 For languages she had a special aptitude. 
 She had spoken French almost from her cradle 
 for besides the man who gave her lessons in 
 conversation, did not a French servant dress 
 her hair, and a second mix the salad for din- 
 ner? Italian she mastered almost as early. 
 
180 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 And her father wrote in a letter to his sister, 
 " Julia knows three words of Spanish, and 
 talks it all day long.' At the same time a 
 master of dancing came to the house to "fin- 
 ish" the girl in that art. First a Frenchman 
 and later an Italian was retained to have a 
 care for her musical culture. And she was al- 
 lowed to exhibit her skill, now and then, be- 
 fore a select coterie of uncles and cousins. 
 
 It may be conjectured that under this fash- 
 ionable course of training the girl would not 
 acquire much dexterity at the various forms 
 of housework. "I remember when a thimble 
 was first given to me," she says, "some simple 
 bit of work being at the same time placed in 
 my hand. Someone said, 'Take the needle in 
 this hand.' I did so, and, placing the thimble 
 on a finger of the other hand, I began to sew 
 without its aid, to the amusement of my teacher. 
 This trifle appears to me an early indica- 
 tion of a want of perception as to the use o 
 tools which has accompanied me through 
 life." 
 
 Julia was, in fact, inclined to be impracti- 
 cal; and, worse to come, she was absent and 
 dreamy. She once wore to school, without 
 knowing it, a blue shoe on one foot and a green 
 one on the other. Her mother complained that 
 when calling on friends she paid no heed to 
 what was going on around her, nor did she at 
 home, if her own word is true. "In the larg 
 rooms of my father's house,' she says, l l 
 walked up and down perfectly alone, dreaming 
 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 181 
 
 of the extraordinary things that I should see 
 and do." 
 
 And what did she dream of doing that she 
 should be impolite to the neighbors and make 
 herself comical before her schoolmates? For 
 one thing, naturally, she dreamed of writing, 
 since of Milton and Byron and Shakespeare 
 she read so much ; for another thing, of dresses 
 and balls, and all social gayeties, for which she 
 was evidently being prepared, but of which, as 
 yet, she had caught scarcely a glimpse. And 
 inevitably, when she tried her hand at writing, 
 she would treat of those fascinating scenes in 
 which she would sometime move. Her earliest 
 printed poem relates to the costuming at a 
 certain ball. It ends: 
 
 Perhaps mantillas were the passion, 
 Perhaps ferronieres were in fashion, 
 I cannot, and I will not tell. 
 But this one thing I wot full well, 
 That every lady there was dressed 
 In what she thought became her best. 
 
 At the age of sixteen Miss Julia left school. 
 The event awakened her to the sad fact that 
 time was passing, and she resolved to have 
 done with her romantic day dreams for the 
 present, and to excel, if it might be, in her 
 studies. She accordingly laid out for herself 
 a strenuous course, including French, German, 
 literature, history and philosophy. For each 
 subject she set aside regular hours of the day ; 
 
182 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 and lest the temptation to play should over- 
 power her in these hours, she coaxed the maid 
 to tie her fast in a chair. Her brother Samuel, 
 returning from a European university, brought 
 a library in which she could browse at will. 
 And the father, for the special benefit of his 
 children, added a spacious art gallery to his 
 house, and filled it with the choicest pictures 
 obtainable in New York. 
 
 The girPs associations were such as to foster 
 her natural inclination for study. With Bry- 
 ant and Irving, New York was beginning to 
 preen itself on its literary character ; and Julia 
 Ward met and spoke with these men, and ad- 
 mired them with the rest, in the society where 
 they were the fashion. Not unnaturally, as she 
 says, ' ' Through all these years there went with 
 me the vision of some great work or works 
 which I myself should give to the world. I 
 should write the novel or play of the age. 
 . . . I find it difficult to account for a sense 
 of literary responsibility which never left me 
 and which I must consider to have formed a 
 part of my spiritual make-up.' Nor, once 
 aware of the vision, did she ever allow it to 
 slumber. She began several dramas one of 
 them founded on "Kenilworth' but lost con- 
 trol of them in mid-career. A brief apprecia- 
 tion of the poems of Goethe and Schiller, pub- 
 lished in the New York Review, was spoken of 
 as "a charming paper, said to have been writ- 
 ten by a lady." And on the death of her 
 favorite music master, she wrote for a news- 
 
JULIA WAKD HOWE 183 
 
 paper some descriptive verses which were 
 favorably noticed and widely copied. 
 
 This taste of print, however, and her delight 
 in voluntary study were embittered by her en- 
 forced abstinence from social pleasures. The 
 home life, under Mr. Ward's jealous eye, con- 
 tinued to be almost severely simple. On Sun- 
 day, for example, the children were expected 
 to sit attentively through at least four serv- 
 ices, to read only religious books and sing only 
 hymns, and to deny themselves to all com- 
 pany. During the week, the family would 
 spend the evenings together Mr. Ward on 
 guard with their books, needlework and music. 
 A lecture, concert or party, all in strict propri- 
 ety, might occasionally vary this routine. 
 
 The elder son, Samuel, meantime, had broken 
 away completely from Mr. Ward's point of 
 view, and frequently disputed with him on the 
 question of social intercourse. 
 
 "Sir," said he one day, "you do not keep in 
 view the importance of the social tie. ' 
 
 "The social what?" asked the father. 
 
 "The social tie, sir.' 
 
 "I make small account of that." 
 
 "I will die in defense of it!" proclaimed the 
 young man. 
 
 No such heroic sacrifice was necessary; but 
 Samuel did go a good deal into fashionable 
 society, and his brothers with him. And, with 
 their lively table gossip tingling her ears, Miss 
 Julia, who had a youthful passion for music 
 and dancing, began secretly to chafe against 
 
184 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 her father's restraint. To learn to play and 
 sing under a music master, and learn to dance 
 with a dancing master was all well enough ; but 
 such exercises, to a young woman, were not 
 really singing and dancing. "I did not desire 
 to be counted among ' fashionables,' but I did 
 aspire to much greater freedom of association 
 than was allowed me. ... I seemed to my- 
 self like a young damsel of olden time, shut up 
 within an enchanted castle. And I must say 
 that my dear father, with all his noble gener- 
 osity and overweening affection, sometimes 
 appeared to me as my jailor.' 
 
 As she grew out of her teens, however, her 
 father's anxiety somewhat relaxed. Young 
 Samuel married into the wealthy and fashion- 
 able Astor family; and though on the wedding 
 night Miss Julia was ordered home while the 
 jollity was at its height, she really counted her 
 freedom from that hour. She often visited the 
 Astor mansion, "made delightful by good 
 taste, good manners and hospitable entertain- 
 ment.' Then, after the father's death, she 
 went to live with Samuel, and the ' 'social tie" 
 was paid all the homage due it. 
 
 Someone made the remark years later that 
 "if she were on a desert island with no inhabi- 
 tants but one old nigger, she would give a 
 party. ' The Manhattan of 1840 was anything 
 but a desert, or devoid of congenial company. 
 The young woman, wealthy and handsome, 
 witty in conversation, and charming in song 
 and dance, queened it joyously in the brilliant 
 
JULIA WAED HOWE 185 
 
 circles of her native town. "The history of 
 the next two years would, if written, chronicle 
 a series of balls, concerts and dinners,' she 
 confesses. ' ' These years glided by with fairy- 
 like swiftness." Miss Ward did not abandon 
 her studies nor the idea of writing the novel 
 of the age. But while the pleasures of society 
 engrossed her, any serious literary labors were 
 indefinitely deferred. She wrote charades and 
 clever dramatic skits to entertain her friends 
 or for an interlude at a ball but never any 
 more heavy historic plays, like the one on the 
 fall of Constantinople. The society girl had 
 quite absorbed the student and writer. 
 
 "If this state of things had continued," she 
 says, "I should probably have remained a fre- 
 quenter of fashionable society, a musical ama- 
 teur, and a dilettante in literature." 
 
 The fact was that, unbeknown to Miss Ward, 
 her fates were spinning a web of quite a dif- 
 ferent color. While on a visit to Boston in 
 1841, Charles Sumner, the statesman, a particu- 
 lar intimate of her brother's, often called upon 
 her. Mr. Sumner expatiated upon a friend of 
 his, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who. had estab- 
 lished the Perkins Institute for the blind, and 
 had taught Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf 
 mute, to make use of language. In company 
 with Mr. Sumner, and the poet Longfellow, 
 Miss Ward drove over one day to see the won- 
 derful school and its teacher. 
 
 Dr. Howe was absent when they arrived, but 
 before they took leave, "Mr. Sumner, looking 
 
186 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 out of a window, said, '0! here comes Howe on 
 his black horse!' I looked out also, and beheld 
 a noble rider on a noble steed. . . . He 
 made an impression on us of unusual force and 
 reserve." 
 
 More facts were soon forthcoming about this 
 interesting man. He had fought with the 
 Greeks in their war for independence, bivou- 
 acing on the bare rocks of the mountain side, 
 and dining on roasted wasps. He had, latterly, 
 not only founded the first school for the blind 
 in this country, but had conducted a troupe of 
 his pupils through several states and influ- 
 enced the legislatures to build other schools. 
 He had done only less important service for 
 the feeble-minded and the insane. And, along 
 with all the rest, he was hostile, heart and 
 mind and outspokenly so to the system of 
 negro slavery. 
 
 Altogether, Mr. Howe was a romantic and a 
 commanding figure a man of energy, who 
 could do things for the betterment of his race; 
 a man who contrasted splendidly with the 
 devotees of fashion, among whom Miss Ward 
 had recently moved, and, not less, with her 
 ideals of a scholarly or literary career. * ' That 
 he was indeed a hero, the events of his life suf- 
 ficiently declare," wrote his biographer. It 
 did not take him long to become a hero to Miss 
 Ward. They fell in love, despite a discrep- 
 ancy of twenty years in their ages, and in April, 
 1843, were married. She perhaps did not sus- 
 pect that for a girl of fashion and a literary 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 187 
 
 dilettante to marry a reformer in that age of 
 reformers, was to put herself in a very serious 
 predicament. 
 
 The couple sailed for Europe, where the fame 
 of Laura Bridgman had been heralded by 
 Charles Dickens 7 American Notes, and they 
 were feted by many of the celebrities of the 
 time. They had tea with Carlyle and Words- 
 worth. They were guests of various noblemen, 
 at homes, and at theater parties and balls. 
 The parents of Florence Nightingale enter- 
 tained them at the Embly Park mansion. 
 Dickens grew so familiar with them that he 
 broke through all reserve; and once, at a din- 
 ner, when Mrs. Howe addressed her husband as 
 "darling," the author "slid down to the floor, 
 and, lying on his back, held up one of his small 
 feet, quivering with pretended emotion. 'Did 
 she called him ' darling, ' ' he cried. ' ' All of this 
 lionizing was very grateful to the American 
 belle, the "stately Julia, queen of all," as 
 someone described her. When in after years 
 she was asked what most impressed her during 
 this visit in London, she replied, "The clever 
 people collected there." 
 
 Not so, however, with Dr. Samuel Howe; 
 the witless people, the feeble-minded, the 
 ignorant and the deformed, were the ones who 
 most impressed him. He went about with 
 Dickens, it is true but he went to Bridewell 
 and Newgate prisons, and to the charity school. 
 He accepted the hospitality of the Nightin- 
 gales; but while there he took occasion to ad- 
 
188 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 vise the daughter, Florence, to become a nurse. 
 He studied schools, workhouses, prisons, and 
 asylums of all kinds. An admirer gave him 
 an etching with the inscription, "From a lover 
 of truth to a lover of truth.' In short, the 
 gay young bride, like it or not, found herself 
 in leading strings to a man intensely serious, 
 an out and out philanthropist. Without miss- 
 ing any balls or theater parties, she felt con- 
 strained occasionally to accompany the doctor 
 on his rounds to the public institutions. She 
 wrote a humorous travesty in rhyme of a letter 
 of his describing a blind deaf woman: 
 
 She has but one jaw, 
 
 Has teeth like a saw, 
 Her ears and her eyes I delight in; 
 
 The one could not hear 
 
 Tho' a cannon were near, 
 The others are holes with no sight in. 
 
 "But when I showed it to him, I was grieved 
 to see how much he seemed pained at my 
 frivolity. " In fact, the doctor could not see 
 the point of that kind of "humor;' 7 it is doubt- 
 ful if he could appreciate his young wife's 
 charades and dramas for ball room consump- 
 tion, or for that matter, any part of the gay, 
 social life, that she thought so important. He 
 was "pained" at her frivolity, and she was 
 "grieved" to see it. The reformer had begun 
 to reprove and sober the literary dilettante 
 and the frequenter of fashionable society. 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 189 
 
 Upon their return to America, this influence 
 was many times intensified. They lived near 
 the Institute in South Boston, a " distinctly un- 
 fashionable" suburb, remote from the city, and 
 by no means hand in glove with the city's 
 socially elite. "I was now," she writes, "to 
 make acquaintance with quite another city 
 with the Boston of the teachers, of the reform- 
 ers, of the cranks, and also of the apostles." 
 For Mrs. Howe, like some who "marry a whole 
 family,' had, in taking her husband, in some 
 measure married the whole race of reformers. 
 Not that Mr. Howe consciously tried to attach 
 her to that strenuous band he even forbade 
 her to undertake any work in his own school. 
 But "reformers, cranks and apostles" were 
 the kind of men who naturally grouped them- 
 selves around him, and the young wife, will or 
 no, could hardly avoid them. "I endeavored,' 
 she says, "to enter reasonably into the func- 
 tions and amusements of general society, and 
 at the same time to profit by the resources of in- 
 tellectual life which opened out before me.' 
 
 So the freest thinkers and the boldest doers 
 of Boston's golden age went continually in and 
 out of the "Green Peace" homestead of the 
 Howes. Edwin Booth, Holmes, Longfellow, 
 Emerson, Theodore Parker and numerous 
 other men of letters and leaders in the "tran- 
 scendental" school of philosophy found there 
 a hospitable drawing room. Garrison, the 
 abolitionist, whom she had never seen but of 
 whose "malignity of disposition," due to false 
 
190 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 reports, she entertained not the smallest doubt, 
 she came to hold in great esteem. Wendell 
 Phillips, too, she warmly admired; and when 
 two women walked home with him from a lec- 
 ture hall, one on each arm, to thwart the 
 violence of a mob, Mrs. Howe wrote to him that 
 "In case of any recurrence of such a disturb- 
 ance, I should be proud to join his bodyguard. " 
 
 Now Julia Ward Howe was always suffi- 
 ciently imitative to make common cause with the 
 progressive spirits who chanced at any time to 
 be around her. The motto of her life, she says, 
 was, "I have followed the great masters with 
 my heart. " That discipleship in these years 
 took full possession of her. 
 
 For a time, it is true, the cares of family 
 life interposed themselves between the young 
 wife and her dreams. A troop of active, in- 
 quisitive children were continually storming 
 up and down the house; and by the word of 
 those same children, Mrs. Howe was a tender 
 and tireless mother. She made one in all their 
 games. She sang them endless rhymes, set to 
 her own music: 
 
 The little donkey in the stable, 
 Sleeps as sound as he is able ; 
 All things now their rest pursue, 
 You are sleepy too. 
 
 She arranged for them a puppet theater, of 
 which she speaks in a letter to her sister, "I 
 have written a play for our doll theater, and 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 193 
 
 performed it yesterday afternoon with great 
 success. It occupied nearly an hour. I had 
 alternately to grunt and squeak the parts, while 
 Chev (Mr. Howe) played the puppets/ Then, 
 since Mr. Howe regularly had his friends in to 
 dinner, she endeavored tardily to repair the 
 defects of her housekeeping, devoting one whole 
 summer, for example, to the study of cookery. 
 Yet in housekeeping and doubtless, at times, in 
 the offices of motherhood she had but indiffer- 
 ent success. "I was by nature far from ob- 
 servant, " she says, "and often passed through 
 a room without much notice of its condition or 
 contents, my thoughts being intent on other 
 matters." 
 
 Those other matters were her studies for 
 she cared not so much to cook for her husband's 
 friends as to talk with them. They were 
 masters, of their kind; and it interested her 
 less to feed them than to follow them. Her 
 children remembered her as always deep in 
 German or Latin. She steeped herself in 
 literature, too, and in history and philosophy, 
 the subjects on which the master men of Boston 
 were wont to converse. The children dared 
 not interrupt her during her study hours, 
 although those hours frequently stretched over 
 most of the day. She formed a habit, never 
 afterward relinquished, of committing to 
 memory a Latin ode, or of untangling a few 
 pages of the toughest German philosophy not 
 so much to store her mind with ideas as to sup- 
 ple and brighten it by the difficult exercise. 
 
192 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 "From first to last," writes her daughter, 
 "she kept her mind in the same state of high 
 training that the athlete keeps his body. ' ' She 
 was in pursuit of the master minds, and she 
 was not going to break down in the race from 
 lack of nimbleness in her faculties. 
 
 And after reading, the earnest devotee 
 turned to and produced. Those days were 
 troublous in the American nation. The North 
 and South were swiftly preparing to hurl them- 
 selves at each other's heads over the question of 
 slavery. The great masters had, many of 
 them, for long been writing passionately on 
 the subject. After the publication of "Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin/ the lesser masters, not to men- 
 tion those who had no talent at all, rushed as 
 eagerly to print. And Julia Ward Howe would 
 not be likely to withhold her contributions. 
 
 An anti-slavery newspaper, The Common- 
 wealth, was running in Boston, and Dr. Howe 
 one winter assumed its editorship. Mrs. Howe 
 assisted him. But he seems to have appropri- 
 ated to himself the political department, leav- 
 ing to her only the social and literary. She 
 tried the scope of her pen somewhat more 
 freely in the New York papers. And in 1854 
 she came before the world with "Passion Flow- 
 ers," a volume of poems. 
 
 The volume contained metrical compositions 
 on themes of family life, the Italian and Hun- 
 garian struggles for freedom, and the wrongs 
 of slaves in America. "It was a timid per- 
 formance upon a slender reed," she comments, 
 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 193 
 
 "but the great performers in the noble or- 
 chestra of writers answered to its appeal, which 
 won me a seat in their ranks. ' In other words, 
 by her own computation, at least, she had, with 
 a bound, overtaken the masters. But it is doubt- 
 ful whether the masters awarded her the seat 
 ungrudgingly. "I dare say thy volume has 
 faults enough/ ' wrote Whittier, though he also 
 commended its merits. Emerson acknowl- 
 edged the copy sent him in a kind letter; but 
 that was the kindly author's wont. Haw- 
 thorne, who flatly disapproved of the "mob of 
 scribbling women," treated "Passion Flow- 
 ers' with severity. And a modern critic ob- 
 serves that the poetry has evaporated from the 
 effort and "there never was much passion.' 
 On the whole, however, Mrs. Howe could 
 read more praise than blame into the reviews. 
 She tried again, two years later, with "Words 
 for the Hour.' This fell farther short of suc- 
 cess than its predecessor. But the woman was 
 still emboldened to ply her pen this time on 
 a drama, "The World's Own." The piece was 
 produced in New York, but owing to dramatic 
 defects did not remain long on the boards. 
 Finally she undertook to write a play for 
 Edwin Booth. The great actor consented to 
 perform in it, the manager to produce it, and 
 "my dream," says Mrs. Howe, "was very near 
 becoming a reality. But lo! on a sudden, the 
 manager bethought him that the time was late 
 in the season ; that the play would require new 
 scenery; and, more than all, that his wife, who 
 
194 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 was also an actress, was not pleased with a 
 secondary part assigned to her. A polite note 
 informed me of his change of mind. This was, 
 I think, the greatest Met down' that I ever 
 experienced. It affected me seriously for some 
 days, after which I determined to attempt 
 nothing more for the stage.' 
 
 In good truth her versifying was inspired 
 too much by a desire to ape the men of genius 
 whom she knew, and too little by an inner 
 necessity for utterance. If she would insist on 
 tagging the great masters, it would have ap- 
 peared that she must content herself with doing 
 it at a considerable distance. In the early 
 sixties she accepted the invitation of a New 
 York newspaper to chronicle the season at 
 Newport. In one less determined this might 
 have implied a retreat from her former high 
 ground. In spite of all her striving she was 
 still a dilettante; she had not yet reached, and 
 perhaps never could reach the elevation of the 
 masters. She was a society reporter what 
 she had evidently started out to be when she 
 composed her first poem. But Julia Ward 
 Howe ignored the implication. And her day 
 of days was at hand. 
 
 Mr. Howe, as has been said, was an active 
 anti-slavery leader. So was his close friend 
 Sumner. So, as the war of words in the fifties 
 grew hotter, were an increasing proportion of 
 the visitors at Green Peace. John Brown, 
 who intended to "devote his life to the redemp- 
 tion of the colored race from slavery, even a 
 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 195 
 
 Christ had willingly offered his life for the 
 salvation of mankind/ called there not long 
 before his raid on Harper's Ferry. John An- 
 drew, later to be war governor of the state, 
 came often. From these men Mrs. Howe heard 
 all the burning gospel of abolition. And with 
 them she willingly cast in her lot. 
 
 Then the war of the rebellion broke out. 
 Governor Andrew often took refuge from State 
 House worries in the Howe parlor. "I seemed 
 to live in and along with the war, while it was 
 in progress, and to follow all its ups and downs, 
 its good and ill fortune with these two brave 
 men." 
 
 Nor did she live in the war by report only. 
 When the soldiers killed in Baltimore the 
 same attack that started Clara Barton as a 
 nurse were brought sorrowfully home, she 
 saw them buried in the King's Chapel ground. 
 The coffins were draped in the national flag. 
 Moved by the sight, Mrs. Howe wrote: 
 
 "Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, 
 To deck our girls for gay delights: 
 The crimson flower of battle blooms, 
 And solemn marches fill the nights/ 
 
 Of this the first two lines may indeed still 
 echo the mind of the society reporter; but the 
 second two indicate a swift transition. 
 
 And now the horrors of the war came thick, 
 one upon another. The finest homes in Boston 
 sent forth their sons, and received them back 
 
196 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 on the litter, if not in the coffin. Even in New- 
 port, where Mrs. Howe summered, she found 
 the streets one day lined with carriages, the 
 passengers of which were white faced and 
 silent. 
 
 "Why are these people here?" she asked, 
 "what are they waiting for?' 
 
 "They are waiting for the mail,' replied a 
 bystander, "don't you know that we have had 
 a dreadful reverse?" 
 
 Yet again, in the autumn of 1861, she made 
 a visit to Washington. The Southern troops 
 had forced their way nearly to the capital and 
 threatened its capture. The Army of the 
 Potomac was encamped round about the city 
 to defend it. Troopers clattered continually 
 to and fro. "Ambulances, drawn by four 
 horses, drove through the streets, stopping 
 sometimes before Willard's Hotel where we 
 had found quarters. From my window I saw 
 . . . the ghastly advertisement of an agency 
 for embalming and forwarding the bodies of 
 those who had fallen in the fight or who had 
 perished by fever." 
 
 The feelings of the woman were stirred by 
 these sights to depths she had never suspected 
 in herself. Her country was fighting a terrible 
 fight. It would win, perhaps, but at unreck- 
 onable cost. It might even fail, and die but 
 it would die gloriously to make men free. 
 And what was she doing in the conflict ? Other 
 women were sending their husbands and sons; 
 but her husband was too old and her son too 
 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 197 
 
 young. Other women were nursing in the mil- 
 itary hospitals or packing relief supplies at 
 home ; but she was too much hampered by chil- 
 dren to do the one, and too inexpert with her 
 hands to do the other. "Something seemed to 
 say to me, 'you would be glad to serve, but 
 you cannot help anyone; you have nothing to 
 give, and there is nothing for you to do.' 
 She could only write poetry, and that with ill 
 success. She might write a poem now. But 
 what would that amount to in the war! 
 
 One day when she had driven out with some 
 friends to see a review of troops, the party, 
 to beguile the return drive, sang snatches of 
 the popular army song, "John Brown's body 
 lies a-mouldering in the grave; his soul goes 
 marching on." 
 
 Her minister, James Freeman Clarke, who 
 was of the company, asked, "Mrs. Howe, why 
 do you not write some good words for that 
 stirring tune?" 
 
 Let her tell the rest herself. "I went to bed 
 that night as usual, and slept, according to 
 my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray 
 of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting 
 for the dawn, the long lines of the desired 
 poem began to twine themselves in my mind. 
 Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to 
 myself, 'I must get up and write these verses 
 down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.' 
 So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, 
 and found in the dimness an old stub of a pen 
 which I remembered to have used the day be- 
 
198 HEROINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 fore. I scrawled the verses almost without 
 looking at the paper. . . . Having com- 
 pleted my writing, I returned to bed and fell 
 asleep, saying to myself, 'I like this better than 
 most things that I have written.' " 
 
 And well she might like it better. The poem, 
 under the title, "The Battle Hymn of the Ee- 
 public,' was published soon after, in the 
 Atlantic Monthly. It attracted little notice 
 then; the country was agonizing over its war; 
 of what account were a few lines of rhyme, 
 printed in a magazine? But a certain McCabe, 
 chaplain in the army, read it, liked it, memor- 
 ized it. A year or so later he was captured in 
 the South and confined, with other Union men, 
 in a large cell in Libbey prison. They were 
 told of a great Union victory. They broke into 
 rejoicings. McCabe recited the poem, sang it. 
 They all sang it, in chorus with what effect 
 from the tremendous uplift of its lines may 
 well be imagined ! From that the Battle Hymn 
 somehow took wings and flew through all the 
 camps of the army. They sang it in bivouac 
 at night. They sang it on the march. They 
 sang it rushing to the fight. And where it was 
 sung, it counted more than many men for vic- 
 tory. 
 
 Mrs. Howe had cause to think well of the 
 poem. For in it she had, for once, done more 
 than follow the masters. She had surpassed 
 them. The literary dilettante had become, to 
 the extent of one poem at least, a great author. 
 
 Speaking of the success of the Battle Hymn, 
 
JULIA WABD HOWE 199 
 
 one of the author's friends said, "Mrs. Howe 
 ought to die now, for she has done the best that 
 she will ever do." So far as authorship went, 
 the saying was true. But the woman, as she 
 says, still felt herself "full of days' works." 
 And that also was true. For although the 
 literary woman had played her sweetest and 
 farthest-sounding note, the frequenter of fash- 
 ionable society, as modified by the "great 
 masters," was yet only tuning up her instru- 
 ments. 
 
 Of one summer at Newport Mrs. Howe re- 
 lates a significant incident. "I felt that I 
 had read and written quite as much as was 
 profitable. 'I must go outside my own 
 thoughts, I must do something for someone,' I 
 said to myself. Just then the teacher of my 
 sister's children broke out with malarial fever. 
 She was staying with my sister at a farm 
 house near by. The call to assist in nursing 
 her was very welcome, and when I was thanked 
 for my services I could truly say that I had 
 been glad of the opportunity of rendering them 
 for my own sake.' 
 
 And again to quote, "In the days of which 
 I now write, it was borne in upon me that I 
 had much to say to my day and generation 
 which could not and should not be communi- 
 cated in rhyme, or even in rhythm.' 
 
 The fact was that neither poetry nor the 
 drama, but platform eloquence was the style 
 of expression most applauded in those martial 
 days. Julia Ward Howe's friends and mas- 
 
200 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 ters were famed, many of them, less for their 
 writing than for their oratory. Wendell 
 Phillips, Charles Sumner, James Freeman 
 Clarke, Theodore Parker, even Emerson and 
 Holmes were accustomed to sway great audi- 
 ences. Moreover, one by one the talented 
 women of the time, Lucy Stone, Miss An- 
 thony, Mrs. Stanton were mounting the ros- 
 trum, in the cause of temperance, anti-slavery 
 and the like, and they were speaking with un- 
 deniable power. It would be strange, there- 
 fore, if Julia Ward Howe did not find in her 
 mind some leadings in the direction of public 
 speaking. 
 
 Though totally ignorant of her ability, she 
 could not long deny her honest promptings. 
 "I commissioned certain of my friends,' she 
 says, "to invite certain of their friends to my 
 house for an appointed evening, and began, 
 with some trepidation, my course of parlor 
 lectures.' She read careful essays of her own 
 on "Doubt and Belief," "Moral Triangula- 
 tion,' "Duality of Character' 1 and so on 
 topics that would be meat to the most trans- 
 cendental of her listeners. Informal discus- 
 sion followed the reading. The course was re- 
 ceived with some favor, and the adventurous 
 author repeated it, a little later, in private and 
 church parlors in Washington and Newport. 
 
 Then in 1867 she was elected to membership 
 in the new Boston Eadical Club. This club 
 met in some private house once a month, list- 
 ened to an eminent speaker, and then good 
 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 201 
 
 naturedly tried to flay him in debate. Mrs. 
 Howe, determined to keep up to the high plane 
 of the meetings, chose her subjects, "Polar- 
 ity," "Ideal Causation" and so on, from Ger- 
 man philosophy. The Radical Club, appar- 
 ently, relished them. But where she regaled 
 an audience of ordinary people with "Ideal 
 Causation," they all nodded, to her great sor- 
 row, and one was reported to have wondered 
 "what Mrs. Howe was driving at." "I laid 
 this lesson much to heart, and . . . deter- 
 mined to find a pou sto nearer to the sympa- 
 thies of the average community, from which 
 I might speak for their good and my 
 own. ' ' 
 
 It occurred to her that while comparatively 
 few people, and they the elect, ever trod the 
 precincts of a radical club, nearly every one, 
 at some time or other, went to church. There- 
 fore the nearest road to the popular heart was 
 by way of the pulpit. Julia Ward Howe ac- 
 cordingly began to preach. She had been a 
 constant church goer; the Bible and the best 
 pulpit eloquence were familiar to her; there 
 was every probability that, in an age when 
 women ministers were so rare, she would 
 preach her way to fame. She supplied various 
 pulpits near home and, on a trip to Santo 
 Domingo, headed a native church for a year. 
 As a preacher, and a preacher only, she might 
 have filled her days, but for a new inspiration 
 that presently seized her. 
 
 The forces back of this inspiration had been 
 
202 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 acting from long ago. As early as 1848, 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton had called a conven- 
 tion at Seneca Falls, supplicating for women 
 certain privileges formerly thought proper 
 only for men. Later, the freeing of the slaves 
 was attended with earnest discussion of 
 woman's rights. By now, those once so revo- 
 lutionary doctrines were preached commonly 
 enough. None had heard them more unwill- 
 ingly at first than Mrs. Howe. But as they 
 began to make way, and take on the aspect of 
 a sane and practical movement, none cham- 
 pioned them with greater zeal. 
 
 Her change of front cannot be better de- 
 scribed than in her own words. Hitherto her 
 masters had been men. To men she looked for 
 an ideal of character, and to the verdict of men 
 on her own character and work she always 
 bowed. But now, "in an unexpected hour a 
 new light came to me, showing me a world of 
 thought and of character quite beyond the lim- 
 its within which I had hitherto been content to 
 abide. The new domain now made clear to 
 me was that of true womanhood, woman no 
 longer in her ancillary relation to her opposite, 
 man, but in her direct relation to the divine 
 plan and purpose, as a free agent, fully shar- 
 ing with man every human right and every 
 human responsibility. This discovery/ she 
 adds, "was like the addition of a new continent 
 to the map of the world. ' 
 
 In brief, Mrs. Howe, at the age of fifty, or 
 thereabouts, sighted a new realm of experi- 
 
JULIA WABD HOWE 203 
 
 ence, and chose new masters to follow therein. 
 And as the literary dilettante became at last 
 a celebrated author, so the society woman, by 
 the same knack of imitation turning into an 
 advocate of the rights of her sex, would finally 
 make a notable contribution to modern prog- 
 ress. 
 
 In the late sixties, Mrs. Howe watched with 
 the interest of a traveler and a linguist the 
 progress of the Franco-Prussian war. Her 
 mature conclusion was that the war had been 
 hatched up by politicians for political reasons, 
 without any heat whatever on the part of the 
 soldiers who fought in it. The war had been 
 won and lost, and thousands of lives had been 
 snuffed out. But the issues of the war might 
 have been won and lost by a pacific act of arbi- 
 tration, without the sacrifice of those disinter- 
 ested men. The killing off of the men was, 
 therefore, plainly murder. Why did not some- 
 one interfere to stop it? Who had the right to 
 interfere? Why, who so much as the mothers 
 of the men, the mothers who valued their lives 
 more highly even than they themselves did? 
 Well, then, if all the mothers of men got to- 
 gether and protested against such wanton 
 waste of their offspring, could they not put an 
 end to this war, and indeed bring it about that 
 war everywhere should cease? "The august 
 dignity of motherhood and its terrible respon- 
 sibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, 
 and I could think of no better way of express- 
 ing my sense of these than that of sending 
 
204 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the 
 world. ' ' 
 
 She then and there composed such an appeal, 
 in French, Spanish, Italian, German and Swed- 
 ish, asking women to assist her in a peace con- 
 gress in London. For two years she corre- 
 sponded from home; then for several weeks 
 held preliminary meetings in London in a 
 hall of her own hiring, after the English Peace 
 Society denied her its platform; and finally, in 
 1872, she called the general conference. 
 
 But, all along, something had been out of 
 joint. Women generally had not fired up with 
 the glow of her own enthusiasm. Perhaps the 
 subject was foreign to them it did not seem 
 probable. Perhaps so sweeping a crusade, 
 like the dramas she had written, exceeded the 
 scope of her genius. At any rate, the con- 
 gress, while fairly attended, came to nothing. 
 And "I could not help seeing that many steps 
 were to be taken before one could hope to ef- 
 fect any efficient combination among women.' 
 
 Meanwhile a likely movement had arisen 
 nearer home, and Mrs. Howe, who had by this 
 time got a reputation in conservative quarters 
 as a runner after novelties, was easily taken in 
 tow by it. She went to a meeting on woman 
 suffrage, reluctantly, for she had heard that 
 none were suffragists but feminized men, and 
 blatant, masculine women. But her best 
 friends were there Garrison, Phillips, Clarke ; 
 and Lucy Stone, whom she abhorred on hear- 
 say, she now saw to be a " woman pure, noble, 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 205 
 
 great-hearted, with the light of her good life 
 shining in every feature of her face.' These 
 speakers quietly disposed one by one of the 
 arguments against suffrage. When Mrs. 
 Howe was requested to speak, she said, con- 
 trary to all her previous notions, "I am with 
 you." "I have been with them ever since,' 
 she remarked, late in life, "and have never 
 seen any reason to go back from the pledge 
 there given." 
 
 For some years, now, woman suffrage 
 crowded for first place in Mrs. Howe's mind. 
 And as every believer, in those days, was 
 pressed into field service, she was soon called 
 upon to speak first in Boston, and then in 
 many cities and towns, east and west. Her 
 standing as a writer and a society woman 
 helped guarantee the tone of a movement then 
 too often scoffed at as vulgar. She was not 
 wanting, either, in the heroism of the greater 
 leaders ; as when, in a tumultuous meeting, she 
 said to the other speakers, "Let me come first 
 in the order of exercises, as I read from a 
 manuscript, and shall not be disconcerted, even 
 if they throw chairs at us." And she counted 
 it no dishonor to be sung in ballad, with Lucy 
 Stone and Mary Livermore, as an old crow. 
 
 Yet in woman suffrage as in the peace cru- 
 sade, she admits, "my own contributions ap- 
 peared to me less valuable than I had hoped 
 to find them. 7 ' She had to speak in large audi- 
 toriums, who had modulated her voice to the 
 narrow space of parlors. She had to preside 
 
206 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 at turbulent conventions, who had never 
 learned the rules of debate. Then, too, her 
 acceptance of the principle, at so late an age, 
 was merely a feat of the mind she had not 
 the personal reasons that filled women such as 
 Mrs. Stanton with something like holy fire, and 
 literally drove them into leadership. The 
 Mrs. Howe who was a frequenter of fashion- 
 able society, but who wished, even in that, to 
 follow the masters, had not yet hit upon the 
 work in which she could herself be a master. 
 
 Somewhere about 1870, Mrs. Howe was bid- 
 den to a parlor meeting, "to be held with the 
 view of forming a women's club in Boston.' 
 The invitation was issued by Mrs. Caroline M. 
 Severance, late of Ohio, who desiring to meet 
 the talented people in her new home, had cogi- 
 tated the possibility of a literary and social 
 union. 
 
 Mrs. Howe, while never averse to meeting 
 notables, did not think it necessary to have a 
 union for the purpose. She gave only a lan- 
 guid assent to the measures proposed. In this 
 meeting, however, and in others that followed, 
 certain arresting ideas were voiced. It was 
 not a question merely of a woman's meeting 
 the great ones of her sex; it was a question of 
 meeting anybody. Women were too much 
 housed up, the organizers said. They might 
 go to church or to missionary and temperance 
 gatherings; but beyond that they had no 
 chance, as men did in business, professions, 
 and politics, to burnish their minds by inter- 
 
JULIA WAED HOWE 207 
 
 course with their equals. Full as they were of 
 energy and aspirations, they could nowhere 
 assemble for the free discussion of special or 
 general knowledge, hut must sit at home and 
 deliberate on dresses and dinners and children 
 and hired help. Now those in attendance 
 proposed to furnish rooms in a central locality, 
 and keep them open for the convenience of 
 women. There would be easy chairs and 
 lounges, books and papers to read, a hall for 
 social or literary exercises, and possibly a tea- 
 room in a word, a common ground where 
 women could commune with their kind, and so, 
 in an easy, natural way, enlarge their stock of 
 wisdom and experience. 
 
 After all Mrs. Howe grasped at the thought 
 there might be something of promise in this. 
 Here might be one way of compassing the new 
 era for women of which she had dreamed. 
 Her own ambition as a producer of things 
 cultural had of late receded behind her ambi- 
 tion as a promoter of reforms social. Yet she 
 still studied and thought and wrote; most 
 women did not do so enough for their own 
 good; so when she was appointed chairman of 
 the committee on art and literature, she saw 
 an opportunity by no means to be despised. 
 She lent herself heartily to the purposes of the 
 club. With its weekly teas, its bi-weekly lec- 
 tures and discussions by famous thinkers 
 herself more often than any other and its 
 rarer elaborate socials and programs, Mrs. 
 Howe realized in the club what, a few years 
 
208 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 earlier, would have been to her the ideal life. 
 
 This association was called the "New 
 England Women's Club." It was not the first 
 federated society of women there had been 
 one in Illinois as early as 1833 but it was the 
 first one called a "club," and the first of great 
 dignity and influence. Its generally accepted 
 title, "The first women's club" is not far 
 wrong. 
 
 It did not, however, long stand alone. Only 
 two weeks behind it came "Sorosis,' in New 
 York. Then, as if some dormant force had all 
 at once awakened, women here and there all 
 over the land began to leave their kitchens and 
 nurseries and their silent parlors, and troop 
 together in some convenient place to read and 
 talk. They took to themselves without ques- 
 tion the apparent motives of Sorosis and the 
 New England Women's Club. Culture they 
 wanted, and culture they would have. But 
 most of them were not blessed with leaders like 
 Severance and Howe, or speakers like Emer- 
 son and W T hittier. Very well then, they would 
 lead themselves; they would address them- 
 selves. So women with only an elementary 
 education began reading papers to their neigh- 
 bors on Grecian vases, the history of China, 
 and the poetry of Browning all subjects under 
 the sun that had any flavor of the literary. It 
 mattered not that the subjects were distant. 
 It mattered not that they were abstruse. It 
 did not matter even that the papers shame- 
 lessly copied the contents of the cyclopaedias in 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 209 
 
 the village library, where anyone could read 
 if they would. The women were getting cul- 
 ture, and they were glad. But people of more 
 education saw how far they were over-reaching 
 themselves. They were deceived with names, 
 and not really scratching the surface of true 
 learning. Earnest as they might be in their 
 quest, they were generally making " women 's 
 club" a term of ridicule and reproach. 
 
 But meanwhile things in Boston were taking 
 a new turn. The New England Club an- 
 nounced a program of "service." The women 
 there were not too much entranced by the name 
 of culture ; they had viewed the real thing with 
 clear eyes already and it was not a thing to 
 worship. Moved, even as Mrs. Howe had been, 
 by the reform spirit of the age, they were 
 anxious to make themselves practically useful. 
 They had been organized less than a year when 
 they took measures from which arose a horti- 
 cultural school for women. Their committees 
 inquired into the possibilities of homes for 
 destitute children, infant asylums, co-operative 
 kitchens, laundries, lodging houses and labor 
 schools. "Although the committees did not 
 organize all these works," says the historian, 
 "yet the impulse given produced many bene- 
 ficial results in these varied directions." 
 
 In 1870 the club formed the Friendly Even- 
 ing Association for working women. It co- 
 operated in a fair for a hospital for women 
 and children. It raised money to bring Polish 
 exiles to this country. And so on, indefinitely. 
 
210 HEKOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 Now this was the kind of thing, on a small 
 scale, to be sure, that Mrs. Howe in her later 
 period had wished to do. It meant a new 
 sphere of action, a new life for women. Then 
 in 1872 the New England Women's Club elected 
 her its president. She could now pilot it as 
 she would. At the head of a band of strong 
 women, committed to a social as well as a lit- 
 erary program, Julia Ward Howe had at last 
 come gloriously into her own. And her reign, 
 it is worth noting, was to last forty years. 
 
 Speaking of her abandonment of the peace 
 crusade, Mrs. Howe said, "Insensibly I came 
 to devote my time and strength to the promo- 
 tion of women's clubs which are doing so much 
 to constitute a working and united woman- 
 hood." 
 
 Insensibly or not, she did it. In Newport 
 she formed a "Town and Country Club" for 
 the literary lights who summered there. Her 
 "club-loving mind found sure material for 
 many pleasant meetings, and a little band of 
 us combined to improve the beautiful summer 
 season by picnics, sailing parties, and house- 
 hold soirees.' When this club disbanded, she 
 promptly filled its place with a new one, the 
 "Papertree." At another time, wishing to 
 furnish her daughter some intellectual stimu- 
 lus, combined with social pleasure, she founded 
 a "Saturday Morning Club" for girls; and this 
 not only lived and flourished, but was quickly 
 imitated in other cities. One time, in Paris, 
 she noticed that the students of art and medi- 
 
JULIA WAKD HOWE 211 
 
 cine were generally unacquainted with each 
 other, and led isolated, lonely lives; she in- 
 vited them to her lodgings, and organized them 
 into a social union. 
 
 In 1868 the Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Women had been formed. Ten years 
 later Mrs. Howe became president. During 
 the next thirty years she directed the associa- 
 tion which was simply a women's club on a 
 national scale. It held its three-day con- 
 gresses east and west, north and south, in 
 nearly all the principal cities, discussing sci- 
 ence, art, education, industrial training, and so 
 on, in their relation to women. And the con- 
 ventions of this national club always resulted 
 in the formation of a local women's club in the 
 city and in those round about. Mrs. Howe, 
 mother of clubs, was causing her progeny to 
 multiply a thousandfold. 
 
 And, naturally, these clubs of her calling 
 flew the newer banner of social service. They 
 did not relinquish their studies; but they 
 brought those studies nearer home, and took 
 them up with more deliberation; and, besides, 
 in whatever out-of-the-way corner of the land 
 they were established, they began to look about 
 in that corner for any social evils child labor, 
 impure milk, unsanitary housing, what not 
 that they might correct. Where they had the 
 franchise, they voted. Where they had it not, 
 they could still mould public opinion. And in 
 their capacity as buyers for the home they 
 could blacklist so effectively as to bring some 
 
212 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 things to pass more quickly than either public 
 opinion or the vote. Before many years there 
 would be nearly a million American women in 
 clubs, all combined in a national federation, 
 and recognized as one of the nation's most 
 potent forces for good. This result was prob- 
 ably due more to Julia Ward Howe than to any 
 other woman. 
 
 In fine, it seemed that the part of Mrs. Howe 
 ,that was a society woman had finally fastened 
 upon the activity that was peculiarly hers. 
 Dr. Holmes had once said to her, "Mrs. Howe, 
 I consider you eminently cluhable." And that 
 was about the conclusion of the whole matter. 
 After all her experimentings with reform, she 
 never shook off the characteristics of the New 
 York belle; but she so far sobered and ampli- 
 fied them that wherever she went she changed 
 drawing-rooms into schools and council cham- 
 bers, and fashionable women into students 
 anxious for the improvement of their minds 
 and the betterment of all mankind. Social 
 spirited, socially capable, and at the same time 
 ambitious to excel both in speculative thought 
 and in practical reform, she was indeed emi- 
 nently clubable the one person best qualified 
 to band all women into societies for self culture 
 and social service. In that, as in writing the 
 Battle Hymn, she went beyond any master she 
 had followed and made an original contribu- 
 tion to modern progress. 
 
 Mrs. Howe lived to the age of ninety-one, 
 and as her contemporaries one by one dropped 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 213 
 
 away, the veneration of the young for an older, 
 heroic generation came to center upon her, the 
 only surviving member. Her distinction as the 
 " grand old woman," the " first lady,' the 
 "American queen" was firmly entrenched. 
 She became a kind of an institution, a reposi- 
 tory of the spirit of a vanished age. She was 
 revered for the people and causes she repre- 
 sented, as her Battle Hymn was sung but 
 still with renewed fire, for the national spirit 
 of freedom that had brought it forth. Peopte 
 came on pilgrimage to see her, as they might to 
 a historic monument. Audiences rose in re- 
 spect when she entered a theater. An auto- 
 graph copy of the Battle Hymn was considered 
 the choicest of personal relics or the rarest 
 contribution for a magazine. 
 
 Yet Julia Ward Howe did not precisely out- 
 live her age. When someone asked her, at 
 ninety-one years, for a motto for the women 
 of America, she replied promptly, "Up to 
 date!" And to the last she was herself up to 
 date. The vigor and alertness of her mind 
 seem never to have waned. The poetic output 
 of her last year, critics say, was not only as 
 felicitous as that of any year, but it was as 
 modern and timely; with the centenary trib- 
 utes so often asked of her, she could skillfully 
 weave in allusions to the events of the present 
 day the latest march of discovery, the newest 
 development in science, industry, or education. 
 She still presided at the meetings of the New 
 England Women's Club and the Boston 
 
214 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 Author's Club; and though she could not hear 
 a word of the debate, when her secretary 
 quoted to her the gist of it, she would state her 
 views, as fresh and contemporary as those of 
 the youngest member. 
 
 In fact, the trait in Mrs. Howe that exalted 
 the literary dilettante and the society belle, 
 exalted also the failing, aged woman of four 
 score and ten years. The trait that had made 
 her great in one age made her great also in 
 the next and would do so in any. With small 
 originality of her own, she was yet always 
 eagerly receptive of the newest and best. And 
 with her sturdy and well-preserved strength 
 she "followed the great masters with her 
 heart." 
 
 That motto and one other suffice to frame 
 her picture. She was comparatively rich, and 
 had no need to work, nor seldom did work for 
 money. Yet, speaking in a lecture of the idle 
 lives of some women, she once said, "If God 
 works, madam, you can afford to work also.' 
 Julia Ward Howe never rested from work. 
 Therefore she never ceased to win. 
 
FRANCES WILLARD 
 

FRANCES E. WILLABD 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD at seven years of 
 age traveled five hundred miles overland, 
 from Ohio to Wisconsin, in a prairie schooner. 
 Her father drove the foremost wagon, her 
 brother the next, and her mother the last. 
 Beside the mother, through all that jolting, 
 tedious journey huddled Frances and her sister 
 among a heap of pillows, on the father's old 
 writing desk. They were a pioneer family 
 going boldly forth to experiment with life after 
 a new mode, upon the great frontier. 
 
 Frances had been born September 28, 1839, 
 at Churchville, New York. Her parents traced 
 their ancestry back through several centuries 
 of pure English stock. They had both taught 
 school successfully in York state. But when 
 Frances was two years old, a wave of the great 
 westward immigration overtook them, as it did 
 so many of the strongest and best in those 
 days. Their first stage terminated at Oberlin, 
 Ohio, where the ambitious parents invested five 
 years in study. Later, the father's ill health 
 called for a change of climate and an outdoor 
 occupation hence the second stage of their 
 journey, and their settlement on the " Forest 
 Home" farm near Janesville, Wisconsin. 
 
 Their picturesque dwelling here is charm- 
 ingly described by Miss Willard. "The bluffs 
 
 215 
 
216 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 . . . rose about it on the right and left. 
 Groves of oak and hickory were on either 
 hand; a miniature forest of evergreens almost 
 concealed the cottage from the view of pass- 
 ers-by. The air was laden with the perfume 
 of flowers. Through the thick and luxuriant 
 growth of shrubbery were paths which strayed 
 off aimlessly, tempting the feet of the curious 
 down their mysterious aisles." And, all 
 about, spread the vast, level, sun-drenched 
 fields of prairie grain. 
 
 In these surroundings Frances dwelt for 
 twelve years, a healthy, exuberant country girl. 
 In the happiest relations with her sister and 
 brother and her parents, she was early imbued 
 with the ideals of a well-ordered American 
 family. She grew up in a perfect pioneer 
 home. And the pioneer home of that day had 
 no superior. 
 
 The two girls, Frances and Mary, were not 
 hampered in their development by the dictates 
 of " society. " They were blissfully ignorant 
 of tight shoes and corsets and new-fangled 
 bonnets, and wore, the year round, plain flan- 
 nel costumes of athletic cut. They early sub- 
 scribed to the total abstinence pledge, as writ- 
 ten on a blank leaf of the family Bible : 
 
 To quench our thirst we'll always bring 
 Cold water from the well or spring, 
 
 So here we pledge perpetual hate 
 To all that can intoxicate. 
 
 On the promise of a reward from the 
 

 FRANCES E. WILLAED 217 
 
 parents, they vowed to drink no tea or coffee 
 until they came of age. They ate heartily, 
 slept long, shunned all intemperate habits, and 
 thus, unconsciously, "stored up electricity for 
 the future." 
 
 Friends and neighbors were few in that com- 
 munity, and so the girls in their outdoor 
 frolics were naturally much in company with 
 their older brother, Oliver. There was one 
 historic fight where, behind a stockade of 
 chairs, they resisted a band of savages, con- 
 sisting of two boys and a dog; and where 
 Frances, wise in strategy, ordered to "have 
 ready a piece of spare-rib to entice the dog 
 away from those two dreadful Indians.' On 
 the Fourth of July the children celebrated at 
 home with processions, speeches and songs. 
 Often they saddled the goat with a pack of eat- 
 ables and trudged away to a hillside spring for 
 luncheon ; and once they were ringleaders in an 
 effort to subdue the calf to harness. In work as 
 well as play there were but small distinctions 
 between boy and girl. Frances could feed 
 poultry and herd sheep like an expert. In fact 
 she rather disliked indoor tasks and acquired 
 a better skill with the rake and hoe than with 
 the frying pan and needle. 
 
 In this intimacy with her brother was 
 grounded her notion of what society ought to 
 be. "A boy whose sister knows everything he 
 does will be far more modest, genial and pleas- 
 ant to have about, ' ' she once said, i l and it will 
 be a great improvement to the sister also." 
 
218 HEROINES OF MODEEN PEOGRESS 
 
 There was one sphere which the brother en- 
 tered, however, into which she could not go. 
 The father came home one night full of news 
 about the prohibition law in Maine. "I won- 
 der if poor, rum-cursed Wisconsin will ever 
 get a law like that?" he said. 
 
 "And mother rocked a while in silence and 
 then she gently said, 'Yes, Josiah; there'll be 
 such a law all over the land some day, when 
 women vote.' 
 
 "That was a seed thought in the girl's brain 
 and heart. Years passed on in which nothing 
 more was said upon this dangerous theme. 
 My brother grew to manhood and soon after 
 he was twenty-one years old he went with his 
 father to vote. Standing by the window, a girl 
 of sixteen years, I looked out as they drove 
 away, my father and my brother, and I felt a 
 strange ache in my heart, and tears sprang to 
 my eyes. Turning to my sister Mary I saw 
 that the dear little innocent seemed wonder- 
 fully sober, too. 
 
 "I said, V Don't you wish we could go with 
 them when we are old enough? Don't we love 
 our country just as well as they do?' 
 
 "And her little frightened voice piped out, 
 'Yes, of course, we ought. Don't I know that? 
 But you mustn't tell a soul not mother, even; 
 we should be called 'strong-minded!' " 
 
 And in all the years afterward she "kept 
 these things and many others like them, and 
 pondered them in her heart.' There was 
 plenty to do, however, without voting. The 
 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 219 
 
 childish energy, bent on self amusement, broke 
 out ever in fresh and original forms. The girls 
 practiced music, botanized and sketched out-of- 
 doors, and Frances, in her " Eagle's Nest" at 
 the top of an oak tree, wrote a lengthy novel 
 of adventure. Her chief pleasure, though, was 
 to plan and manage the games of the other chil- 
 dren. She headed several clubs and drew up 
 rules for them, such excellent rules as " There 
 shall always be something good to eat,' and 
 "We hereby choose Fred as our dog, although 
 once in a while we may take Carlo. Carlo can 
 go when he has sense enough. ' And there is a 
 formal document in which Mary pledges to 
 forego the use of "Frank's" desk. "If I 
 break this promise I will let the said F. W. 
 come into my room, and go to my trunk or go 
 to any place where I keep my things and take 
 anything of mine she likes. These things I 
 promise upon my most sacred honor." Evi- 
 dently the youthful Frances enjoyed running 
 her little world after her own mind. 
 
 The parents at first fitted up a schoolroom 
 in the house, and, to eke out the instruction 
 they gave, called in a young woman from the 
 east. Not till she was fourteen did Frances 
 enter a real schoolhouse the first one built in 
 that region, an affair of logs that looked like a 
 "big ground nut." Yet she probably had bet- 
 ter guidance, on the whole, than public school 
 pupils of the period. 
 
 Her education, it should also be noted, was 
 blended with her religious growth. The Bible 
 
220 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 was her first book, and Pilgrim's Progress her 
 second; and the lullabys she heard in her 
 cradle were evangelical hymns. The family 
 drove to church in the carry-all on Sabbath 
 morning, in good old country fashion, and the 
 parents reminded the girl daily of God and of 
 His care for her. 
 
 In those parents, after all is said, more than 
 in all else, consisted the perfection of the 
 Willard home. The mother, in particular, 
 sacrificed herself wholly to her boy and girls. 
 "I had many ambitions," she said, "but I dis- 
 appeared from the world that I might reappear 
 at some future day in my children. 7 ' 
 
 Mrs. Willard, as was said, entertained some 
 novel "strong-minded" ideas on the subject 
 of votes for women. But if she believed 
 women ought to have all the privileges of men 
 in politics, it was only that they might be equal 
 in the home; and because two equal heads in 
 counsel beside the hearth could ennoble family 
 life beyond any standard known in history. 
 She believed one sex could improve as much as 
 the other. Said the daughter in later years, 
 "If my dear mother did me one crowning kind- 
 ness it was in making me believe that next to 
 being an angel the greatest bestowment of God 
 is to make one a woman.' And to the truth 
 of this the mother testified best by the singular 
 sweetness and unselfishness of her own life. 
 
 Up to the age of fourteen, then, Frances 
 Willard 's outlook was bounded by the limits of 
 her Wisconsin home and farm. But it was a 
 
FRANCES E. WILLARD 221 
 
 beautiful home, where father and mother coun- 
 seled sensibly together, where every healthful 
 activity was stimulated, and where man and 
 woman, boy and girl shared sympathetically 
 each other's pursuits, and all, in a kind, 
 friendly way tried to perfect themselves as a 
 family. So far as Frances knew, the whole 
 world was laid out in the same pleasing 
 fashion. 
 
 But this home life had to end. One rainy 
 Sunday when the family stayed from church, 
 and when the long, lonesome hours dragged 
 heavily, she cried out in querulous tones : 
 
 "I wonder if we shall ever know anything, 
 see anybody or go anywhere? 7 
 
 "Why do you wish to go away?" asked 
 Mary. 
 
 "Oh, we must learn," she said, "must grow, 
 and must achieve; it is such a big world that 
 if we don't begin at it we shall never catch up 
 with the rest." 
 
 She wanted to explore the world, and to re- 
 discover in it the beauties of her own home. 
 But unfortunately such beauties were not 
 there. 
 
 In the little log school house, Miss Frances 
 studied principally the three K's. The Arith- 
 metic she minced over, but she took the read- 
 ing and writing with a good relish. She read 
 Don Quixote, and the whole of Shakespeare, 
 making as she went along an original note- 
 book commentary. Aside from these, all her 
 books, such as Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, 
 
222 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 had a moralistic twist. She was forbidden 
 novels until her eighteenth birthday; then, how- 
 ever, to her father's consternation, she avowed 
 herself free to obey Jehovah only, and delib- 
 erately sat down for an afternoon with the 
 dreaded Ivanhoe. 
 
 In her fifteenth year Frances, and her sister, 
 attended a select school in Janesville, and in 
 her eighteenth, a Milwaukee female, college. 
 Frances ' ambition in these years pointed to- 
 ward a literary career. She declaimed before 
 the school on "Originality of Thought and 
 Action.' And she put her own original 
 thoughts into action by editing the school 
 paper unusually well, and winning a prize from 
 the Prairie Farmer by an article on the "Em- 
 bellishment of the Country Home." 
 
 Her last school was the Northwestern 
 Female College at Evanston, Illinois, where 
 she registered in 1858. In the strange envir- 
 onment she was at first shy, and held herself 
 aloof; and the students, seeing only the out- 
 side, thought her haughty and independent. 
 But when it came to recitations her seeming in- 
 difference melted away. She soon outshone 
 most of her rivals in scholarship. She became 
 editor of the college paper, and a leader in the 
 literary clubs. And long before graduation it 
 was known that she would take the honors as 
 valedictorian. 
 
 With all this, the girl had the good sense 
 "not to let her studies interfere with her col- 
 lege education." Not to amass knowledge but 
 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 223 
 
 to enhance character was her dearest aim. "I 
 am more interested in the Memoirs of Mar- 
 garet Fuller Ossoli,' she writes, in her diary, 
 1 'than in any book I have read for years. 
 Here we see what a woman achieved for her- 
 self, not so much fame or honor, these are of 
 minor importance, but a whole character, a 
 cultivated intellect, right judgment, self-knowl- 
 edge, self-happiness. If she, why not we, by 
 steady toil?" 
 
 In this quest for inward grace her early re- 
 ligious drift again showed itself. While ill 
 with typhoid fever, she experienced an " arrest 
 of thought" as she called it, and said, "If God 
 lets me get well, I will try to be a Christian 
 girl." That winter she knelt in prayer four- 
 teen nights at the altar in the Methodist re- 
 vival services, and finally joined the church in 
 full connection. From that time forward, the 
 woman's religious aspirations colored her 
 every thought. 
 
 At the same time, Miss Frances displayed a 
 growing talent for leadership. When the girls 
 made sport of her red hood she trounced one 
 of them in sight of all the others. As for the 
 men, she would have none of them. She 
 thought women should govern their own 
 actions with an independence like that of men. 
 As her popularity grew, she invented all kinds 
 of pranks and led the girls on to perpetrate 
 them. And in her last year, envious of the 
 young men for the fun they had in their secret 
 societies, she initiated the girls, with proper 
 
224 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 oaths, into a mystic order of her own. "It 
 makes me laugh, 7 she later confessed, "to 
 think how simply and naturally in all our play 
 6 organizations 7 the chief incentive, reward and 
 honor of the leading officer's position was a 
 right to have the 'say so.' " 
 
 All in all, Frances Willard in her student 
 days seems to have done exactly what earnest 
 students everywhere do; she strove for per- 
 sonal strength and independence. Nor was 
 this ideal spent when she finished college. 
 Although she passed immediately into teach- 
 ing, she had little passion for enlightening the 
 young, but a very intense one for building up 
 her own powers. After reviewing the draw- 
 backs of the profession, she calmly accepted 
 them, saying, "I think I may grow to be strong 
 and earnest in practice, as I have always tried 
 to be in theory. So here goes for a fine char- 
 acter. If I were not intent upon it, I could 
 live contented here at Swampscott all my 
 days." 
 
 Miss Willard taught in two or three rough 
 country schools, typical of the times. While 
 the pupils sang "I want to be an angel' at 
 her bidding, she had often to impel them along 
 the way by means of a hickory stick. So by 
 exercise in alternate coaxing and driving, she 
 doubtless got some of the strength she yearned 
 for. 
 
 Just how long she centered her hopes upon 
 herself in this way cannot be known. But in 
 1862 Mary died. This loss appears to have 
 
 
FRANCES E. WILLARD 225 
 
 greatly deepened her social and religious feel- 
 ing. Perhaps she took all girls to be her sis- 
 ters then, and lavished upon them the affection 
 which had formerly gone out toward Mary 
 alone. At any rate, as teacher for the next 
 two years in the Pittsburg Female College, she 
 showed most unusual powers. Not only did 
 she shine as a classroom lecturer and a tea 
 table wit. She wrote a biography of her sis- 
 ter, called " Nineteen Beautiful Years;" and 
 she tried to realize in those about her the 
 virtues she described. "She believed in young 
 girls," a friend reports, "trusted them, stood 
 by them often when others condemned, and 
 sought out those who were shy and retiring 
 and had little confidence in themselves." She 
 coaxed and reproved them, caressed and 
 scolded them, corrected their compositions and 
 read their love letters. And so strong a devo- 
 tion did she inspire in her pupils that some 
 said she used magic or hypnotism. 
 
 The fact is, she was simply beginning to ex- 
 press in a more general way the tender senti- 
 ments that, in her own home, had become a part 
 of her nature. Then shortly by the marriage 
 of her brother and the death of her father that 
 home was entirely broken up. She no longer 
 thought of herself. Her heart was empty. She 
 had to seek a career to fill it. Is it any won- 
 der she chose a career for the making and pro- 
 tection of beautiful homes? The home had 
 ruled her life from the beginning, and it would 
 do so always. 
 
226 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 In the spring of 1868, Miss Willard sailed for 
 a two and a half years ' tour of Europe with her 
 friend, Miss Jackson. The two women paid a 
 studious visit to every country on that conti- 
 nent, and to Egypt and Palestine. They "did" 
 the cathedrals and galleries and music halls, 
 and with the proverbial zest of Yankee school- 
 ma'ams tasted something of the culture of all 
 the ages. A joyous, care-free journey! And 
 yet one reads in Frances' journal, "I never 
 dreamed in all those lethargic years at home 
 what a wide world it is, how full of misery!" 
 
 The truth is that from all the galleries and 
 colleges and relics of the dead past she turned 
 aside more and more to see how people of her 
 own day actually lived. And what did she see ? 
 In Egypt the degradation of child wives who 
 at twenty were already old ; in Italy, the neces- 
 sity of an early marriage or a hard choice be- 
 tween convent life and a disgraced spinster- 
 hood. In France but let us quote her conver- 
 sation with a Parisian lady. 
 
 "I am much concerned," said the Parisienne, 
 "for my friend, Madame D., who is just now 
 doing her best to marry off her daughter ; and 
 it is high time, too, for the girl is already eight- 
 
 een/ 
 
 "How will they begin their operations?' 
 Miss Willard inquired. 
 
 "Oh, the parents will say quite frankly to 
 their friends, 'Find me a husband for my daugh- 
 ter. ' And the friends will beat up for recruits, 
 and will, perhaps, find a young man who is 
 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 227 
 
 deemed suitable, and who is willing to 'consider 
 the project' at least. Then, the parties will 
 meet in the picture gallery of the Luxem- 
 bourg or at an open air concert in the Champs 
 Elysees. The young people are now introduced 
 while the old ones, look on sharply to witness 
 the effect. After several minutes of casual 
 conversation they separate. The young man 
 says to his friends, 'She pleases me' or 'She 
 pleases me not,' and upon this turns the de- 
 
 cision. 
 
 "But what about the girl!' Miss Willard 
 pursued innocently. 
 
 "Oh, the girl? She is charmingly submis- 
 sive. She simpers and makes a courtesy, and 
 says, 'As you please, dear parents, you know 
 what is for my good far better than I.' So 
 glad is she to marry upon any terms ; it is such 
 a release." 
 
 Thus everywhere, even in Merrie England, 
 Frances Willard saw that women were chattels 
 of the men, inferior creatures with inferior 
 rights. The revelation shocked her. There 
 had not been this inequality on the Wisconsin 
 farm! These women, with all their native 
 capabilities, were repressed because they 
 ' ' wore skirts and sang soprano. ' ' But that was 
 not the worst. Each of these women repre- 
 sented a home, and children who should be 
 fostered in the home. So, with degraded 
 mothers the whole race, even the men for 
 men, as boys, were shaped by their mothers 
 would be degraded. The home was the mould 
 
228 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 of character, she thought. Woman, as wife and 
 mother, determined the form and size of that 
 mould. Woman determined the character, the 
 destiny of human kind. So Frances Willard 
 asked, "What can be done to make the world a 
 wider place for women? " 
 
 And in Paris she resolved "to study by read- 
 ing, personal observation and acquaintance the 
 woman question in Europe, and, after return- 
 ing to America, study it further in relation to 
 her own land.' She would talk in public on 
 the subject, too. She would fight. For this 
 battle would "only deepen with the years, and 
 must at last have a result that will delight all 
 who have helped to hasten it." This was 
 Frances Willard 's choice of a career. 
 
 Miss Willard had been trained for teaching. 
 Hence, needing a steady income, as she did, she 
 naturally continued teaching and tried to wage 
 the all-important battle within that profession. 
 
 Northwestern University was, about that 
 time, making a first experiment in co-educa- 
 tion. The citizens of Evanston banded them- 
 selves into a so-called "College for Ladies," 
 which furnished home influences for the young 
 women students and surrounded them with 
 friends of their own sex. Of this college Miss 
 Willard was elected dean in 1871. 
 
 She held the position until 1874, and left a 
 remarkable record. She introduced an honor 
 system among the girls, by which each became 
 guardian of the success and the good name of 
 the school. One afternoon so runs an anec- 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 229 
 
 dote of the times a crowd of girls were out for 
 a walk together when a trainload of men stu- 
 dents rolled by. The men gave the "Fern. 
 Sena." salute. Not a girl responded, but, on 
 the contrary, regarded the salute in the light of 
 an insult. "Miss Willard,' declares one who 
 was present, "had given no specific directions 
 how the girls should deport themselves toward 
 young men. She had simply inspired them 
 with a sense of their individual responsibility, 
 had made them feel that greater interests than 
 they had dreamed of depended upon their con- 
 duct." 
 
 She made them feel, in fact, that the whole 
 interests of women and the race depended on 
 it. For the furtherance of those interests was 
 her true mission ; and how could she begin bet- 
 ter than by converting those women of the/ 
 future? 
 
 Meanwhile events were taking place that 
 would broaden her mission beyond the small 
 field of higher education. The Woman's Tem- 
 perance Crusade began in Ohio. Women of 
 low degree and high swarmed from their homes 
 into the streets, marched to the saloons, sang, 
 prayed, and pleaded with the rum-sellers to quit 
 their iniquitous traffic. In fifty days the 
 saloons were abolished in two hundred and 
 fifty towns. The revival swept on and could 
 not be stayed. It struck Chicago; Miss Wil- 
 lard began to read about it. Here was a 
 woman's movement. The women of her land 
 were grappling with the problem of home pro- 
 
230 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 tection the woman problem as she had con- 
 ceived it. Miss Willard could not leave her 
 teaching. But "it occurred to me," she says, 
 "that I ought to work for the good cause just 
 where I was that everybody ought. It would 
 be dynamite under the saloon if, just where he 
 is the minister would begin active work against 
 it; if just where he is, the teacher would in- 
 struct his pupils" and so on. 
 
 So, just where she was, Miss Willard began 
 by making her rhetoric pupils write on prohi- 
 bition themes. But she could not stop there; 
 she must go on. One day in March, 1874, a 
 procession of women was insulted by a crowd 
 of street corner loafers. The incident stirred 
 Miss Willard to the soul. She made a public 
 temperance speech, then another, and before 
 long became recognized as a worthy ally in 
 the cause. And her own attitude? "To serve 
 such a cause would be utterly enthralling if 
 only I had more time, if I were more free ! ' 
 
 She would soon be more free. She disagreed 
 with the president of Northwestern about the 
 administration of her college. She loved the 
 college, loved her work there, loved the people 
 of education and polish with whom she asso- 
 ciated. Yet already she had heard a call that 
 pierced deeper into her nature than the cause 
 of mere culture ever could the distressed 
 pleadings of the homes of her land. She re- 
 signed her position as educator soon to as- 
 sume that of home protector. 
 
 Miss Willard now went east to study the 
 
FRANCES E. WILLAKD 231 
 
 anti-saloon uprising. With no independent in- 
 come, the question of support for herself and 
 her mother troubled her. Ever religious, she 
 consulted the Bible. The Book opened to the 
 words, " Trust in the Lord and do good; so 
 shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou 
 shalt be fed/ With that she confidently put 
 financial worries behind her for all time. 
 
 Alluring offers to teach pursued her from 
 city to city. She took counsel with her friends. 
 One and all, not excepting her mother, they 
 advised a return to her profession. For the 
 temperance crusade, though rich in workers 
 and in righteousness, could afford but the 
 meagerest salaries. But Frances E. Willard 
 craved a position that would pay her more than 
 money. When a letter invited her to become 
 president of the Chicago Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union she accepted immediately 
 and started west. 
 
 Arrived in Chicago, burning with ardor for 
 her new or, rather, her fully revealed mis- 
 sion, Miss Willard received a genuine crusade 
 baptism, as she called it. She locked arms 
 with some of the crusaders and paraded down 
 the stony street to the saloon district. They 
 halted in front of a rum-shop. The keeper for- 
 bade them entrance. Nevertheless they sang 
 and prayed before they passed on ; and the city 
 throngs newsboys, laborers, hurrying business 
 men, even the brewers' wagons paused to 
 marvel at the unwonted spectacle. At the next 
 door they were permitted entrance; Frances 
 
232 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 Willard went in with the rest; and here, for 
 the first time, she saw the inside of a saloon- 
 its sawdust covered floor, its all too convenient 
 barrels, its bar and shelves glittering with de- 
 canters and cut glass. The fumes of the place 
 sickened her, but she did not retreat. The 
 leader placed her Bible on the bar and read a 
 psalm. Then they sang Rock of Ages with "a 
 tender confidence to the height of which one 
 does not rise in the easy-going regulation prayer 
 meeting/ Then the leader asked Frances 
 Willard to pray! Around her were a few 
 earnest women; behind them, filling every 
 corner and extending out into the street, a 
 'crowd of unwashed, unkempt, drinking men. 
 Yet she knelt in the sawdust and prayed. And 
 "I was conscious that perhaps never in my life, 
 save beside my sister Mary's dying bed, had I 
 prayed as truly as I did then." 
 
 Thus she probed to the bottom of the wrong 
 she wished to heal. She did it, not like a 
 superior person who reaches down a jeweled 
 hand to raise degenerates; but like a sister 
 who, as a matter of course, lends her support 
 to less fortunate brothers in the great human 
 family. At first, in the abandon of her zeal, 
 she scorned the compensation that her position 
 allowed. None insisted, thinking she had 
 other means. Often she walked across the city 
 to her meetings because she lacked a nickel for 
 car fare ; and often when she scoured the slums 
 for outcasts she might help she could say, "I 
 am a better friend than you dream, I know 
 
FRANCES E. WILLARD 233 
 
 more about yon than you think, for, bless God, 
 I am hungry, too.' 
 
 A more absolute break with one's accus- 
 tomed manner of life has seldom been recorded. 
 "Instead of peace," she says, "I was to par- 
 ticipate in war; instead of the sweetness of 
 home, I was to become a wanderer on the face 
 of the earth; instead of libraries, I was to fre- 
 quent public halls and railway carriages; in- 
 stead of scholarly and cultured men, I was to 
 see the dregs of saloon and gambling house.' 
 But in the slowly growing purpose of her life 
 there was no break. Only it was, all at once, 
 infinitely enlarged. The cause of women had 
 at last enthralled her. "Hence," she declared, 
 "I have felt that 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.' " 
 
 From now on Miss Willard's biography be- 
 comes the history of the W. C. T. U. She is 
 seen scarce at all any more as a private woman. 
 Six weeks each year she rested at home with 
 her mother, "Saint Courageous," still her best- 
 loved adviser. But even there her brain was 
 busy with articles, interviews and plans for her 
 Temperance Union, and she never for a moment 
 was out of the public eye. 
 
 In October, 1874, so ably had she supervised 
 the local branch at Chicago, she was elected 
 corresponding secretary of the Illinois State 
 Union. A year or two later she advanced to 
 the same office in the National Union. And in 
 
234 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGKESS 
 
 1879 for her executive powers matured 
 rapidly in those years she became president 
 of the National Union. 
 
 Her doings as president cannot be enumer- 
 ated. She wrote books and founded the Tem- 
 perance Publishing Association. But princi- 
 pally, and with her finest energies, she labored 
 to extend and solidify the national organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 To this end she herself took the field. She 
 purposed to speak in every town of ten thou- 
 sand population in the United States. She did 
 that, and included most towns of five thousand 
 besides. She virtually lived between the Pull- 
 man car and the lecture hall, traveling in one 
 year 30,000 miles and averaging for twelve 
 years one meeting a day. Her labors were 
 enormous; her recreations, with the exception 
 of a daily half hour of physical exercise, she 
 forewent entirely. In 1877, she had taken as 
 her life motto this verse from Paul, "And 
 whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to 
 God and the Father by Him. ' ' And surely she 
 toiled as though in the eye of others than men. 
 Once in the White Mountains, having an ad- 
 dress to prepare, she sternly turned her back 
 to that attractive scenery that she might con- 
 centrate alone on her work. On the Hudson 
 Eiver trip, while others gloated on the splen- 
 dors of the shore, she shut herself in her cabin 
 below decks to make ready for a coming Chau- 
 tauqua. 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 235 
 
 What did she mean to achieve by all this 
 speaking? She meant, in the first place, to 
 plant in every town a branch union through 
 which the women could unite for temperance. 
 They could educate their children in the home 
 and church and school. They could agitate 
 make processions, hire speakers, force tem- 
 perance instruction in public schools, and cam- 
 paign for pledges among the men even at the 
 bars where they drank. They could, in short, 
 work everywhere in a woman's way, to fortify 
 their homes against the evil of intemperance. 
 And not only could they, but they would, and 
 gladly, said Frances Willard. Women were 
 natural, inevitable enemies of liquor, because 
 their lives were consecrated to their homes and 
 liquor ruined their husbands, their children, 
 and all that made their homes precious. Hence 
 mother love, said Miss Willard, will overwhelm 
 the saloon, if only mother love be effectu- 
 ally organized. 
 
 As time went on, Miss Willard saw that even 
 in America the drink habit was only the worst 
 of many home destroying vices. 'All these 
 things mother love would overcome, Miss W T il- 
 lard said, if it were properly organized, and, 
 due to W. C. T. U. agitation, women undoubt- 
 edly thought more and did more about them 
 than they ever had done in the past. "Do 
 everything, " Miss Willard said to the women 
 of the country, "when you see a head, hit it.' 
 And through lectures, reading circles, papers 
 and petitions, she sowed all over the land an 4 " 
 
236 HEROINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 interest in all-round home improvement that 
 has never lost its force. 
 
 Yet in time Miss Willard detected another 
 weakness in her plan. The women might think, 
 they might educate themselves and their chil- 
 dren, they might pray, preach and petition, or 
 what not; but men still made the laws and 
 they, not having the ' i reasons ' of women, 
 might always make laws to hedge round the 
 liquor traffic and related evils. An organiza- 
 tion of women outside of politics would be 
 doomed, in the long run, to mere futile wishing. 
 Hence she declared in favor of woman suffrage. 
 
 To espouse such a cause was no small mat- 
 ter in 1876. But Miss Willard had been think- 
 ing a long time ever since that day at Forest 
 Home, when her mother hinted of it to her 
 father. She had reached the belief that here 
 was the essential division between men and 
 women in America, the peculiar form of 
 woman's restraint that undermined the 
 strength and beauty of homes. "By this time, 
 + my soul had come to ' woe is me if I declare not 
 this gospel.' She had prayed over it and 
 ^believed that she had divine guidance. So at 
 Newark, New Jersey, while her good friends 
 wept at thought of the ostracism that would 
 follow, she voiced her memorable argument, 
 f "Votes For Women." 
 
 "When I had finished, a lady from New 
 York, gray-haired and dignified, who was pre- 
 siding, said to the audience: 'The National 
 Woman's Christian Temperance Union is not 
 
FRANCES E. WILLARD 237 
 
 responsible for the utterances of this evening. 
 We have no mind to trail our skirts in the mire 
 of politics!' She doubtless thought it her duty 
 to speak, and I have no thought of blame, only 
 regret. As we left the church, one of our chief 
 women said, 'You might have been a leader in 
 our national councils, but you have deliberately 
 chosen to be only a scout/ " 
 
 So unpopular was woman suffrage then! 
 Yet Miss Willard stood sturdily by her con- 
 victions and before many years the National 
 Union outspokenly adopted a suffrage plank; 
 and it has been among the foremost of all the 
 agencies that have pushed that reform. 
 
 With these watchwords, "Prohibition, 
 Woman 's Liberation and Labor's Uplift,' the 
 National Union, under Miss Willard 's leader- 
 ship, soon counted one million members. Such 
 a thing had never been heard of in history. 
 Women had been supposed incapable of organ- 
 ization ; they could only follow the lead of men, 
 for men's purposes. But Frances Willard dis- 
 covered a woman's purpose; she utilized 
 woman's instinct; and she convinced a reluc- 
 tant world that through those instincts and pur- 
 poses woman would thenceforth have an appre- 
 ciable influence in human affairs. 
 
 One of the slogans of the National Union 
 under Miss Willard had been, "For God and 
 Home and Native Land.' Yet she at no time 
 aimed to promote the good of her own country 
 at the expense of another. Narrow minded 
 nationalism she abhorred. Her cause was the 
 
238 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 cause of women and humanity, and only inci- 
 dentally of America. The "native land" 
 phrase she added only because she had not 
 imagined her ideas could carry beyond 
 the boundaries of the nation. But time came 
 when she knew better; and the words 
 could be dropped, or changed to " every 
 land." 
 
 In San Francisco she saw the fatal results 
 of the opium trade, and saw Chinese women 
 abased far beyond the lowest level of her own 
 people. Her first thoughts on the subject of 
 woman and home-improvement had been actu- 
 ated by her observations abroad, and this re- 
 vived a host of unpleasant memories. She 
 brooded on the repulsive sights of Chinatown 
 month after month; she could not cast them 
 out if she would ; and finally, one night, she was 
 favored with what she believed to be a distinct 
 revelation from God. 
 
 "But for the intrusion of the sea," she said, 
 "the shores of China and the far East would 
 be part and parcel of our land. We are one 
 world of tempted humanity. The mission of 
 the White Ribbon women is to organize the 
 motherhood of the world for the peace and 
 purity, and protection and exaltation of its 
 homes. We must send forth a clear call to our 
 sisters yonder, and our brothers, too.' 
 
 In her annual address in Detroit in 1883 Miss 
 Willard frankly proclaimed the new doctrine; 
 and then and there came into being the nu- 
 cleus of the World's Woman's Christian Tern- 
 
 
FKANCES E. WILLARD 239 
 
 perance Union. Miss Willard was elected 
 president. White Kibbon missionaries, sailing 
 from New York, traversed every continent of 
 the globe, founding local societies, and federat- 
 ing them, where possible, into national unions. 
 In 1891, the first biennial world's convention 
 assembled in Boston. And by 1898, when Miss 
 Willard died, the world's union had been es- 
 tablished in fifty nations. 
 
 The activities of this world union, which 
 multiplied the wonder of Miss Willard 's previ- 
 ous performance cannot, of course, be traced 
 out in detail. Suffice it that the banded women 
 of half a hundred lands imitated the American 
 plan, and often with more than American suc- 
 cess. Yet one or two measures bear Miss Wil- 
 lard 's individual stamp so clearly that they 
 cannot be omitted. 
 
 The first is the Polyglot Petition. Miss-f 
 Willard addressed this to the ^"Governments of 
 the World." It implored each government to 
 prohibit the liquor and opium trade, and to 
 raise the standard of the law to that of 
 Christian morals. Missionaries carried copies 
 to every continent. Local unions there signed 
 it and presented it to their sovereigns. The 
 names in over fifty different languages were 
 then mailed to the American headquarters, and 
 trimmed, and mounted on a strip of red-white- 
 and-blue muslin. The enormous rolls of cloth, 
 with two million signatures, were finally 
 brought to the attention of President Cleve- 
 land, and a fac-simile in book form, to that of 
 
240 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 Queen Victoria. They were afterward shipped 
 from place to place for a decoration and a 
 symbol in various convention halls. 
 
 Not one country acceded to the terms of the 
 petition, nor had Miss Willard expected it- 
 would. But, she argued, every woman who 
 signed was awakened to the urgency of the tem- 
 perance question ; and, inspired by the thought 
 of being in a class with several million others, 
 they would continue to study it and to pass on 
 their knowledge till not one ignorant person 
 remained. Then prohibitive legislation would 
 come as a matter of course. As a world-wide 
 promoter of education the Polyglot Petition 
 has had no like; and the ponderous rolls still 
 kept in the Union headquarters are a fit monu- 
 ment to Miss Willard 's genius. 
 ^ The second noteworthy deed of the World's 
 Union was its interference in Armenia. That 
 Christian country had been oppressed and per- 
 secuted for three hundred years by the Turks. 
 At last war broke out yet not war for the 
 Armenians had no arms ; and they were cruelly 
 murdered, fifty thousand in one year, and their 
 fields overrun and villages sacked. 
 
 Few details of this horror had leaked out 
 until a shipload of maimed creatures escaped 
 to Marseilles, France. Miss Willard, then in 
 Europe, went at once to Marseilles, where she 
 learned in full of the century-long tragedy. 
 She found homes for the refugees and then 
 sailed for America with a crusader's message 
 in her heart. 
 
FEANCES E. WILLAED 241 
 
 " Sisters, countrymen!' she cried, "our fel- 
 low worshipers perish because they will not 
 apostatize. An ancient nation is being slaugh- 
 tered on the plains of old Bible story!" The 
 Turks, with their un-Christian marriage cus- 
 toms, were outraging a people whose only fault 
 was "their devotion to Christ and their loyalty 
 to a pure home." 
 
 Miss Willard petitioned the government, de- 
 claring that "the protection of the home is the 
 supreme duty of statesmen,' and urging that 
 our country unite with England to stop the 
 massacre. She called upon the unions in every 
 locality to meet, and protest, and collect money 
 for the relief of those far-away, desecrated 
 Christian homes. And "may God so deal with 
 us at last,' she cried, "as we deal with our 
 Armenian sisters and brothers, and their little 
 ones, in this hour of their overwhelming cal- 
 amity. ' ' 
 
 "These appeals,' says one historian, "have 
 hardly been equaled in effect in the annals of 
 the world. ' ' The nation was aroused. Money 
 flowed in from ten thousand sources. Business 
 men gave, and churches, and women and chil- 
 dren. Clara Barton, the Eed Cross nurse, 
 sailed for Constantinople, the private emissary 
 of a whole people. With the consent of the 
 Turkish government already shamed for its 
 cruelty her agents walked into the desolated 
 land with medicine and food and seed corn; 
 
 A 
 
 and with tools to build new houses and encour- 
 agement to found new homes because the 
 
242 HEROINES OF MODERN PEOGEESS 
 
 homes of America would see to their protec- 
 tion. 
 
 The significance of this act cannot be meas- 
 ured in terms of money spent or of people 
 saved. It meant that the women of the land 
 not public women, but home-staying women, 
 the mothers of children could take a hand in 
 world politics and actually force history. The 
 home-protection principle had been asserted 
 and operated on an international scale. 
 Frances Willard had climaxed her life with an 
 achievement she could not hope to surpass. 
 
 Miss Willard divided her last six years about 
 equally between America and Europe. In 
 England, she stayed with the English presi- 
 dent, Lady Henry Somerset, who gave her every 
 comfort. But more and more the great leader 
 felt drawn to her native land. In 1892 her 
 mother died. Through all her public life sh 
 had depended upon that mother and her wel 
 come at "Eest Cottage," at Evanston, Illinois, 
 almost as implicitly as she had when a child. 
 "My nature is so interwoven with hers,' she 
 wrote, "that I almost think it would be death 
 for me to have the bond severed and one so 
 much myself gone over the river.' And when 
 the home-idyl -had ended at last forever, her 
 health continually failed, and it soon became 
 evident that she could not long maintain her 
 hold on this world. Trying, perhaps, to supply 
 what she had lost, she returned, with a curious, 
 unappeased longing, to the haunts of her child- 
 hood. 
 
 
FRANCES E. WILLAED 243 
 
 She sought out the records of her earliest 
 ancestors in Kent, England. She found the 
 grave of her first American ancestor in Massa- 
 chusetts, "Elijah Willard, a beautiful man," 
 and placed on it a bunch of water-lilies, the 
 floral emblem of the World >s W. C. T. IL She 
 saw where her mother and father had been 
 born, eleven miles apart. She saw the house 
 and the room of her own birth, and those of her 
 sister Mary. She revisited Evanston and 
 Janesville, and finally Forest Home which had 
 affected her so powerfully as a girl. Every- 
 where she reflected upon her youth and the in- 
 fluences that had made it, and gathered up all 
 the old personal ties that had latterly been 
 broken. With all earnestness she tried to re- 
 cover the scenes and thoughts, the very actu- 
 ality of her childhood home. 
 
 At the same time she relinquished none of 
 her work with the national and world's unions. 
 So long as strength remained she lectured, 
 wrote letters, editorials and articles, and pre- 
 sided at the councils of her women. 
 
 Thus while leading the forefront of a world 
 movement, she became, for a time, the simple 
 child of a western farm; and, though happy to 
 be a pioneer home child, she still, as a woman, 
 bravely pioneered for the advancement of aP 
 homes and all humanity. The two ends of he 
 life curiously met. And they differed scarcely 
 at all except in their scope. 
 
 "If I were asked the mission of the idea* 
 
244 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGEESS 
 
 woman/' Miss Willard once declared, "I would 
 say, it is to make the whole world homelike. 
 The true woman will make homelike every 
 place she enters, and she will enter every 
 place in this wide world. " 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 
 
 J ELLEN FOSTER was all her life a consci- 
 entious church goer. Like the Puritans 
 in whose stock she was rooted, she went not to 
 see or be seen, but to listen; and when she 
 heard words of spiritual truth, she jotted them 
 down in her diary to ruminate on at leisure. 
 The entry of July 31, 1904, reads in part : 
 
 "The sermon was strong and helpful. I 
 make this application to my present situation. 
 I am now looking for a stenographer. She 
 must, of course, know how to 'take down' rap- 
 idly and correctly ; she must be a lady, first ; but 
 above all, as absolutely essential, she must be 
 true to me. So with God in his choice of work- 
 ers : his first honors are to those who are true. 
 God helping me, I will be true." 
 
 On August 21 of the same year the note is 
 made, "Went to church but was sleepy. Still 
 I bring away the lesson, 'The Thought of God' 
 this should be the background of every life. 
 I humbly rejoice because I know it is the back- 
 ground of mine." 
 
 Mrs. Foster was at the time sixty-four years 
 old. The words referred to that present date; 
 but they were also a summing up of all her 
 years, and a fulfillment of the promise of her 
 youth. 
 
 She was born Judith Ellen Horton, in Low- 
 
 245 
 
246 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 ell, Massachusetts, 1840. Externally, a clear 
 religious background for her life had already 
 been sketched by her parents. Mrs. Horton in- 
 herited Puritan traditions and showed them 
 forth in gentleness and affection as a wife and 
 mother. The father had a kindred spirit but 
 it emerged from him in acts more positive and 
 energetic. For thirty years a Methodist min- 
 ister, he was not more ready to recommend 
 right living and the bliss thereof than to de- 
 nounce a course of evil and to portray the 
 horror of its consequences. "A faithful min- 
 ister of the gospel' * were the words that he 
 wished carved on his tomb. And his was a 
 fighting faithfulness. The Methodist church 
 took an equivocal position concerning slavery. 
 In general conference, when called upon to lead 
 the devotions, he made bold to pray "that the 
 wrath of God might not descend upon a slave 
 holding church." The bishop reproved him 
 for the undutiful allusion. Later, because of 
 the church's attitude on slavery, he withdrew 
 from the sect and affiliated with the Wesleyan : 
 for the gospel to which he would be faithful 
 had to be one in which he could be true. 
 
 The combined gentleness and intensity of the 
 minister's home were unfortunately too soon 
 lost to the growing girl. The mother died 
 when she was eight, and the father when she 
 was thirteen, and she went to live with her 
 elder sister, Mrs. Pierce, in Boston. The 
 transfer was not, however, to a less pious at- 
 mosphere, for Mrs. Pierce had become in- 
 
. J. ELLEN FOSTER 247 
 
 grained with the scruples of their father. 
 Then the stern Puritanism received from 
 father and sister was soon fire-tempered by an 
 act of Miss Horton's brother Jotham. Serv- 
 ing as chaplain of a peace conference in New 
 Orleans, he made a prayer too honest for his 
 hearers, and was murdered while still on his 
 knees. 
 
 So Miss Horton, in her plastic years, was 
 made firm in the faith of her fathers. She 
 never experienced conversion, because she 
 never was conscious of variance from God's 
 purposes. While her education went on in 
 Boston a very complete education in books, 
 music and society, thanks to her sister's 
 wealth, she disciplined herself yet more thor- 
 oughly in the lore and labors of the church. 
 Not only did she eschew dancing, card playing 
 and like frivolities : once, when at a Wesleyan 
 seminary at Lima, New York, she wrote to her 
 monitor, "I promise not to go walking on Sun- 
 day or to gossip on Thursday." She early be- 
 gan a practice that she would never afterward 
 discontinue, of spending a half-hour in devo- 
 tions each morning before she faced the duties 
 of the day. She belonged to the missionary 
 society of the church, taught a Sunday-school 
 class, and, still led on by her father 's evangeliz- 
 ing spirit, went into the dingy missions to sing 
 new hope into the lives of weary-hearted 
 dwellers in the slums. 
 
 During this time, the fifties and sixties of the 
 nineteenth century, certain vigorous-minded 
 
248 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 women were proclaiming a new, secular gospel. 
 They held that women were the mental and 
 moral equals of men. They asked for equal 
 rights at the polls, in the courts, and in eco- 
 nomic fields ; and scores of them like Mrs. 
 Stanton, Florence Nightingale, and Julia Ward 
 Howe, were forging into positions of public 
 usefulness where men had formerly reigned 
 alone. Miss Horton, however, did not accept 
 the gospel of emancipated womanhood. She 
 believed woman's place was the home, and her 
 duties wifely affection and maternal care. Out- 
 side the home, if she had strength, she might 
 abet the propaganda of the church. That was 
 public, indeed, but it was religious. In such 
 things a woman could, in her way, be a "faith- 
 ful minister of the gospel." 
 
 But Miss Horton was the heir of family 
 heroisms she could not put out of mind: her 
 ancestors had fought in the Revolution, her 
 father had resigned his church for conscience's 
 sake, her brother had been slain for speaking 
 truth. Her background was purely religious; 
 but the religion was one of action. The future, 
 while leaving unchanged her notion of what 
 woman is, might be expected radically to 
 broaden her conception of what woman may do. 
 
 While still a young woman she went to 
 Chicago to live with relatives. There, in the 
 slums of the Bridgeport district, she directed 
 the music in a mission Sunday-school. One of 
 the teachers was a lawyer, recently graduated 
 from the University of Michigan, named E. C. 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 249 
 
 Foster. The young man and woman, drawn 
 together by similarity of interests, soon formed 
 a love match, married, and settled in Clinton, 
 Iowa. The husband would practice law for 
 their support, so they planned, and Mrs. Foster 
 would busy herself agreeably with her familiar 
 occupations in the home and the church. 
 
 Children were born, and Mrs. Foster has tes- 
 tified eloquently to her delight in them, "I 
 know the intense interest of guiding the child 
 mind and the sensitive child heart. I know the 
 bliss of mother love. It outranks all other joy 
 that I have known." To the doings of the 
 church she also lent a hand, for that was as nat- 
 ural as living. 
 
 The religious-minded couple had not been 
 long in Clinton, however, before they saw that 
 church work could not be limited by the con- 
 ventional bounds set by well-to-do people in 
 Boston. Clinton was a lumber town. With its 
 gambling dens, saloons, and "Murderer's 
 Row,' to which the rivermen swarmed, it was 
 reputed one of the wickedest towns on the Mis- 
 sissippi. Furthermore, it was a comparatively 
 small town; the good parts and the bad were 
 necessarily commingled, and in simple self-de- 
 fense the interests of righteousness had ac- 
 tively to put down those of evil. 
 
 In the early seventies this antagonism re- 
 solved into a fierce conflict. Some women in 
 an Ohio town had taken it into their heads to 
 beat down the saloon power. Their spirit in- 
 fected women everywhere, and almost in a day 
 
250 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 a woman's temperance crusade was sweeping 
 from coast to coast. The church women of 
 Clinton welcomed any method by which they 
 could purify their town. A band of them took 
 their hymn books and marched into "Mur- 
 derer's Row." They sang and prayed in every 
 saloon which they were allowed to enter. To 
 their gratification, some hard faced men left 
 off carousing to sing and worship with them. 
 Some were shamed and went home vowing they 
 would drink no more. Some proprietors were 
 moved to drive out their patrons and close the 
 doors, for the night, if not for all time. 
 
 Encouraged by these signs, Mrs. Foster or- 
 ganized the women into a permanent society. 
 Then, drawing on her knowledge of city mis- 
 sions, she opened a hall where she could sing, 
 and exhort, and educate for temperance. At 
 first her proceedings were very simple. She 
 hitched old gray "Charlie' to the spring 
 wagon, put a bundle of sticks in behind, and 
 with her small son drove to the hall ; and while 
 he kindled a fire in the stove, she swept, dusted 
 and ventilated. Then when the audience had 
 drifted in, the janitoress would turn orator, 
 and later present the pledge, "I do solemnly 
 promise, God helping me, that I will never 
 make, buy, sell or use intoxicating liquors as 
 a beverage, and that I will in all honorable 
 ways discourage their use." 
 
 So far, Mrs. Foster was well within the 
 established proprieties. But now a change 
 in fact a whole series of rapid changes 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 251 
 
 were imminent. Mr. Foster, it will be re- 
 membered, was a lawyer as well as a church 
 man. While his wife was praying in the rum 
 shops, damage cases against the saloon fell to 
 him to advocate. He prosecuted the offenders 
 fearlessly; his popularity took a sudden bound, 
 and intemperance cases filled his docket. Now, 
 in order to understand the matters that oc- 
 cupied him, and the legal side of matters that 
 on their moral side occupied her, Mrs. Foster, 
 urged by her husband, began reading law in 
 his books at home. For some years she 
 "studied the pages of Blackstone, while she 
 dressed dolls and blew soap bubbles" for her 
 children. 
 
 Meantime, Mr. Foster's duel drew to closer 
 and deadlier issues. Threatened with violence 
 if he did not desist from mauling the saloons, 
 he only quickened his blows. Some one, in 
 spite, set up a little rum-shop near his home. 
 He began action against it and the saloon was 
 driven out. But, on the night after the judg- 
 ment was pronounced, thugs burned his house. 
 There was a total loss of all his goods, and the 
 family saved themselves but narrowly. 
 
 This incident probably made J. Ellen Foster. 
 It was an outrage upon her home. It was an 
 unfair , retaliation against the sincere, even 
 dutiful, acts of her religion. The mother in her 
 and the evangelist in her, as by a chemical 
 change, became stern and militant. 
 
 She had applied herself closely to her law 
 reading. Now she asked her husband when the 
 
252 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 bar examinations were to be held. Why? She 
 wanted to take them! There was not a single 
 woman lawyer in Iowa, and only one or two 
 in America, Still, this erstwhile quiet home- 
 and-church woman wished to be one. In due 
 time she was sworn in at the Iowa bar. One 
 morning, instead of staying at home, she got 
 into the buggy with her husband behind the old 
 gray horse, and drove to his- office. A new 
 shingle went up: "Foster and Foster," it read. 
 She entered the room and squared around at an 
 empty desk. A woman came in and began to 
 talk to Mr. Foster. A saloon had ruined her 
 husband. For years, it had steadily debauched 
 him, taking his money and breaking his habits 
 and his health. To-day they were penniless. 
 The house was to be sold. They would have no 
 home but the street. And there were children, 
 four of them. The woman wept. She could 
 not pay a lawyer now, but 
 
 ' ' Here, ' ' said Mr. Foster, turning to his new 
 partner, "is a case for you. You can make 
 that saloon pay damages.' 
 
 So another anti-saloon lawyer, a woman, 
 soon to be as busy and successful as Mr. Fos- 
 ter, was given speed in her profession. 
 
 Simultaneously Mrs. Foster took a deep 
 plunge into the popular crusade she had helped 
 start. Local temperance societies had been 
 marshaling in various towns of the state, and 
 had organized into an Iowa union. In 1874 the 
 National Woman's Christian Temperance 
 Union had arisen, to federate those of the 
 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER , 253 
 
 states. Iowa joined the sisterhood ; and almost 
 at once, Mrs. Foster encountered and succumbed 
 to the charm of the national president, Frances 
 E. Willard. "I loved her with a chivalrous de- 
 votion not common among women, 7 she says. 
 "My admiration was absolute and unquestion- 
 ing. ... I gave to Miss Willard the ardor 
 of a personal devotion, which drew to itself the 
 religious fervor of that holy war. Her words 
 were to me almost as sacred as the spirit of the 
 movement itself. I did not question her 
 methods or exercise my judgment concerning 
 them I was only too happy to follow where 
 she led." 
 
 Miss Willard advised her to go on the plat- 
 form and tell how her home had been burned 
 and how liquor was destroying other homes. 
 The idea was not new to Mrs. Foster, but the 
 magnetism of the great leader, who was her- 
 self an orator with the purest religious en- 
 thusiasm, gave it for the first time a face of 
 plausibility. So she went to stir the towns 
 where no branches existed. Soon she found 
 that her modest practice in Sunday-schools, 
 missions, and at the bar had matured her into 
 a powerful orator. The economic argument 
 was the one she used most, the loss of efficiency 
 in the man, society, and the state. ' ' She sways 
 her audiences at will," wrote an editor, "not 
 by sentimental appeal, but by that quality most 
 rare in her sex; clear, concise, and yet beauti- 
 fully embellished logic." 
 
 Yet if she made harvest of pledges as few 
 
254 HEEOINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 women could, there was more to it than orator- 
 ical skill there was downright hard labor by 
 day and night, and there was constant readiness 
 with the personal appeal. She would speak 
 one afternoon to a company of children at a 
 school picnic; seven o'clock found her at a 
 banquet, responding to a toast ; at eight o 'clock 
 " tired out, and with not one idea to begin on,' 7 
 she faced a refined audience in a new opera 
 house and held them for two hours ; at eleven 
 o'clock she got wearily onto the caboose of a 
 freight train, and was dropped two hours later 
 on a switch, whence she had to walk a mile with 
 her baggage to a hotel ; at ten the next morning 
 there was a conference with the local leaders; 
 at noon she talked to a crowd of grimy miners, 
 who had come out of the shaft for lunch. And 
 always, with her rudest audience or her most 
 elegant, she had a private word for any she 
 could reach. 
 
 Very soon, from a humble messenger of the 
 (Union she was elevated to be i ( Superintendent 
 of Legislation.' Then the Union petitioned 
 for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the 
 sale of liquor in Iowa. The amendment was 
 referred to popular vote. Mrs. Foster ap- 
 pealed to the people of the state young and 
 old, women and men, Democrats and Repub- 
 licans, churchmen and non-churchmen every- 
 body, without distinction, who hated the blight 
 of intemperance. The people forgot their age, 
 party and denomination and voted the amend- 
 ment through, with a thirty thousand majority. 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTEE 255 
 
 No other state had dealt the saloon such a blow. 
 Miss Willard declared Iowa to be " Queen and 
 leader of Christian civilization on this con- 
 tinent. ' ' 
 
 This was in 1882, only nine years after the 
 burning of Mrs. Foster's home; but the spell 
 then loosed had already done its complete work. 
 No longer was she a mere fledgling in public 
 life. She was a figure bulking large in the 
 affairs of both state and nation. She had 
 swerved widely from her early beliefs concern- 
 ing woman's restriction to the home and the 
 church. "As a rule," she said, "the preachers 
 and teachers who speak about woman's work in 
 the churches speak too much of the petty and 
 insignificant. They emphasize its femininity 
 rather than its humanity. Women may differ 
 from men in their intellectuality, but there is 
 no sex in soul, and women have a work to do 
 that cannot be assumed by men. It is a large 
 and a grand work." 
 
 Yet her sallies into public life were still ac- 
 tuated by the same religious purpose as was 
 her church and mission work. She never 
 traveled on the Sabbath ; unless too ill to stand, 
 she never missed hearing or preaching one or 
 more sermons on that day; each new day and 
 each new enterprise she opened with prayer. 
 
 She was still religious in the background; 
 but, the fact is that the background had amaz- 
 ingly spread. Woman's home work included, 
 for her, opposition to the enemies of the home, 
 anywhere, and by any means. Woman's reli- 
 
256 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 gious work might include any effort tending to 
 the good of humanity. Praying in " Mur- 
 derer's Row,' pleading at the bar, or arguing 
 on the platform, she believed her deeds con- 
 sonant with God's purposes, and assigned her 
 to do from heaven. 
 
 The Iowa amendment was repealed on 
 technical grounds, but Mrs. Foster, undaunted, 
 went deeper into the work. And, with closer 
 intimacy, she fell more and more under the 
 spell of Miss Willard. Like the other million 
 or so of women in the W. C. T. U., she paid an 
 unreasoning allegiance to the loved leader, 
 whose wish was law and whose commands, the 
 cautious feared, might be a tyranny. "As the 
 work progressed and my official relation to it 
 necessitated my individual action,' she ad- 
 mits, . . . "in the settlement of any ques- 
 tion of duty in the W. C. T. U., where Miss 
 Willard and I differed in judgment, I always 
 yielded mine to hers.' 
 
 But from the first two or three things were 
 conspiring to weaken this "sweet coercion of 
 personal affection." Mrs. Foster was not so 
 strong an executive as Miss Willard, having 
 been engaged, during the other's apprentice- 
 ship as an educator, "in domestic affairs and 
 the care of little children." But she was just 
 as grimly conscientious; she required herself 
 as much to be true to God and her own con- 
 science. Devoted as she was to Miss Willard 
 and the W. C. T. U., she could be expected, like 
 her father, to renounce her "faithfulness,' if 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 257 
 
 at any time she could not be true. And be- 
 sides Scripture and conscience, she was, with 
 her experience of the world, beginning to see 
 the claims of certain other guides. She might 
 try to serve these also, and hence bring on a 
 conflict. 
 
 In the early eighties she was pained to note 
 certain acts of Miss Willard which she con- 
 sidered mistaken and rash. At the convention 
 in Washington in 1881, the president asked "us 
 here at the nation's Capitol to pledge our 
 allegiance to the new party which she pro- 
 phesied would unite North and South, help on 
 the work of constitutional prohibition and the 
 enfranchisement of women.' The new party 
 was the Prohibition Party. Miss Willard 's re- 
 quest was not formal, and it passed unheeded 
 by the general body of women. Only Mrs. 
 Foster, a lawyer and the wife of a lawyer, 
 marked its trend and knew it dangerous. 
 
 All the successes of temperance in the past 
 had been won through non-partisan methods. 
 Temperance was a moral question on which all 
 men could unite, irrespective of their political 
 views, as they had in Iowa. The Union had no 
 excuse for going further than that into party 
 politics. "What has the W. C. T. U. to do with 
 tariff or free trade, with hard or soft 
 money, with railroads or mines?" Mrs. Fos- 
 ter asked. Now, suppose one party should 
 announce a temperance plank, and the Union 
 should form an alliance with it on account of 
 the plank, then all other parties, containing a 
 
258 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 large share of temperance men, would be made 
 inimical to temperance, merely because it con- 
 sorted with strictly political doctrines which 
 they opposed. The third party vote did not 
 represent five per cent of the prohibitory senti- 
 ment of the country. By endorsing such a 
 party, therefore, the Union would offend ninety- 
 five per cent of its friends, and defeat the legis- 
 lation for which it was laboring. Yet, unless 
 she misread the signs, Miss Willard was surely 
 working up to that endorsement. 
 
 Still sustained by her affection and believing 
 no "such arrogant assumption of power would 
 ever be attempted,' she protested, but mildly, 
 and in private, although the assumption was 
 hinted at more clearly in every succeeding con- 
 vention. Finally, in 1884, at St. Louis, the con- 
 vention voted flatly to "lend their influence to 
 the Prohibition Party." Then and there Mrs. 
 Foster rebelled. Miss Willard would not, per- 
 haps could not, see the fatuity of third party 
 action. "God had so honored woman's temper- 
 ance work," Mrs. Foster says, "that I believe 
 she was confused with expectation of a popular 
 uprising under the leadership of the W. C. T 
 U. with her at its head." 
 
 "A great party hurled from power in '84, 
 the speedy dominance of the third party, the 
 enfranchisement of women and the overthrow 
 of the liquor traffic, all soon following, were 
 they to be successive stages in the victorious 
 march which should usher her in as the nation 
 deliverer ? ' ' 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 259 
 
 Convinced of her leader's "political lunacy" 
 and suspecting her ambition, Mrs. Foster's 
 loyalty began to weaken. Then, under the 
 party policy, legislative action was ordered 
 which she would have to conduct. She resigned 
 from her official relation to the National 
 Union. She "did this with reluctance, for she 
 loved the women and loved the work, but there 
 was no other honorable course open to her." 
 
 Her own state was ready to stand by her 
 for weal or woe. At the next annual meeting 
 it elected her president of the Iowa Union. 
 And at the National Convention, 1885, in Phila- 
 delphia, Iowa ranked solidly behind her in a 
 protest: "With a deep sense of grave respon- 
 sibility and with a conviction of duty so over- 
 mastering that it will not permit us to be silent, 
 we solemnly, and in the presence of Him whose 
 name we bear, protest against the action of this 
 Convention in (committing this Christian or- 
 ganization to the aid and support of a political 
 party." Mrs. Foster's reasons were stated. 
 The women signed : 
 
 Here we stand; 
 
 We can do no other; 
 
 So help us God. Amen. 
 
 The same protest was offered in '86 and again 
 in '87. Then in 1888 at New York, while Mrs. 
 Foster was on the floor and speaking, someone 
 moved the previous question. Miss Willard, in 
 the chair, sustained the previous question, and 
 Iowa was thereby denied the right to be heard. 
 
260 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 In a letter to "Dear Judith," Miss Willard 
 claims, "In every parliamentary ruling I 
 acted up to my knowledge and light. . . . 
 Believe me, ever with an earnest purpose to do 
 right, your friend and sister.' Mrs. Foster, 
 however, replied coldly, pointing to the injus- 
 tice done her and her state, and plainly dates 
 the end of their friendship by closing, "With 
 tender memories of the days of 'Auld Lang 
 Syne.' " 
 
 The final split was now very near. The sum- 
 mer following, Iowa refused its dues to the na- 
 tional treasury, claiming they were diverted 
 for third party political work. In the fall con- 
 vention of the National Union at Chicago, a 
 resolution was read to the effect that anyone 
 unfriendly to the third party "is hereby de- 
 clared disloyal to our organization. 7 Many, 
 even of Miss Willard 's own retainers, felt that 
 this was straining the national authority; and 
 as the reading finished, all eyes turned upon 
 the section where the Iowa delegation sat. At 
 least they would try to obstruct the procedure. 
 But no; obstruction was too mild! There was 
 a moment of silence; then a murmur; then a 
 general rustling; then a figure, that of Mrs. 
 Foster, stood in the midst of the delegation; 
 she spoke a few words, short and firm ; and the 
 small knot of women arose, moved into the 
 aisle ; and with Mrs. Foster at their head they 
 silently filed through the door which swung to 
 upon an assembly that had not yet begun to 
 breathe. 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 261 
 
 Iowa had seceded from the National lUnion. 
 Judith Ellen Foster had disrupted the great- 
 est organization of women that the world, up 
 to that time, had seen. Were they not right 
 who said that henceforth woman's influence for 
 social righteousness was to be exerted in a dif- 
 ferent way? 
 
 It is generally agreed that with this break 
 the Woman's Christian Temperance Union 
 passed the crest of its power and began the 
 descent. For the decline of the organization, 
 Mrs. Foster was bitterly blamed. She was 
 called a "disturber of the peace," a "Judas," 
 a "sender of spurious reports/ a "receiver 
 of bribes." She defended herself by logic and 
 plain statement without a flash of temper or 
 a tinge of malice. She persistd in her own 
 course, even while the W. C. T. U. dashed itself 
 upon the rocks, "for the cause of temperance,' 
 she said, "is dearer to me than that Union.' 
 And since no temperance law has ever been en- 
 acted, by a Prohibition Party, but many by gen- 
 eral non-partisan vote, history seems to uphold 
 her judgment. 
 
 It was not long after this that on a trip to 
 England she heard from Hannah Whitall 
 Smith the contents of an unpublished book, 
 "The Philosophy Of Fanaticism." She wrote 
 in her diary, "Hannah says people become 
 fanatics because they listen to one voice they 
 think it the voice of God in the soul. She says 
 we must not take any new position in matters 
 
262 HEKOINES OF MODERN PROGEESS 
 
 of faitH and conduct till four voices unite in 
 approval and direction. These voices are 
 
 The voice of Scripture. 
 The voice of the spirit within. 
 The voice of circumstance. 
 The voice of common sense. 
 
 "When these unite, go ahead; when even one 
 is lacking, stay where you are. I have known 
 some of the same and similar instances of ship- 
 wreck of noble craft. ' ' 
 
 The W. C. T. IL, in Mrs. Foster's opinion, 
 may have heard the voices of Scripture and the 
 spirit within; but it assuredly had not heeded 
 those of circumstance and common sense. 
 Mrs. Foster acknowledged the claims of these 
 two latter guides also. For them she had 
 divided the Temperance Union, though, as she 
 said, it "almost broke her heart.' But with 
 them she was rounding out her character and 
 preparing herself for her greatest work. 
 
 This dissension from the Prohibition Party 
 alliance did not mean that Mrs. Foster reposed 
 no faith in politics. On the contrary, she 
 favored working with every party that would 
 help disable the saloon. "In absolute fealty to 
 religious conviction and patriotic devotion, I 
 advise every temperance woman to lend her in- 
 fluence to that party which she believes gives 
 the best embodiment of prohibition principles 
 and will most surely protect the home." In 
 some localities the Prohibition Party might do 
 this, in others the Democratic, in others the 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 263 
 
 Republican. For her, privately, "I most un- 
 qualifiedly state that I believe the Republican 
 Party does this. Nine-tenths of the voting 
 temperance sentiment of the country Is em- 
 bodied in the Republican Party. " 
 
 Mrs. Foster had always been a Republican. 
 She believed that "that party is the party of 
 action ; its breath is progress ; its speech is the 
 language of the world; its dialect the rhetoric 
 of the home and the farm and the shop.' In 
 that conviction she had, in 1884, spoken in ad- 
 vocacy of the election of Blaine. 
 
 She now saw yet another reason for adher- 
 ence to the party. "Its heroic constituencies 
 are the thinking, moving, vital elements of 
 American life. It holds within its ranks the 
 armies of all reforms" among others, the 
 greatest number of temperance men. Hence 
 she ought to maintain it in office, as against its 
 rivals which aggregated less temperance senti- 
 ment. 
 
 She could not, of course, ask it to insert a 
 prohibition plank in its platform. Temper- 
 ance, as she had said, was a moral question, for 
 all people to consider on a moral plane, wholly 
 apart from their views on tariff and soft 
 money. It was as far above the Republicans, 
 as a party, as it was above the Prohibitionists, 
 as a party. To marry the moral question and 
 the political party would be quite too gro- 
 tesque; it would mean the subjection of onfe and 
 perhaps, in the end, the ruin of both. 
 
 Nor did she wish to tie the W. C. T. U. as 
 
264 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 an organization to the party she favored. 
 What she had said of the other alliance held 
 true here as well. Such an affiliation was im- 
 practical to begin with. And then, one might 
 as well ask all W. C. T. U. women to join the 
 Methodist church, if it should happen to take 
 an advanced position on the temperance ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Her theory was this, merely: the Republican 
 Party, seated in power for its strictly political 
 doctrines, would from mere weight of moral 
 excellence in its ranks, do more for temper- 
 ance as individuals than any other party 
 could. It would do more, too, for various other 
 reforms. Therefore she ought to support it. 
 Especially ought she to support it against any 
 such impotent combination as the Prohibition 
 Party and the fond, misguided W. C. T. U. 
 
 This reason, added to her previous love for 
 Republicanism, determined Mrs. Foster now 
 to throw herself actively into partisan politics. 
 
 There was, furthermore, a definite new field 
 to cultivate the W. C. T. U. had shown her 
 it the field of non-voting women. The vote 
 swung for the Prohibitionists by the Temper- 
 ance Union and the disintegration caused in the 
 rival parties had revealed what women could 
 do in partisan politics. Wives could influence 
 their husbands who perhaps had less time 
 than they to read and think. Mothers could 
 guide the minds of their growing sons, to the 
 vast advantage of both. For "happy is that 
 mother whose ability to help her child continues 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTEE 265 
 
 on from babyhood and manhood into maturity. 
 Blessed is the son who need not ]eave his 
 mother at the threshold of the world's activi- 
 ties, but may always and everywhere have her 
 help. . . . Such mothers and such sons 
 shall bring to the nation, which is only the 
 larger home, a priceless benediction.' 
 
 The problem, then, was to lead women to 
 think and act sanely on political issues with 
 the unanimity and enthusiasm that they had 
 shown for party prohibition. Evidently as- 
 sociation, on the plan of the Temperance Union 
 itself, to instruct the women and prick them 
 into action was the first necessity. The men 
 already had such in their Republican clubs. 
 And the president of the National Association 
 of Republican Clubs was Clarkson of Iowa, Mrs. 
 Foster's close friend. 
 
 Mrs. Foster's mind was made up. The Re- 
 publican Party was then strong and buoyant. 
 It then carried doctrines worth preservation. 
 And women, wisely generaled, could probably 
 give it appreciable help. In 1888 Mrs. Foster 
 laid these propositions before the National Re- 
 publican Committee. It met her more than 
 half way. In the woman's own simple story, 
 "Headquarters were opened and a general 
 woman's campaign begun. The national colors 
 floated from the window, bearing the legend, 
 'The Woman's National Republican Associa- 
 tion and Harrison and Morton.' Of this as- 
 sociation Mrs. Foster was president. 
 
 That year a quantity of partisan literature 
 
266 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 was strewn through the country, speakers were 
 sent out, and numerous clubs were organized. 
 In many instances, says Mrs. Foster, "they 
 turned the tide for the Republican ticket." 
 After the election Mrs. Foster opened a law 
 office in Washington. Then in 1892 she again 
 brought out her woman's association, fully or- 
 ganized, safely financed, and backed with the 
 confidence of the party to do a thing new in 
 history. 
 
 She first went to the national convention of 
 the party in Minneapolis. She hoped to bring 
 her work before that body, but considered the 
 project too bold. It was managed, however, 
 and to her surprise she was led to the platform 
 and introduced. "Such a gathering of in- 
 telligence is not often witnessed/ she com- 
 ments. "I cannot describe my emotions as I 
 found myself before that vast sea of faces. 
 The physical effort to make them hear took a 
 little from the pleasure of speaking, so that 
 I cannot say I enjoyed it, but of course, I was 
 very thankful for the opportunity. The con- 
 vention expressed its approval by cheers and 
 otherwise, and we were all satisfied and happy. 
 I cannot wholly realize as I am writing it, what 
 a triumph it was. It is the first honor of the 
 kind ever conferred upon a woman.' 
 
 With this assurance, she deputed women to 
 build up local clubs, and fifteen state clubs that 
 year acknowledged the headship of the na- 
 tional. The object of these was "to unite the 
 women of this community in educational work 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTEE 267 
 
 and social influence for the maintenance of the 
 principles of the Republican party in the home, 
 in the state and in the nation.' The women 
 were to study, discuss, and circulate party 
 literature, exert all honorable pressure upon 
 voters, especially first voters, and, above all, 
 use their own ballot at every election for which 
 women might qualify. 
 
 Second, the association carried on an exten- 
 sion course of political education. It recom- 
 mended "The Home And The Flag Reading 
 Course," a set of books non-partisan on 
 history, civil government and economics. It 
 followed up these with "The Home And The 
 Flag" series of papers and pamphlets, full of 
 political news and argument. To stimulate 
 study, it offered prizes for the best essays writ- 
 ten by women on governmental topics. 
 
 The association assisted, finally, in any im- 
 portant local election. In states where women 
 could vote, sample Australian ballots were is- 
 sued; and in the kitchen tete-a-tete, the parlor 
 conference, and the general rally, women were 
 taught how to mark them. Mrs. Foster, helped 
 by other women, invaded the states on a tour 
 of campaign speaking. At one place the street 
 parade was reckoned over a mile and a quarter 
 in length. It was led by automobiles, wherein 
 rode the town dignitaries in broadcloth and 
 high hats, and brass bands that mingled 
 "America" with "Annie Laurie," and the lat- 
 est ragtime. There followed a procession of 
 floats, filled with children all in white, who 
 
268 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 feverishly waved bouquets and banners with 
 symbolistic devices. Then came a troop of 
 young women on horseback, attended by horse- 
 men as a guard of honor. And last, another 
 band and a mob of boys running, falling, shout- 
 ing, half choked and hidden in the dust. All 
 these wended their way to the courthouse 
 square, where J. Ellen Foster, a woman poli- 
 tician, was to address them from the steps. 
 
 So drums, banners, and red fire, dusty train, 
 stuffy hotel, and steaming auditorium, tele- 
 gram, interview, caucus, and hurried address 
 before vociferous throngs of both men and 
 women these were the things through which 
 Mrs. Foster now continually moved. Occa- 
 sionally a reporter grew facetious, or remem- 
 bered his gallantry, and spoke of the rustle of 
 silks, the gloved applause, or the head usher, 
 11 ^ marked blonde, whose deep blue eyes make 
 the men do her bidding.' But generally it was 
 remarked that in the steady march of Mrs. Fos- 
 ter 's logic, people forgot whether they were 
 men or women, and knew only they were voters. 
 And many of them were voters of a different 
 persuasion from that in which they entered the 
 hall. 
 
 In a non-suffrage state the fire was directed 
 at women in the homes, who, it was expected, 
 would bring their men about. With Helen 
 Boswell, Secretary of the Association, Mrs. 
 Foster carried out in New York city, a tene- 
 ment house canvass which still stands a classic 
 example of women's party work. Miss Bos- 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 269 
 
 well had headquarters on Broadway, and sixty 
 women helpers. Daily they swept down upon 
 the foreign East side, taking it block by block, 
 street by street, house by house and, as was 
 necessary in the congested parts literally 
 room by room. While mothers rocked cradles 
 with their feet and with their hands sewed but- 
 tons onto shirts, the women talked to them of 
 school, street cleaning, and health protection. 
 When younger women came home fagged from 
 their day in the department store or the factory, 
 the canvassers met them with the party prom- 
 ises concerning labor. As a final measure, 
 Miss Boswell boiled down the questions of the 
 hour into brief, simple pamphlets in all lan- 
 guages, and put them into the hands of the 
 children, who might read them to their parents. 
 
 So, a man coming home at night, slightly 
 fuddled with promises and a cheap cigar, the 
 souvenirs of a street-corner harangue by a 
 ward heeler for the opposition, would walk into 
 a united family who also had promises, but, in- 
 stead of cigars, had reasons. He was indeed 
 an egotist if he did not change his mind. As 
 a matter of fact he generally did change his 
 mind, as was shown on election day. Wards 
 went Republican that had returned big Tam- 
 many majorities for a quarter of a century. 
 
 Working by these several means, Mrs. Fos- 
 ter earned wide repute as a woman in politics 
 a useful ally and a dangerous opponent. In 
 election after election, it was conceded that she 
 turned the scale in various states for Repub- 
 
270 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 licanism. Most candidates took pains to secure 
 her alliance in the early preliminaries of the 
 contest. A senator-elect, foreseeing opposition 
 when he came to be seated, wrote to her pro- 
 testing his good faith. A presidential candi- 
 date refused to discuss his religious creed with 
 her, lest it rob him of her friendship. "I re- 
 joice in your friendship," he added, "and I 
 rejoice in your faith in me, and I hope always 
 to have the benefit of your advice and sym- 
 pathy. " 
 
 But her eminence as J. Ellen Foster was 
 nothing compared to her eminence as a woman 
 and a representative of women. For she had 
 done what few before her had even dreamed of 
 doing. She had made woman a recognized fac- 
 tor in party politics and in the party govern- 
 ment of a nation. 
 
 Other women were asking for the suffrage, 
 deeming that essential before political work 
 could begin. Mrs. Foster desired the suffrage 
 too; but she knew it would, in some states, be 
 a long while coming; and she insisted that 
 meanwhile woman, just as she was, should have 
 a political education and assert herself as a 
 person to whom government is a natural in- 
 terest. She prepared the way for the general 
 participation of non-voting women in partisan 
 politics as in the presidential campaign of 
 1912. J. Ellen Foster made woman conscious 
 of herself as a political being. In winning 
 prominence for herself, therefore, she opened 
 a vast new room in the house of womanhood. 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 271 
 
 She was still, in all essentials, the quiet, 
 motherly person she had always been. Her 
 personality, a journalist observes, pervaded 
 even the national headquarters. "No ser- 
 geant-at-arms or pert office boy stepped forward 
 to inquire the caller's business. No tobacco 
 smoke hung mistily, obscuring the view. No 
 excited groups harangued and argued in hoarse 
 whispers. No frock-coated statesmen hurried 
 in and out, winding their ways through lanes 
 of shaking hands. No messenger boys dashed 
 among the throng, waving telegrams from high 
 personages. The babel of noises, the rapid 
 shifting of groups were absent. " 
 
 As to her religion all this time it was dur- 
 ing this period that, being in Boston, she took 
 the communion in a strange church, and wrote 
 in her journal, "The wine, I am sorry to say, 
 was the wine of commerce and fermented, so 
 I could only touch my lips in honor of the thing 
 symbolized, while I repudiated the symbol it- 
 self." And on the very Sunday before she 
 addressed the National ^Republican Convention 
 at Minneapolis she spoke on temperance in 
 the Baptist church, and on Tuesday and Wed- 
 nesday of the same week, at the Methodist 
 church. 
 
 No, she was not less what she had been ; she 
 still gave heed to the voices of Scripture and 
 conscience, but she had learned to obey two 
 others also. These estranged her from certain 
 people and groups of people with a high moral 
 purpose; but they qualified her for service of 
 
272 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 high moral purpose and accomplishment in 
 politics, a science of Circumstance and Com- 
 mon Sense. She had made her piety so prac- 
 tical that it combined with and helped control 
 the greatest practical organization in the world. 
 
 As Mrs. Foster was the first, she remained 
 the only president of the Woman's Republican 
 Association, until her death, August 11, 1910. 
 She did not, however, spend all her strength 
 in the ferment of campaign year. In her last 
 period, she seemed to shoulder all labors pos- 
 sible to womankind. 
 
 She was Advocate General for the National 
 Relief Association that aided the Red Cross 
 of the board of managers of which she was 
 long a member in Cuba. She was delegate 
 for the United States, to a Red Cross Conven- 
 tion in St. Petersburg. She accompanied the 
 Taft party to the Philippines, and, at President 
 Roosevelt's request, looked privately into the 
 status of women and children in the islands. 
 Her recommendations, quickly translated into 
 executive orders, played no small part in the 
 educational and economic remaking of the 
 people of the islands. She then remained in 
 the orient and toured the remote mission sta- 
 tions, to lecture in them and to study their 
 works. 
 
 On her return to America, Mrs. Foster as- 
 sumed the support of an orphan boy in the mis- 
 sion school at Pekin. She was elected trustee 
 of her church, and assistant superintendent of 
 Sunday-school. She interested herself in the 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 273 
 
 local Y. W. C. A. Incessantly busy as she was 
 with big things, she crowded her spare minutes 
 with small things, which she appeared to love 
 no less. At the end, she was ill only four hours 
 before she died; people said she had not had 
 time to be ill. But besides all these activities, 
 there were some of another class in Mrs. Fos- 
 ter's latest period. They began back in the 
 period of the Spanish War. The American 
 volunteers had mobilized in a few large stations 
 before starting to Cuba. The sanitation was 
 bad in the barracks, and the food ill-selected, 
 and men were dying of fever. Just what were 
 the conditions and what their cause, and what 
 could be done for instant remedy? The govern- 
 ment had to know. McKinley, strange to say, 
 turned to a woman, J. Ellen Foster. She in- 
 spected the stations and reported. The gov- 
 ernment, without further question, ordered im- 
 provements that checked the fever, and saved 
 the men for the war and for their homes. 
 
 This prompt obedience to her words caused 
 Mrs. Foster to stop and think. She had in her 
 time used many agencies for doing good. But 
 here 
 
 She was still thinking when a letter came to 
 her from a Mrs. Black of Nebraska. The 
 soldiers were returning from the war; in the 
 receiving station at Montauk Point they were 
 dying by the score; and those that died were 
 buried there within a day or two of home. 
 Leslie Black was among the victims and his 
 mother wanted his body sent home. There 
 
274 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 was nothing she would not give to have it done ! 
 What, asked the letter, would Mrs. Foster ad- 
 vise? Mrs. Foster did not wait to advise, but 
 went to President McKinley. Leslie Black 
 was sent home; and in a few days an order 
 went out that all Leslie Blacks should be 
 transported to their own people for burial. 
 Yes, there was no doubt of it ; Mrs. Foster had 
 learned to use another great instrument for 
 good the United States Government. 
 
 It must have pleased her then in 1906 when 
 Roosevelt detailed her to study the condition 
 of woman and child workers throughout the 
 nation. Her findings were conveyed to the 
 President in a confidential report that fur- 
 nished the basis for influencing national and 
 state action ; but Mrs. Foster did not stop with 
 a mere report. Working actively in many dif- 
 ferent ways "lobbying," writing, speaking, 
 educating, she mothered legislation for the 
 protection of the child and woman worker. An 
 opportunity to further the cause came when 
 she was made chairman of the committee on 
 child labor of the National Society of the 
 Daughters of the American Revolution; "we 
 will study the past not to boast we are de- 
 scended from its heroes, but to show ourselves 
 worthy of the inheritance they left us,' she 
 announced. For the Federal Children's 
 Bureau, created a year and more after her 
 death, she labored hard. But she saw that 
 thorough-going national child labor legislation 
 was impossible for the present; without ceas- 
 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTEE 275 
 
 ing tactfully and quietly to urge it, she threw 
 her energy into the advocacy of state laws to 
 protect the young worker and the weak. Again, 
 she showed that she heard the Four Voices and 
 not two alone. 
 
 In 1908, finally, Mrs. Foster was appointed 
 special agent of the Department of Justice to 
 inspect United States criminals in the federal 
 and state prisons. The office was an old one. 
 Men had held it for years and done or left un- 
 done their duties so peacefully that, with an 
 exception or two, the world knew them not. 
 Mrs. Foster, however, was proud with her 
 power, a new power for a woman. She in- 
 spected with her eyes open; and her revela- 
 tions were the sensation of a year. Eight in 
 the District of Columbia the prisoners were 
 crowded, unclean, and feeding from tin 
 troughs little better than those Elizabeth 
 Fry saw in Newgate jail a hundred years 
 before. The women prisoners were espe- 
 cially unfortunate. Many prison boards, com- 
 posed of men, were too lax in disci- 
 pline to do the women good; others were too 
 harsh. Then, there was no federal prison for 
 them and they were farmed out to the differ- 
 ent states, where their teaching was indiffer- 
 ent, and they were confined in tiny, sunless 
 cells. 
 
 The Government acted immediately upon 
 Mrs. Foster's report. Orders were given for 
 the enlargement and modernization of the 
 Washington prison and for the erection of a re- 
 
276 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 formatory on a farm near by. A "woman's 
 wing' was put under construction at Leaven- 
 worth, Kansas. "I can turn my mind to noth- 
 ing else,' she wrote. "I am thinking lavato- 
 ries, paint, shelves, stoves and beds. My mind 
 is with the poor women. Think of it; these 
 women are to have a chance to work out in their 
 own grounds and enjoy God's free air and sun- 
 shine.' And it was at her suggestion that the 
 National Prison Labor Committee was formed, 
 to regulate prison labor in the state and na- 
 tion and to study it and apply the conclusions 
 for the benefit of free labor everywhere. 
 
 In effect, Mrs. Foster was able late in life 
 to use for moral or humanitarian ends the most 
 powerful of all organizations, the constituted 
 government. 
 
 She had used many agencies the church, the 
 law, the Temperance Union. When the Union 
 erred in policy she had cut loose from it, to help 
 in politics. Now her political success had 
 given her influence with the officials elected 
 by her party and those officials, as she had 
 boasted, were good men, first in the army of 
 reform : they let her use the powers of govern- 
 ment for the moral works which were to her th 
 real end of living. 
 
 Mrs. Foster in her last years carried on re 
 forms that she never thought of in the early 
 stages of her life. And she carried them on 
 by means that the church worker, the lawyer, 
 even the temperance woman could not have 
 imagined. Her point of pride was now that 
 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 277 
 
 she could get the United States Government to 
 do them for her. She was like one who 
 marches out to battle with a wooden sword, 
 leading a dozen men, and comes back, after 
 victories, fully armed, at the head of an army. 
 
 Two brief incidents of her last years set her 
 character in clear light. There had been a 
 strike of miners in a western state. Mrs. Fos- 
 ter arrived in the town while the strife was 
 yet hot, to make a political speech. She men- 
 tioned the name of a labor leader. The miners 
 cheered. Mrs. Foster let them go on as long 
 as they would. i l All right, ' ' she said. ' ' Cheer 
 him. For he is a man on whom no blood 
 stain rests. He has not desecrated the flag 
 with crimes committed in the name of labor!' 
 
 As she spoke the miners had fallen silent 
 and glum. They were stained with blood; 
 they had desecrated the flag. 
 
 "Now, look here!" the woman cried. 
 
 She snatched a little flag which she always 
 wore on her bosom, and held it high. 
 
 "Here is your flag!" she said. "You have 
 cheered your leader. Cheer this.' 
 
 There was not a sound in the hall. 
 
 "Cheer it," she said firmly. 
 
 Still no sound. 
 
 "I'll wait right here," she said, raising the 
 flag higher, "till you do cheer it. Cheer!' 
 
 Some man found his voice in a faint cry. A 
 dozen hands went up, and a dozen voices 
 shouted. The whole hall arose as a man and 
 for five minutes they cheered while the win- 
 
278 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 dows rattled. The town went Republican in 
 that election, through the miners' admiration 
 for J. Ellen Foster. She had the courage, even 
 while pleading for votes, to stand on her pa- 
 triotism and her sense of right. \ 
 
 The other incident one that occurred on 
 the same trip Mrs. Foster herself relates. 
 "I was in a region of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains. As I was about to get into the carriage, 
 a woman said, 'Did you once live in Iowa and 
 make speeches there!' I answered that I cer- 
 tainly did. 'Well,' she said, 'I thought it was 
 you. I heard you on temperance when I was a 
 little girl. I do not remember the speech at 
 all. But when I went with my mother to speak 
 with you after the lecture, you took my hand 
 and said, 'Who is this sweet faced little girl?' 
 My mother was a good woman, but she did not 
 have much time to make of me. No one ever 
 told me I had a sweet face; I looked in the 
 glass when I went home to see if I really was 
 sweet looking; many a time when I have seen 
 what beauty I had going with weather and hard 
 work, I have said to myself, Mrs. Foster said 
 I was sweet looking little girl, and I'll be sweet 
 whether I look it or not!' 
 
 "I haven't seen the woman since, but I'm glad 
 I told her twenty years ago that she was sweet 
 faced. I resolved that night as I slept in the 
 log cabin on the divide, 'I'll say all the good 
 things I can of every one, and I'll not say an 
 unkind word of anyone!' 
 
 Thus behind all her public work the fever 
 
J. ELLEN FOSTER 279 
 
 of temperance crusades, the pain and worry of 
 secession, the loud excitement of political con- 
 flict, the responsibility of official missions the 
 serene religious background, the thought of 
 God, remained secure. Nor was there any 
 separation of her life into compartments; for 
 it was always out of that background that her 
 public deeds one by one naturally emerged. 
 
 She declared the roundedness of woman's 
 character: her right to work in politics, and 
 through politics and government for great re- 
 forms. Yet that was not entirely for an end 
 in itself; it was for "the overthrow of all sin 
 and the setting up of the Kingdom of Christ in 
 this dear land of ours." 
 

 JANE ADDAMS 
 
 WHEN Jane Addams was three and a half 
 years old, she, one day coming home 
 from play, saw two flags waving above the 
 gate posts of her father's yard an American 
 flag and a flag of black. She sped tip the 
 gravel walk and into the house. "What were 
 the flags there for?" Her father answered 
 solemnly and with tears, that the greatest man 
 in the world had died. That man had been 
 Mr. Addams' personal friend. His name was 
 Lincoln. 
 
 The incident laid hold of the little girl's 
 fancy not so much because of Lincoln's mar- 
 tyrdom as because of her father's intimacy 
 with him. And of another occasion when Mr. 
 Addams was plunged into gloom over the death 
 of Joseph Mazzini, the Italian patriot, she says, 
 "I was filled with pride that I knew a man 
 who held converse with great minds, and who 
 really sorrowed and rejoiced over happenings 
 across the sea." 
 
 In her childish eyes, this father was great in 
 his own right, too. He was a state senator in 
 Illinois, a respected miller in Cedarville, and, 
 above all, a man of imposing figure, and a 
 grave Quaker mien. What small girl would 
 not venerate him? Whether she studied in the 
 village school, as she did in winter, or rambled 
 
 280 
 
 
JANE ADDAMS 281 
 
 in summer over the beautiful country around 
 Cedarville, the sense of his superiority lay 
 heavy upon her. It was doubtless in tribute to 
 some of his teachings that she and her step- 
 brother reared an altar by the mill stream, and 
 thither brought for sacrifice all the snakes they 
 could kill, from weary distances, "dangling 
 between two sticks. " She so much admired 
 his miller's thumb that in order to flatten hers 
 in the same way she would sit for hours by 
 the revolving mill stones rubbing the crushed 
 grain. At night, when she had told a false- 
 hood, she could not sleep until she slipped from 
 her room and defied all the perils of a cold, 
 dark stair and hallway, to confess at his bed- 
 side. 
 
 Sometimes her pride in him had a curious 
 effect upon herself. In person undersized and 
 delicate, she imagined she was unfit for his 
 company. When strangers were to visit the 
 Sunday-school, she prayed they might not asso- 
 ciate him, the handsome and famous parent, 
 with her, the homely girl. And to lessen the 
 chance of such a disgrace for him, she would 
 forego the churchward trip at his side and walk 
 with her less distinguished uncle. 
 
 But this humility was soon banished. One 
 afternoon on the main street of a neighboring 
 city she met him coming out of a bank. The 
 street was thronged with people of wealth and 
 
 ] uon. Happily, she thought, none of them 
 were aware of her connection with the gentle- 
 V'l the high silk hat. But what did he do, 
 
 
282 HEROINES OF MODEEN PROGRESS 
 
 this exalted being, but doff his hat and swing 
 it wide, and bow imposingly, right there in 
 the eye of all the public ! 
 
 The truth is that Mr. Addams did not in the 
 least deprecate either the looks or the gifts of 
 his daughter. With all his senatorial pomp he 
 could descend easily to her level. He told her 
 the meaning of the news in the papers; talked 
 familiarly of public men and what they were 
 doing; and in the kindliest way both praised 
 her virtues and confessed her for her sins. 
 "I never recall those early conversations with 
 my father,' Miss Addams says, "nor a score 
 of others like them, but there comes into my 
 mind a line from Mrs. Browning in which a 
 daughter describes her relations with her 
 father : 
 
 He wrapt me in his large man's doublet, 
 
 Careless did it fit or no. ' 
 
 By slow degrees she came to understand his 
 peculiar rule of conduct : that it is the privilege 
 of the strong and the good to demean them- 
 selves simply, if not humbly, and to find points 
 of contact with the lowest. 
 
 And then he had another lesson to teach. 
 One Sunday morning, arrayed in a gorgeous 
 new cloak, she came to him for approval. He 
 said it was a very pretty cloak; but, to her 
 chagrin, he added that she had better wear an 
 old garment instead, because the splendor of 
 this would provoke envy and discontent in 
 other little girls. Those girls, he said, might 
 be as favored as she with education and 
 
JANE ADDAMS 283 
 
 ligion the really important things. But if 
 she paraded her fine clothes it might seem that 
 she was different, and superior and that 
 would be very stupid. The girl laid aside her 
 cloak. It cost her some pangs of self-sacri- 
 fice. But the moral of the incident was clear. 
 As her great parent made himself equal to 
 her, so she must obliterate all divisions be- 
 tween herself and those less fortunate. 
 
 Yet this equality did not imply any abase- 
 ment of one's own character. Quite the 
 contrary. That she might pattern after the 
 illustrious men of history, Mr. Addams re- 
 warded her five cents for each life of a 
 Plutarch hero that she could report on, and 
 ten cents for each signer of the Declara- 
 ation of Independence. When she fled to him 
 with a confession, he would comment, a bit 
 sternly, that if she told lies he was glad she 
 "felt too bad to go to sleep afterwards." To 
 her eager questions upon religious doctrine he 
 said "it was very important not to pretend to 
 understand what you didn't understand, and 
 that you must always be honest with yourself X 
 inside, whatever happened." And the man's 
 own clear integrity, no doubt, impressed her 
 quite as much as any of his precepts. For it 
 was said of him that he had never been offered 
 a bribe, "because bad men were instinctively 
 afraid of him.' 
 
 Certainly while the girl retained her hold on 
 these principles no effort to seem like other 
 people could dangerously lower her own ex- 
 
284 HEROINES OF MODEEN PEOGRESS 
 
 cellence. Would she retain them or could 
 she, as the ^ears went on, along with a prac- 
 tice of equality? 
 
 At seventeen, Miss Addams entered Rock- 
 ford College. During her four years there, 
 she specialized in history and "mental" and 
 " moral' philosophy. But these improving 
 studies were not the ones that told most upon 
 her career. 
 
 Rockford, like many colleges in those days, 
 drilled its students in religion rather more than 
 in literature and science. Attendance at chapel 
 and Scripture reading was compulsory. Every 
 winter the quiet of the place would be up- 
 heaved by a great revival. A girl who re- 
 mained outside the church ran the risk of being 
 thought either blind or stubborn. The stand- 
 ard of perfection was set by those who joined 
 early and, before graduation, enlisted for the 
 foreign missionary field. 
 
 Jane Addams did not hear the missionary 
 call, nor was she even converted. "I was 
 singularly unresponsive to all these forms of 
 emotional appeal," she says, "although I be- 
 came unspeakably embarrassed when they 
 were presented to me at close range. 7 And 
 yet, in her own way, she grew as fast reli- 
 giously as any of her classmates. 
 - She could not see the truth that others ap- 
 peared to see. Well, then, she would not pre- 
 tend that she saw it. At any hazard she would 
 be "honest with herself inside." That was 
 her father's style of mental honesty, and also 
 
JANE ADDAMS 285 
 
 Emerson's an author whom she revered so 
 much that "in a state of ecstatic energy' she 
 cleaned the overshoes of a mere friend of his 
 who lectured at the college. She could not 
 grasp the faith that her fellows did. There- 
 fore, like her father and Emerson, she would 
 search out an independent faith of her own. 
 In this roundabout way the religious fervor in 
 Kockford ripened unexpected fruit. 
 
 Every Sunday morning Miss Addams read 
 for an hour in the Greek testament in her 
 teacher's room read not by chapter and verse, 
 but an entire gospel at a time. She liked this 
 record of a "wonderful L'fe" of service among 
 the poor, because it seemed to fill out and per- 
 fect the lessons of equality she had already 
 learned at home. And by the close of college 
 Miss Addams resolved that she would not 
 preach to the heathen, but would "live among 
 the poor" in her own land. Her particular 
 service there would be the practice of medi- 
 cine. 
 
 Her liking for science and her views as to 
 the future of women combined to focus her at- 
 tention upon the same profession. She 
 believed in woman's intuition, as an "accurate 
 . perception of truth and justice." But too 
 many women did iot confirm their knowledge 
 by the aid of that in books. They were, there- 
 fore, the subjects /of self deceit and fancy, and 
 they were fated to be disbelieved and rejected. 
 
 To gain accuracy, 
 
 let woman study some physi- 
 
 cal science. 'hen let her test her theories by 
 

 286 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 application in the workaday world. So, she 
 would find her "faculties clear and acute," 
 Miss Addams said grandiloquently in her 
 senior essay, "and her hand upon the magnetic 
 chain of humanity. ' 
 
 The young woman enrolled in a Philadelphia 
 medical college in the fall of 1881. She com- 
 pleted but a single year, however, when a spinal 
 weakness laid her flat in bed and the scientific 
 course had to be given up. But for this 
 chance, Miss Addams would probably have 
 traversed the regular channel into an old and 
 well established profession. As it was, she 
 simply went adrift, with no port in view, and 
 therefore with no inducement either to steer or 
 row. 
 
 What should she do? The physician pre- 
 scribed two years of European travel. Her 
 health made this imperative, but her mind did 
 not wholly consent. She wanted to be at some- 
 thing. Yet, since the " thing" did not take 
 shape, she quieted her discontent with the 
 promise of further education. She would pre- 
 pare and prepare ; no good training could ever 
 come amiss; perhaps the "uture would, pretty 
 soon, miraculously define itself through the 
 mist, and she would steer into an attractive and 
 busy haven. Some misgivings may have 
 troubled her about this kind of navigation. 
 But at present there was nothing else for it. 
 And after all, she frankly loved study and, per- 
 haps, was not sorry to postpone for a while 
 the rough work of investing her talents. 
 
JANE ADDAMS 287 
 
 For two years, then, she made Europe her 
 schoolroom, reading, viewing the art treasures, 
 and collecting beautiful things with which to 
 adorn her Illinois home. She fairly feasted on 
 the accumulations of culture with which 
 Europe had stocked its galleries, apparently 
 for such as she, rich, educated, and with lei- 
 sure to enjoy. 
 
 But unexpectedly a "ghost" appeared at the 
 board where she was dining. One midnight, 
 with a party of tourists, she sat on the top of 
 an omnibus in the great East End slum dis- 
 trict of London. A mob of men and women 
 were gathered round a huckster's cart, their 
 rags and dirt and their haggard faces weirdly 
 lit by the flare of the gas lamps. The huckster 
 was auctioning off a half-decayed cabbage 
 for it was Saturday night, and such vegetables 
 as would not keep till Monday had to go cheap 
 and the hungry people were bidding for it, 
 with upraised hands. The cabbage was flung 
 to the successful bidder. During a brief 
 pause he sat down on the curb and began to 
 devour his prize, raw and unwashed, as it was. 
 Then the higgling recommenced, and the hands 
 went up. "The final impression was not of 
 ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and 
 sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, 
 pathetic, nerveless and workworn, showing 
 white in the uncertain light of the street, and 
 clutching forward for food which was already 
 unfit to eat." 
 
 For weeks after that, Miss Addams "went 
 
288 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 about London almost furtively, afraid to look 
 down narrow streets and alleys lest they dis- 
 close again this hideous human need and 
 misery.' Indeed, she was not dining without 
 her ghost, nor ever could again: the ghost of 
 equality which she had not murdered yet, but, 
 for a time, deserted. How was she persever- 
 ing in the course of life so attractively laid out 
 by her father and by the gospel story? 
 
 The answer shocked her. She was wealthy, 
 she was privileged, yet she viewed poverty and 
 repression from the top of an omnibus, like 
 any spectacle on a stage. She had the wisdom 
 of books and schools and the culture of good 
 society and the fine arts and she was wearing 
 them like a new cloak, flaunting them in the 
 face of unfortunate millions. 
 
 Here Jane Addams experienced a lasting x 
 conversion. What was the use of culture, she \ 
 asked, if it did nothing to "mitigate the suf- j 
 ferings of the world," but rather aggravated/ 
 them. She could not pursue it whole-heart- 
 edly any more. The sense of its futility 
 amounted at times "almost to a paralysis/ It 
 seemed to her she would be happier with 
 nothing unless she could expend what she had 
 for the common good. She would herself 
 rather be an ignoramus and a pauper unless 
 some of those in the midnight mob, with their 
 nervous, workworn hands, could get the things 
 they were reaching after-r-food, leisure, knowl- 
 edge, the things she had in such abundance. 
 A passionate longing laid hold of her to belong 
 
JANE ADDAMS 289 
 
 to some kind of "universal fellowship" in which 
 each member should for once have his rightful 
 share. 
 
 While at home the following summer, Miss 
 Addams was baptized in the village church, 
 which to a great extent stood for the lofty fel- 
 lowship of her desire. But with that she 
 stopped. 
 
 There was the misery, plain enough; but 
 what could she do about it? How should she 
 begin ? The life of the primitive Christian who 
 "went about doing good,' and even more so, 
 that of mediaeval imitators was wholly inade- 
 quate, in our day, the day of social distresses 
 as wide as the world. There was no process 
 out of the church or in it that could be made 
 to serve. Well, she would go ahead preparing. 
 So for five or six years more she continued 
 her unhappy quest for culture. But every- 
 where now the old ghost rose up before her. 
 The rich were so rich and the poor so very 
 pOor; the learned knew so much and the igno- 
 rant were so like dumb beasts; and both, to 
 judge from her own experience, were so dis- 
 contented ! 
 
 Yes, the rich were as discontented as the 
 poor. For Miss Addams was slowly coming 
 to the conclusion that her life was, after all, an 
 empty one. She had seen pictures, and heard 
 nr:sic and read books ^ but she had not lived. 
 S .'} Ir^d not worked at any useful toil not 
 earned her bread, or produced merchantable 
 goods. She had not been hungry, or cold, or 
 
290 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 tired; nor any more had she thrilled in the 
 morning with eagerness or anxiety for the task 
 to be done. She had not kept house or raised 
 children, or waited at sick bedsides, or worried 
 over the price of milk. She had not concerned 
 herself with a ward election, or the paving of a 
 street, or the appointment of a new school 
 teacher. These were the kind of things com- 
 mon people did every day. These were real ex- 
 periences. How much more satisfactory they 
 must be than the mere reading of a book about 
 experience! How gladly she would exchange 
 some of her shadowy book learning for the 
 hearty enjoyment of really being and doing 
 something. 
 
 In this state of mind, she at last began to cast 
 about for an occupation. Was there no way 
 in which a woman, who had a plethora of study, 
 but who longed for the experience of life itself, 
 could restore the balance? Could she not, 
 somehow, go and live among poor people who 
 had all too much experience, and were over- 
 whelmed by it, and stupefied? Could she not 
 make fair exchange with them so that each 
 would have as much as any? Could she not 
 appoint a clearing house for social democracy? 
 
 Miss Addams had already begun to think of 
 renting a house in the slums of Chicago, when 
 she heard of Toynbee Hall. This was an in- 
 stitution in London, founded a few years 
 earlier, by Oxford men; and the "residents" in 
 the Hall, so far as she could learn, were do- 
 ing precisely what she wanted to do. 
 
 
JANE ADDAMS 
 
JANE ADDAMS 291 
 
 Then, at a critical juncture, came the young 
 woman's second "conversion." She witnessed 
 a bull fight in Madrid. It was a gory fray, but 
 she enjoyed it while it lasted. Then reaction 
 followed. "In deep distress I felt myself tried 
 and condemned, not only for this disgusting ex- 
 perience but by the entire moral situation which . 
 it revealed. ' ' She had pretended to herself ' 
 that she wanted to reform something. Maybe 
 she did, a little. But here she was still study- 
 ing; still cheering at bloody bull fights, gazing 
 curiously at hungry hordes from the top of 
 omnibuses! Worse, she was still contenting 
 herself with the mere reports and pictures of 
 things. In actual experience the silliest shop 
 girl of the slums was richer than she. Her life 
 was empty of all but the ornaments. That con- 
 demnation was enough. She made up her mind 
 that, ' t come what would, ' ' she would begin the 
 very next day to carry out her plan. 
 
 She talked it over with her traveling com- 
 panion, Miss Starr. It became tangible. A 
 month later she set out for Toynbee Hall to 
 gather suggestions there. She had some work 
 in hand and she was happy. "I had confidence 
 that, although life itself might contain many 
 difficulties, the period of mere passive recep- 
 tivity had come to an end, and I had at last fin- 
 ished with the everlasting ' preparation for life/ 
 however ill-prepared I might be." 
 
 In 1889 Miss Addams secured a house in a 
 depressed industrial quarter of Chicago. She 
 named it Hull House, after the builder and one- 
 
292 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 time occupant. It was a hospitable looking old 
 place, with a piazza on three sides and a wide 
 hall and open fire-places. Miss Addams and 
 her friend, Miss Starr, furnished it with the 
 spoils of their European rambles, with prints 
 and photographs and handsome tables and 
 chairs and book cases, just as they would have 
 done in a fashionable district. In every way 
 they humored their cultivated and fastidious 
 tastes, for this was to be their home. Then 
 when all was ready, they spread open the doors, 
 and in a gracious, neighborly tone invited the 
 poor to "come see them.' 
 
 Now the difficulty of her undertaking was 
 probably greater even than Miss Addams had 
 foreseen. Her wealth and culture were indeed 
 fabulous to the humble under-strata of society. 
 Their indigence and their mental stupor were 
 no more comprehensible to her. Could they 
 ever unite in genuine sympathy! Moreover, 
 the barrier in Chicago was twice as high as be- 
 tween two such classes in London; for most of 
 the poor here were also foreign, speaking a 
 strange language, wedded to old-world customs, 
 and generally mistrustful of the American-born 
 who hemmed in their little colony on all sides. 
 The people surrounding Hull House were Irish, 
 Greeks, Russians, Poles and Boheniians- 
 thirty-six distinct nationalities. Could she, the 
 daughter of an American home and an Ameri- 
 can college, clear away that barrier? Intelli- 
 gent men said no her whole scheme was quite 
 quixotic. But others, especially young men 
 
JANE ADDAMS 293 
 
 and women, top-heavy like herself with educa- 
 tion and eager for an outlet in useful activity, 
 flocked to her door to offer help. So she 
 began. 
 
 In the vicinity of Hull House lived many 
 mothers, with families of small children, who 
 had, perforce, become active bread-winners. 
 Some of these women worked at home finish- 
 ing garments, for example where two or three 
 babies tumbling under their feet were a grave 
 encumbrance. Others worked in factories and 
 left their youthful offspring all day without at- 
 tention. In either case the parents spoke a 
 foreign language and preserved foreign cus- 
 toms in their homes ; so that the children, when 
 they came of public school age, were years 
 behind American-born pupils. Here seemed a 
 practicable opening. For the women would 
 favor anything that lightened the drawbacks 
 of their wage earning. And they would snatch 
 at anything that removed the handicaps from 
 their children. "It's different in America,' 
 they would say, "a boy gets left if he isn't 
 educated." 
 
 Miss Addams started, for the younger chil- 
 dren, a day nursery, where, for five cents each, 
 they could be properly fed and amused, during 
 the mother's working hours. For those a lit- 
 tle older she started a kindergarten. And a 
 true child's garden it was, where they played 
 with their dolls, fashioned artistic things of 
 paper and sand, talked to and, if they would, 
 climbed up to kisa the madonna pictures on 
 
294: HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 the wall, and heard stories of all the heroes of 
 history and myth. 
 
 The foreign women who had been accus- 
 tomed to think of Americans as stand-offish 
 and insolent, at first naturally suspected some 
 deep plot behind this kindness. It was the 
 strangest thing! The primitive Christians, 
 some of them knew, and certain orders of 
 monks and nuns had made it their glory to bear 
 the tribulations of the poor but not modern 
 people of culture! No, there must be some 
 hidden motive. 
 
 But the plot, if there was one, remained 
 dark. Motive or no motive, here was help to 
 be had for next to nothing. The women and 
 the men, too, began to trust Hull House and to 
 rely upon it for aid. One day a Greek 
 woman 's infant was stricken with n unknown 
 illness; her husband was from home; she had 
 no medicine and no money to fee a doctor ; she 
 bundled the baby into a shawl and ran to Hull 
 House and to her joy the life was saved. An 
 Italian I ride of fifteen, whose husband abused 
 her because she had lost her wedding ring, 
 sought refuge and counsel at the House. A 
 man shuffled into the office hoping for light on 
 the legal phase of a piece of business, or mar- 
 riage, or burial, or what not. In brief, it was 
 little by little understood that Miss Addams ) 
 and her associates were " ready to perform the / 
 humblest neighborhood services/' In the 
 chaos and hurry of a great industrial city, they 
 were ready to play the neighbor and friend and 
 
JANE ADDAMS 295 
 
 generous helper as people so often do in a 
 country village. 
 
 With this confidence established, the " set- 
 tlers, " as the women called themselves, could 
 enlarge their programme. They grouped into 
 a club a few young people who read "Romola" 
 aloud, and found it quite to their fancy. Miss 
 Addams did not wait for a second revelation. 
 She went to the Chicago Public Library, and 
 persuaded it to locate a branch in the House. 
 The result may be inferred from the words of 
 one young man: "It was the first house I had 
 ever been in where books and magazines just 
 lay around as if there were plenty of them in 
 the world, and it changed the whole aspect of 
 life for me to know people who regarded read- 
 ing as a reasonable occupation." 
 
 The settlers formed classes in drawing and 
 modeling, and built a room for the exhibition 
 of paintings; and both were "enthusiastically 
 visited by hundreds of people from the neigh- 
 borhood. " Then they arranged a series of 
 free Sunday afternoon concerts and lectures, 
 all of a high quality. A gymnasium and a 
 playground were provided for the young whose 
 games had all been played upon the streets. 
 Sewing and cooking classes were opened for 
 girls who could not learn their domestic sci- 
 ence at home. The mothers were taught, very 
 tactfully, to feed their children oatmeal for 
 breakfast instead of bread soaked in tea or 
 wine, and for diseases resulting from unclean- 
 liness, to bathe them instead of hanging a 
 
296 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 charm about their necksj[ In regard to the cof- 
 fee house, which sold a scientific diet, one 
 woman said she didn't like to eat what was 
 nourishing, she liked to eat "what she'd 
 ruther;' but the patronage of this enterprise, 
 as of all the others, steadily increased. 
 
 In a very short space of time, then, Miss 
 Addams had satisfied herself on one question 
 that had vexed her eight idle years. It really 
 was possible to utilize one's culture. The 
 people, in all their destitution, had a lusty, if 
 not a refined appetite for the better products 
 of civilization. The people could rise. Like 
 anyone else in the world, all they needed was a 
 friend. And it was possible for her so far to 
 find a plane of equality with them that she 
 could be that friend. 
 
 A few people still cocked a weather eye for 
 the secret plot that ought to underlie this phi- 
 lanthropy. They would be asked for their 
 vote, they thought, or the "prayer meeting 
 snap" would come in somewhere it was 
 only a * ' question of time. ' But the second 
 class of activities at Hull House left not 
 an inch of ground for the doubters to stand 
 on. 
 
 lit did not suffice Miss Addams to give away 
 her culture. She wanted something in return. 
 She wanted to participate in the hearty, every- 
 day life of the people. She suspected that 
 their work and play, their sorrow and joy, 
 would come a great deal nearer one's heart and 
 be longor remembered than any of the insiab- 
 
JANE ADDAMS 297 
 
 stantial ideas she had acquired from booksj 
 But how could she obtain a little portion of 
 this experience! 
 
 Not easily, she saw. For the people were 
 isolated, and did not even share each other's 
 experience. The people were lonely. Every- 
 where they were lonely. An aged man and 
 woman, whose children had settled elsewhere, 
 had to while away the long days with only 
 their melancholy thoughts for company. 
 Young people from the country could not knit 
 up true friendships among self-centered tene- 
 ment dwellers. Families who, to get cheap 
 rent, had to live in the quarter, but who prided 
 themselves on their connections outside, 
 sneered at the unpretentious residents of their 
 street, and would not "mix' with them. The 
 young men and women native to the quarter 
 had no club where they could exchange ideas, 
 or where they could arrange a social or a 
 dance. The races, dwelling side by side, ig- 
 nored and despised each other. Whatever 
 might be their experience, they kept it to them- 
 selves, because while living .near each other 
 they did not live together, jbtjow, then, could 
 a woman of Jane Addams' class hope to be- 
 come one of them?^ 
 
 She did not know. But she did know this,* 
 that the people were not lonely from choice.) 
 They were, many of them, leading narrow and 
 bitter lives, from lack of sympathy and help; 
 and they only wanted some slight hint to make 
 them fly into each other's arms. The best thing 
 
298 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 she could do for the present would be to 
 furnish that hint. 
 
 She began with business. 
 
 When coal was high, she induced the neigh- 
 bors to combine in a co-operative coal society; 
 and the members, through the united effort to 
 reduce their expenses, became friends. Or, 
 again, a group of working girls wanted to 
 stand by each other in times of strike, or sick- 
 ness, but did not know how. With the advice 
 of Hull House and the gift of a month's rent 
 for a small flat, they formed a co-operative 
 boarding club. The original group soon grew 
 to fifty ; and that number of girls at least would 
 no more face the storms of the world without 
 sympathy. 
 
 Next, the settlers passed the word that social 
 clubs might make use of the reception room 
 of Hull House. There was a quick response. 
 Reading and sewing circles sprang up thickly. 
 The men, in their social science club, discussed 
 weekly the current abuses and reforms. Five 
 hundred working people were trained to chorus 
 singing. The different nationalities staged 
 their native plays. But one girl said "she 
 wouldn't be caught dead at a lecture," for she 
 wanted ' ( to get some fun out of it ; ' ' and at a 
 club where a Greek play was being read aloud, 
 the leader overheard the president saying to 
 the restive members, "You might just as well 
 keep quiet for she is bound to finish it, and the 
 quicker she gets to reading, the longer we'll 
 have for dancing." So for those who pre- 
 
JANE ADDAMS 299 
 
 ferred dancing, there was a good floor and 
 music. Every one who cared to stop in at Hull 
 House found a social outlet suitable to his age 
 and_ inclinations. 
 
 ^Perhaps the most daring project was that of 
 interpreting one race to another.^JThe Social 
 Extension Committee of Irish women one even- 
 ing invited Italian women to a reception. The 
 outcome is amusingly related by Miss Addams. 
 "The Italian women, who were almost eastern 
 in their habits, all stayed at home and sent 
 their husbands, and the Social Extension Com- 
 mittee entered the drawing room to find it 
 occupied by rows of Italian working men. 
 They were quite ready to be ' socially extended, ' 
 but plainly puzzled as to what it was all 
 about." The committee were worse per- 
 plexed. But the Italian men, when they saw 
 what was forward, gallantly stepped into the 
 breach. "Untiring pairs of them danced the 
 tarantella, their fascinating national dance, 
 they sang Neapolitan songs, one of them per- 
 formed some of those wonderful sleight-of- 
 hand tricks, . . . they politely ate the 
 strange American refreshments.' The en- 
 tertainment never lagged; the evening was a 
 proud success. The Irish women saw that 
 Italians were "quite like other people, only 
 one^must take a little more pains with them.' 
 (Finally, the varied elements of the Hull 
 Efeuse community were so well fused that they 
 would all wheel into line for a concerted effr 
 in neighborhood improvement and politics. 
 
300 HEEOINES OF MODEEN PEOGEESS 
 
 The children were armed with sharp sticks, 
 and the little girl who collected the most waste 
 paper from the streets was crowned "queen of 
 love and beauty" on May day. The women, 
 who now perceived that their own weal was 
 identical with that of their neighbors, could 
 unitedly demand a better milk supply, better 
 car service, better housing. The men could 
 snap their fingers at the ward "boss" and loy- 
 ally vote together for a representative who 
 would represent, and for improved sewage, 
 playgrounds, and other things in the gift of the 
 city. 
 
 I Thus in the course of years the individuals 
 once so diverse were welded into one solid, 
 social whole. They worked and played to- 
 gether. They were glad with each other's joy, 
 and sad with each other's sorrow. Their lone- 
 liness and isolation were in a great measure 
 overcome, so that the experience of one was 
 accessible to all. 
 
 And what a marvelous experience that was 
 the thoughts, trials, and aspirations of thirty- 
 six nationalities, engaged in trades and pro- 
 fessions literally without number. The 
 Greek fruit vendor might have speech with the 
 English artisan; the Englishman with the 
 Italian laborer or musician; the Italian with 
 the Jewish tradesman or the Irish politician, 
 and so on. To share the experience of all 
 these was a culture in itself. Eeally, these 
 people could fare very happily without the 
 gifts of the rich. The lore of a few books was 
 
JANE ADDAMS 301 
 
 stale and flat beside the fresh realities of their 
 infinitely varied life. They could soar by the 
 strength of their own wings. Like anyone 
 else in the world, all they needed was a chance. 
 
 And now, little by little, Jane Addams 
 found contentment stealing into her heart. 
 For she was getting the return she craved. All 
 this free expression of the people's life flowed 
 through her. Hull House had become a peo- 
 ple's home; and she was one of the peopleTf 
 
 In the middle of a busy morning, says Me 
 writer, the telephone bell will ring: " Hello! 
 Miss Addams? No? Well, I would like to 
 speak with Miss Addams personally, please. 
 You say she is busy? Yes, I know, but I'm 
 sure she will spare me a moment; I am Mrs. 
 Blank, of the North Shore. She wants you to 
 take this message? You say you can bring 
 me an answer? 0, very well. Tell her I 
 want to get a monkey for a children's party. 
 I know you don't have monkeys, but Miss 
 Addams will know of one; you have only to 
 take the message." 
 
 Or again, Miss Addams is made a willing 
 confidante for some interesting story of indus- 
 try, or family economics. "I recall a certain 
 Mrs. Moran," she writes, "who was returning 
 one rainy day with her arms full of paper bags 
 containing beans and flour which alone lay be- 
 tween her children and starvation. Although 
 she had no money, she boarded a street car in 
 order to save her booty from complete de- 
 struction by the rain; and as the burst bags 
 
302 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 dropped ' flour on the ladies ' dresses' and beans 
 'all over the place,' she was sharply repri- 
 manded by the conductor, who was further ex- 
 asperated when he discovered she had no fare. 
 He put her off, as she had hoped he would, 
 almost in front of Hull House. She related to 
 us her state of mind as she stepped off the car 
 and saw the last of her wares disappearing," 
 and so on, with quaint, amusing, and yet pa- 
 thetic detail. 
 
 Or, again, some crisis more cruel than that 
 of starvation overtakes one of the neighbors. 
 A high official is assassinated by an immigrant. 
 The American populace goes mad with rage 
 against all foreigners. Some old men are ar- 
 rested, charged with being anarchists and with 
 complicity in a plot to shatter the American 
 government ; they are thrust into prison, denied 
 bail, denied communication with their friends; 
 they await summary trial and will be lucky to 
 have a trial, for a mob storms outside the 
 prison wall. Some friend of theirs has the wit 
 to fetch Miss Addams. The jailers know her. 
 They admit her behind the barred doors. She 
 steps into the cell. The prisoners cling to her 
 skirts, weeping, chattering in some eastern 
 language, and they tell her their story. They 
 are old, poor, and sick ; they speak no English, 
 have been unable to learn the cause of their ar- 
 rest, have never heard of the assassination ; al- 
 though they once professed hostility to govern- 
 ment in the empire from which they came, they 
 have only love for America and its laws and 
 
JANE ADDAMS 303 
 
 its rulers. They ask nothing but peace 
 and the right to earn a few pennies a day 
 until they die. Jane Addams hears their 
 story, substantiates it, and they are re- 
 leased. 
 
 And while these diverse exciting incidents 
 succeed one another, through the halls of the 
 settlement there passes an endless procession 
 of the "other half." Eesidents representing a 
 dozen states; staying guests representing a 
 dozen countries; doctors, lawyers, journalists; 
 governors, princes, and the most brilliant think- 
 ers and talkers of the age; all these, besides 
 settlers high and low, continually gather round 
 the Hull House table. And all of them, like the 
 trembling "anarchists' and the woman who 
 spilled her beans, tell their stories to Jane 
 Addams. 
 
 In effect, the life of a great and varied world 
 flows through her : and each part reveals itself 
 without reserve, for it does not doubt its wel- 
 come. 
 
 ' ' On the whole, ' ' says one writer, ' ' the reach V 
 of this woman's sympathy and understanding '} 
 is beyond all comparison wider in its span 
 comprehending all kinds of people than that 
 of any extant public man.' 
 
 [No wonder Miss Addams grew contented. 
 Sne was doing splendidly what her nature cried 
 out to do in all the years of preparation. She 
 had become a part you might say the heart 
 of the whole living body of society. She had 
 given and she had received: she had given the 
 
304 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 life of culture ; and she had received the culture 
 of life/1 
 
 The"3ane Addams that came out of these re- 
 markable undertakings was what one might ex- 
 pect. "She is always trying to be incon- 
 spicuous, ' ' wrote one who knew her well. l ' She 
 likes some of the elegancies, for she was born 
 to them. No one could accuse her, for example, 
 of being shabby. She wears soft, grayish 
 shades of blue more than other colors. Her 
 tailor-made suits are usually blue, and I re- 
 member one pleasing evening gown of that 
 color trimmed with rich Japanese embroidery. 
 Jewels are, naturally, not in her line, and she 
 never has a hat upon her smooth brown hair 
 when she can dispense with it. ' She is a rather 
 smallish, dark faced woman, gentle of manner 
 and soft of voice. She is "slightly stooped as 
 she stands with her hands clasped behind her 
 in a way touchingly childish, looking out at an 
 audience, or at those with whom she is convers- 
 ing. . . . They say she had a sad face 
 before she became a professional neighbor. . . . 
 Certainly her face is sad now, though the eyes 
 are luminous, and the lips adapt themselves 
 readily to smiles.' 
 
 That sadness if sadness it really is can- 
 not have been written on her face by any de- 
 feat of her personal ambitions if^r-again if 
 she has any personal ambitions. (Miss Addams 
 has been a member of the city school board. 
 She has traveled extensively, and lectured, and 
 written books. A master's decree was con- 
 
JANE ADDAMS 305 
 
 ferred upon her by Yale University, which had 
 never before given an honorary degree to a 
 womanO! At a recent national congress of so- 
 cial workers she was characterized to an an- 
 dience of three thousand as "the first citizen 
 of Chicago, the first citizen of America, the 
 first citizen of the world ! ' ' And the hall rocked 
 with applause. 
 
 Neither has Hull House suffered any declen- 
 sion. It is famous in every continent. Ten 
 thousand people, besides the casual visitors, 
 actually frequent its various buildings. It 
 knows no classes. And yet all classes so deeply 
 respect it that they take pride in appearing 
 there at their best. Of one well dressed man 
 who came seeking employment, Miss Addams 
 said, "The coat the man wears belongs to a 
 neighbor. The hat is the property of some one 
 else. Perhaps he does not wear a stitch of 
 clothing he may claim as his own. Beggars do 
 not come to Hull House they are men of self- 
 respect and pride, and they wish to make the 
 best appearance/' And it was with the idea 
 that there should be but one all-embracing class 
 in national politics but one class before the 
 law that Miss Addams threw herself into the 
 presidential campaign of 1912. 
 ^Finally, what should please Miss Addams 
 most of all, the movement initiated from such 
 natural and sincere motives has proved a boon 
 to thousands who felt the same passion for a 
 democratic way of life. Every city now has its f 
 settlement, modeled generally after Hull House, , 
 
306 HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS 
 
 and the great cities have dozens. Altogether, 
 they constitute one of the most striking features 
 of modern urban lifeTj They accomplish things 
 Miss Addams did not dream of in the begin- 
 ning. And still investigators who by a happy 
 agreement with colleges can earn a degree by 
 their work are incessantly busy finding what 
 more can be done. 
 
 Miss Addams' seriousness of countenance 
 must come upon her from those moments when 
 she looks beyond the settlement and its small 
 success to what she hopes may take place in 
 society. For in her thought she runs well 
 ahead of the settlement. Such an institution, 
 she says, is only a symptom of the social 
 democracy to come. 
 
 Men have long been equal in religion. Re- 
 cently they have obtained a tolerable equality 
 in politics and education. But socially they 
 are divided into a hundred groups, the tendency 
 being for each to court the so-called "higher' 
 groups and to snub the lower. This separation 
 is detrimental to all classes. For no race and 
 no class can live to itself without dwindling to- 
 ward mental priggishness and emotional 
 penury. The health and the wealth of each will 
 be best enhanced by partaking of the thoughts, 
 labors, and emotions of all. The settlement 
 stands for this new social democracy. But is 
 society as a whole broad-minded enough to en- 
 tertain it? That is a question to cause melan- 
 choly looks. The time is coming, Miss Addams 
 prophesies, when it will be as criminal for a 
 
 
 
JANE ADDAMS 307 
 
 woman to invite to her dinners only those who 
 can advance her socially as it is now for a pol- 
 itician to buy votes. Coming, surely. But she 
 recognizes with regret that both poor and rich 
 will suffer much in their narrow spheres before 
 that time finally arrives. 
 
 Miss Addams states her creed most clearly 
 in this comparison of the uncultivated and the 
 cultivated person. ' ' The former is bounded by 
 a narrow outlook on life, unable to overcome 
 differences of dress and habit, and his interests 
 are slowly contracting within a circumscribed 
 area; while the latter constantly tends to be 
 more a citizen of the world because of his grow- 
 ing understanding of all kinds of people, and 
 their varying experiences." 
 
 In her own conduct she has exemplified the 
 creed. Says one writer, * ' She is sensitively at- 
 tuned to the manners and traditions of the most 
 privileged class, yet she meets the poorest and 
 the coarsest without a touch of the condescen- 
 sion that separates people more than pride.' 
 Indeed the word " condescend" has no meaning 
 for her. For the only "privileged" class is the 
 one that comprehends all classes. 
 
 Miss Addams is a modern democrat. But 
 her democracy is not low or vulgar. It is iden- 
 tical with culture: the culture which Goethe 
 defined as "entering into the life of the race/ 
 
 THE END 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 
 
 With the purpose of assisting readers in making 
 for themselves a conspectus of each of the lives here 
 studied and a broader conspectus of the relation of 
 these lives to each other and to the events and move- 
 ments with which they are bound up, this outline is 
 offered. It is offered also by way of indicating the 
 definite unity that binds together the book as a whole. 
 
 1780. Birth of Elizabeth Gurney (Fry). 
 
 1792. Death of the mother of Elizabeth Gurney 
 
 (Fry). 
 
 1797. Birth of Mary Lyon. 
 1800. Elizabeth Gurney is married to Joseph 
 
 Fry. 
 
 1810. Elizabeth Gurney Fry is ordained a min- 
 
 ister by the Society of Friends. 
 
 1811. Birth of Harriet Beecher (Stowe). 
 1813. Elizabeth Gurney Fry first visits New- 
 gate Jail. 
 
 1815. Birth of Elizabeth Cady (Stanton). 
 
 1817. Elizabeth Gurney Fry forms an associa- 
 tion for the amelioration of the con- 
 dition of women prisoners. Mary Lyon 
 attends Sanderson Academy. 
 
 1819. Birth of Julia Ward (Howe). 
 
 1820. Birth of Florence Nightingale. 
 
 1821. Birth of Clara Barton. 
 
 Mary Lyon becomes assistant at Sander- 
 son Academy. 
 
 1824. Harriet Beecher (Stowe) attends her sis- 
 ter's school at Hartford. 
 
 1828. Mary Lyon becomes Miss Grant's as- 
 sistant at Ipswich. 
 309 
 
310 CHEONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 
 
 1830-32. Elizabeth Cady (Stanton) attends the 
 Young Ladies' Seminary at Troy. 
 
 1832. Harriet Beecher (Stowe) moves to Cin- 
 
 cinnati. 
 
 1833. Harriet Beecher (Stowe) visits Kentucky. 
 
 1834. Mary Lyon begins the plans for her fe- 
 
 male seminary. 
 
 1836. Harriet Beecher marries Calvin E. Stowe. 
 Corner stone for Mt. Holyoke Female 
 
 Seminary laid. 
 
 1837. Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary opens. 
 Clara Barton begins teaching in a dis- 
 trict school. 
 
 1838. Elizabeth Gurney Fry visits France. 
 
 1839. Birth of Frances E. Willard. 
 
 1840. Birth of J. Ellen Horton (Foster). 
 Elizabeth Cady marries Henry B. Stan- 
 ton. 
 
 1841. Florence Nightingale decides upon her 
 
 life work. 
 
 1841-53. Florence Nightingale studies in Euro- 
 pean hospitals. 
 
 1843. Julia Ward marries Dr. Samuel G. Howe. 
 
 1845. Death of Elizabeth Gurney Fry. 
 
 1847. Elizabeth Cady Stanton moves to Sen- 
 
 eca Falls, N. Y. 
 
 1848. Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca 
 
 Falls, N. Y. 
 
 1849. Death of Mary Lyon. 
 
 1850. Harriet Beecher Stowe moves to Bruns- 
 
 wick, Maine. 
 
 1851. Elizabeth Cady Stanton meets Susan B. 
 
 Anthony. 
 
 First chapter of " Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
 appears. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 311 
 
 1852. " Uncle Tom's Cabin' 1 is published in 
 
 book form. 
 
 1853-4. Florence Nightingale in charge of the 
 Harley Street Home, London. 
 
 1853. Judith Ellen Horton (Foster) moves to 
 
 Boston. 
 
 1854. Florence Nightingale goes to the front in 
 
 the Crimean War. 
 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton addresses the 
 New York Legislature. 
 
 1854-7. Clara Barton is clerk in the Patent Of- 
 fice. 
 
 1856. Florence Nightingale returns to Eng- 
 land. 
 
 1858. Frances E. "Willard attends Northwestern 
 
 Female College. 
 
 Frances E. Willard joins the Methodist 
 Church. 
 
 1861. Birth of Jane Addams. 
 
 Julia Ward Howe writes the " Battle 
 Hymn of the Republic." 
 
 Florence Nightingale opens a training 
 school for nurses at Liverpool. 
 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton helps form the 
 National Loyal League. 
 
 Clara Barton nurses soldiers in Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 1862. Clara Barton serves on the field of battle. 
 1865-73. Elizabeth Cady Stanton president of Na- 
 tional Woman's Suffrage Association. 
 
 1867. Julia Ward Howe elected to the Boston 
 Radical Club. 
 
 1867-69. Clara Barton lectures on the Lyceum cir- 
 cuit. 
 
312 CHEONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 
 
 1868. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a candidate 
 for election to the House of Kepre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 1868-70. Elizabeth Cady Stanton edits "The Revo- 
 lution." 
 
 1868. Frances E. Willard goes to Europe for 
 
 two and one-half years. 
 
 1869-81. Elizabeth Cady Stanton lectures on Ly- 
 ceum platform. 
 
 1869. Judith EUen Horton marries E. C. 
 
 Foster. 
 
 Clara Barton goes to Europe. 
 Julia Ward Howe espouses the woman's 
 
 suffrage movement. 
 
 1870. Clara Barton serves as nurse in the 
 
 Franco-Prussian War. 
 New England's Woman's Club is founded. 
 
 1871. Frances E. Willard becomes dean of 
 
 Evanston College for Ladies. 
 
 1872. J. Ellen Foster admitted to Iowa bar. 
 Julia Ward Howe leads Woman's Peace 
 
 Conference, London. 
 
 Julia Ward Howe becomes president of 
 New England Woman's Club. 
 
 1873. Clara Barton returns to America. 
 
 1874. Frances E. Willard resigns as dean of 
 
 Evanston College for Ladies, and 
 later becomes president of Chicago 
 W. C. T. U. 
 
 Frances E. Willard becomes correspond- 
 ing secretary of Illinois W. C. T. U. 
 
 Under Florence Nightingale, National 
 Nursing Association provides nurses 
 for the poor in their own homes. 
 
CHEONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 313 
 
 1876. Frances E. Willard advocates woman's 
 
 suffrage. 
 
 1878. Jane Addams enters Eockford College. 
 Julia Ward Howe becomes president of 
 the Association for the Advancement 
 of Women. 
 
 1879-98. Frances E. Willard, president of Na- 
 tional W. C. T. U. 
 
 1881. Clara Barton establishes the American 
 
 Association of the Red Cross. 
 Jane Addams enters a Philadelphia med- 
 ical school. 
 1881-3. Jane Addams spends in Europe. 
 
 1882. Clara Barton secures amendment of the 
 
 Geneva Treaty to provide for Red 
 Cross in time of peace. 
 Iowa becomes a prohibition state. 
 
 1883. Frances E. Willard founds and becomes 
 
 president of World's W. C. T. U. 
 
 1884. W. C. T. U. votes to support the Pro- 
 
 hibition Party. 
 
 1885. J. Ellen Foster resigns from office in Na- 
 
 tional W. C. T. U. and is elected presi- 
 dent of Iowa W. C. T. U. 
 
 1888. Frances E. Willard becomes president 
 of American branch of International 
 Council of Women. 
 
 J. Ellen Foster's offer to help the Na- 
 tional Republican Committee is ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 1888-1910. J. Ellen Foster president of Woman's 
 National Republican Association. 
 
.TM CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE 
 
 1889. 
 1893-1902. 
 
 1896. 
 
 1898. 
 
 1902. 
 1904. 
 
 1906. 
 
 1908. 
 
 1910. 
 
 1912. 
 
 Jane Addams opens Hull House in Chi- 
 cago. 
 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, honorary presi- 
 dent of National Woman's Suffrage 
 Association. 
 
 Death of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 
 Clara Barton goes to Armenia to relieve 
 the victims of oppression. 
 
 Death of Frances E. Willard. 
 
 Clara Barton serves in Spanish American 
 War. 
 
 Death of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 
 
 Clara Barton retires from presidency of 
 the American Eed Cross. 
 
 J. Ellen Foster detailed to study condi- 
 tions of women and child workers in 
 the United States. 
 
 J. Ellen Foster appointed special agent 
 of the Department of Justice to inspect 
 United States criminals in federal and 
 state prisons. 
 
 Death of Julia Ward Howe. 
 
 Death of Florence Nightingale. 
 
 Death of J. Ellen Foster. 
 
 Death of Clara Barton. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addams, Jane, 280-307; child- teaches in Sanderson 
 hood, 281; school educa- Academy in, 36, 37. 
 tion, 283-284, 286; trav- Association for the Advance- 
 els, 287; occupies Hull ment of Women, organ- 
 House, 291; Hull House ized, 211. 
 activities, 294-299; influ- 
 ence of Hull House, 304; 
 
 in campaign of 1912, Barton, Clara, 147-177; early 
 
 305; social democracy of, education of, 148, 149; 
 
 early self -consciousness of, 
 
 306-307. 
 
 Addams, Hon. John H., fa- 
 ther of Jane Addams, 
 280-283. 
 
 American National Associa- 
 tion of the Red Cross, at- 
 tempts to found, 168; 
 founded, 169; service in 
 times of peace, 171-173; 
 service in Armenia, 173; 
 service in Cuba, 174; re- 
 organization of, 176. 
 
 Amherst Academy, Mary 
 Lyon attends, 36. 
 
 Andrew, Governor John, 
 friend of Julia Ward 
 Howe, 195. 
 
 Anthony, Susan B., first 
 meets Mrs. Stanton, 78; 
 close alliance with Mrs. 
 Stanton, 76, 77, 85; cam- 
 paigns for woman's suf- 
 frage in Kansas, 81; 
 business manager of The 
 Revolution, 82. 
 
 150-152; early education 
 in nursing, 151 ; teaches 
 school, 154; government 
 clerk in Washington, 
 155, 156; acts as nurse 
 for wounded soldiers in 
 Washington, 157; acts as 
 nurse at the front, 160; 
 at Culpepper Court 
 House, 160; at Cedar 
 Mountain, 161 ; at An- 
 tietam, 161 ; at Freder- 
 icksburg, 162; at Morris 
 Island, 162; in Europe, 
 165; learns of Red Cross 
 work and society, 167, 
 168; organizes peace 
 service of Red Cross, 171; 
 directs Red Cross serv- 
 ice in Armenia, 173; in 
 Cuba, 174; retires from 
 active service, 176; dies, 
 176. 
 "Battle Hymn of the Repub- 
 
 Antietam, Battle of, Clara lie," written by Julia 
 
 Barton at, 161, 162. Ward Howe, 197; first 
 
 Armenia, service of American sung by Chaplain McCabe 
 
 Red Cross in, 173; ap- in Libby Prison, 198. 
 
 peal of W. C. T. U. on Beecher, Catherine, Harriet 
 
 behalf of, 240, 241. Beecher Stowe attends 
 
 Ashfield, Mass., Mary Lyon her school in Hartford, 
 
 attends school in, 33, 34; 93; opens girls' school in 
 
 317 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cincinnati with Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe, 98. 
 
 Beecher, Rev. Lyman, father 
 of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
 90; character of, 90; in- 
 fluence on Harriet's edu- 
 cation, 91, 93. 
 
 Bellows, Dr., attempts to 
 found Red Cross Society 
 in America, 168. 
 
 Birney, Mr., abolition editor, 
 103. 
 
 Boston Radical Club, Mrs. 
 Howe elected to member- 
 ship in, 200. 
 
 Boswell, Helen V., political 
 work of, 268, 269. 
 
 Brown, John, friend of Julia 
 Ward Howe, 194. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
 friend of Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, 112. 
 
 Buckland, Mass., birthplace of 
 Mary Lyon, 30; Mary 
 Lyon teaches in, 37, 38. 
 
 Byfield Academy, Mary Lyon 
 studies in, 36. 
 
 Cady, Daniel, father of Eliza- 
 beth Cady Stanton; in- 
 fluence on her early char- 
 acter, 61-63; assists Mrs. 
 Stanton in woman suf- 
 frage propaganda, 77, 
 78. 
 
 Cedar Mountain, Battle of, 
 Clara Barton at, 161. 
 
 Chicago Women's Christian 
 Temperance Union, Fran- 
 ces E. Willard becomes 
 president of, 231. 
 
 Churchville, N. Y., birth- 
 place of Frances E. Wil- 
 lard, 215. 
 
 Civil War, retards woman 
 suffrage agitation, 78 ; 
 hastened by Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin, 112; interference 
 of England is averted by 
 
 Miss Stowe's reply to 
 Christian Address of Eng- 
 lish women, 116; Clara 
 Barton in, 157-164; ef- 
 fect on Julia Ward Howe, 
 195-197. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 
 urged Julia Ward Howe 
 to write words for army 
 song, John Brown's Body, 
 197. 
 
 Cleveland, President Grover, 
 receives petition of 
 World's Woman's Chris- 
 tian Temperance Union, 
 239. 
 
 Clinton, Iowa, home of J. El- 
 len Foster, 249-252. 
 
 Commonwealth, The, anti- 
 slavery paper, Mrs. Howe 
 contributes to, 192. 
 
 Crimean War, The, condition 
 of British sick and 
 wounded in, 132, 133; 
 Florence Nightingale 
 takes charge of hospital 
 service, 134; she arrives 
 at Scutari, 135; her serv- 
 ice there, 136-141. 
 
 Culpepper Court House, Bat- 
 tle of, Clara Barton at, 
 160. 
 
 Dansville, N. Y., first local 
 Red Cross Society organ- 
 ized at, 171. 
 
 Daughters of American Rev- 
 olution, Society of, work 
 for child labor legisla- 
 tion, 274. 
 
 Derbyshire, England, home of 
 Florence Nightingale, 
 120. 
 
 Derry, New Hampshire, Mary 
 Lyon teaches at, 58. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, friend ol 
 Julia Ward Howe, 187. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, advocates 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 woman's suffrage at Sen- 
 eca Falls meeting, 74. 
 Durant, Henri, brings Ked 
 Cross Society to atten- 
 tion of Clara Barton, 
 165. 
 
 Eliot, George, Friend of Har- 
 riet Beecher Stowe, 112. 
 
 Evanston "College for Ladies," 
 Frances E. Willard dean 
 of, 228-230. 
 
 Foster, Elijah Caleb, marries 
 J. Ellen Foster, 249; ac- 
 tive anti-saloon lawyer, 
 251. 
 
 Foster, J. Ellen, 245-279; 
 birth, 246; ancestry, 246- 
 7; early life, 247; mar- 
 riage, 249; early tem- 
 perance work, 250; ad- 
 mitted to bar of Iowa, 
 252; forms law partner- 
 ship with husband, 252; 
 Iowa adopts Prohibition 
 Constitutional Amend- 
 ment, 254; active in Na- 
 tional Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union, 256 ; 
 resigns from official posi- 
 tion in National Wom- 
 an's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, made presi- 
 dent of Iowa Woman's 
 Christian Temperance 
 Union, 259 ; active in Re- 
 publican politics, 263 ; 
 organizes Woman's Re- 
 publican Association, 
 265; Red Cross work, 
 272; Philippine Islands 
 and missionary trip, 272; 
 church, prison reform and 
 child labor activities, 
 275. 
 
 Franco-Prussian War, The, 
 service of Red Cross So- 
 ciety in, 167-168; ob- 
 
 servation of horrors of, 
 instrumental in suggest- 
 ing to Julia Ward Howe 
 appeal to women of the 
 world to further peace, 
 203, 204. 
 
 Fredericksburg, Battle of, 
 Clara Barton at, 162. 
 
 Friendly Evening Association, 
 organized by New Eng- 
 land Women's Club, 209. 
 
 Friends, Society of, Elizabeth 
 Fry, minister of, 11; 
 criticises Mrs. Fry be- 
 cause her children mar- 
 ried in other sects, 22, 24. 
 
 Fry, Elizabeth Gurney, 1-29; 
 parentage and birth, 
 early education, 2-4; be- 
 comes Quaker, 6; mar- 
 ries, 8; becomes minister 
 of Society of Friends, 11; 
 first work in jails, 14; 
 establishes school in New- 
 gate prison, 16; criticised 
 by Society of Friends for 
 children marrying in 
 other sects, 22, 24; be- 
 comes more liberal in 
 views concerning sects, 
 23, 27; dies, 25. 
 
 Fry, Joseph, husband of Eliza- 
 beth Fry, 8, 9. 
 
 Gage, Mathilda Joslyn, joint 
 author with Mrs. Stanton 
 and Miss Anthony of 
 History of Woman Suf- 
 frage, 85. 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 
 friend of Mrs. Howe, 189, 
 204. 
 
 Grant, Zilpah, Mary Lyon as- 
 sociated with, 38, 39, 41. 
 
 Harley Street Home, Florence 
 Nightingale becomes sup- 
 erintendent of. 130. 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, com- 
 ment on Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, 114; comment on 
 Julia Ward Howe, 212. 
 
 Horton, Jotham, father of J. 
 Ellen Foster, 246, 247. 
 
 Horton, Jotham W., brother 
 of J. Ellen Foster, 247. 
 
 Howe, Dr. Samuel Gridley, 
 husband of Julia Ward 
 Howe, 185-189; founder 
 of Perkins Institute for 
 blind, 185; teacher of 
 Laura Bridgman, 185; 
 character of, 186; editor 
 of The Commonwealth, 
 192. 
 
 Howe, Julia Ward, 178-214; 
 early life, 179; educa- 
 tion, 180; marriage, 186; 
 travels abroad, 187; in- 
 timacy with men of let- 
 ters and reformers in Bos- 
 ton, 189; student and 
 writer, 191, 192; anti- 
 slavery activity, 194, 195; 
 "Battle Hymn of the Re- 
 public," 198; orator 
 friends, 200; essayist and 
 speaker, 200 ; preacher, 
 201 ; appeal to woman 
 hood, 204; interested in 
 woman suffrage, 205; be- 
 comes president of New 
 England Woman's Club, 
 210. 
 
 Hull House, founded by Jane 
 Addams, 291; activities 
 of, 294-299; influence of, 
 304. 
 
 Illinois, Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union of, 
 Frances E. Willard, cor- 
 responding secretary of, 
 233. 
 
 International Committee of 
 the Red Cross, foundation 
 of, 165; brought to at- 
 
 tention of Clara Barton, 
 165, 166; convention at 
 St. Petersburg, 272. 
 
 Iowa, Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union of, or- 
 ganized, 253; secures pro- 
 hibition constitutional 
 amendment, 254 ; elects 
 J. Ellen Foster presi- 
 dent, 259 ; withdraws 
 from: National Woman's 
 Christian Temperance 
 Union, 261. 
 
 Ipswich, Mass., Zilpah Grant's 
 Academy at, 38-42. 
 
 Janesville, Wisconsin, early 
 life of Frances E. Wil- 
 lard spent on farm near. 
 215, 216. 
 
 Johnstown, N. Y., birthplace 
 of Elizabeth Cady Stan- 
 ton, 59. 
 
 Keiserwerth, Germany, Flor- 
 ence Nightingale studies 
 Lutheran hospital in, 129. 
 
 Lane Theological Seminary, 
 Lyman Beecher president 
 of, 97; Calvin E. Stowe, 
 professor in, 100; center 
 of an ti -slavery contro- 
 versy, 103. 
 
 Liverpool Training School 
 for Nurses, opened by 
 Florence Nightingale, 143. 
 
 Lyon, Mary, 30-57; birth of, 
 30; hardships of early 
 life, 31, 32; studies at 
 Sanderson Academy at 
 Ashfield, 34; in Amherst 
 Academy, 36; in Byfield 
 Academy, 36 ; assistant 
 in Sanderson Academy, 
 36; taught in Ashfield, 
 37; in Buckland, 38; in 
 Derry, N. H., 38; in 
 Ipswich, Mass., 38; South 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 Hadley selected as site 
 and school named Mt. 
 Holyoke Female Sem- 
 inary, 42; starts canvass 
 for funds for new school, 
 43; school opened, 46 j 
 death, 56. 
 
 Mandarin, Florida, school- 
 house and church for ne- 
 groes built and conducted 
 in, by Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, 117. 
 
 McKinley, President William, 
 commends Red Cross, 
 175; orders bodies of sol- 
 diers dying in Spanish 
 War sent home for burial, 
 273-274. 
 
 Morris Island, Clara Barton 
 at, 162. 
 
 Mott, James, presides at Sen- 
 eca Falls suffrage meet- 
 ing, 73. 
 
 Mott, Lucretia, influence on 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
 68, 72-74. 
 
 Mt. Holyoke Female Sem- 
 inary, site chosen, 42; 
 canvass for funds for, 44- 
 47; first session, 47; 
 methods, 48 ; Mary 
 Lyon's conduct of, 48- 
 56. 
 
 National Loyal League, 
 founded by Elizabeth 
 Cady Stanton and others, 
 79. ' 
 
 National Nursing Association, 
 organized in England, 
 143. 
 
 National Prison Labor Com- 
 mittee, formed, 276. 
 
 National Relief Assocation of 
 the Red Cross, J. Ellen 
 Foster's connection with, 
 272. 
 
 National Society of the 
 Daughters of the Amer- 
 ican Revolution, work for 
 child labor legislation, 
 274. 
 
 National Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union, Fran- 
 ces E. Willard corre- 
 sponding secretary of, 
 233 ; president of, 234 ; en- 
 dorses woman's suffrage, 
 237; organization of, 
 252; endorses Prohibition 
 party, 257-259 ; with- 
 drawal of Iowa Woman's 
 Christian Temperance Un- 
 ion from, 261. 
 
 National Woman's Suffrage 
 Association, Elizabeth 
 Cady Stanton president 
 of, 82; until 1893, 85. 
 
 New England Woman's Club, 
 organized, 206; work of, 
 207; Julia Ward Howe 
 president of, 210. 
 
 Newgate Jail, condition of, 
 14; work of Elizabeth 
 Fry in, 16-20. 
 
 Nightingale, Florence, 120- 
 146; birth, 120; early ed- 
 ucation, 121, 122; in 
 nursing, 123-125; in 
 philanthropy, 126 ; stud- 
 ies hospitals and nursing, 
 127; -abroad, 129-130; 
 superintendent Harley 
 Street Home, 131; as- 
 sumes direction of relief 
 and hospital work in Cri- 
 mean War, 135; activity 
 there, 136-141 ; returns 
 home invalid, 142; death, 
 145. 
 
 Northwestern University, 
 Frances E. Willard's 
 connection with, 228, 230. 
 
 Papertree Club, organized by 
 Julia Ward Howe, 210. 
 
322 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Patent Office, Clara Barton 
 clerk in, 155, 156. 
 
 Peace Service of the Red 
 Cross, 171-173. 
 
 Perkins Institute for the 
 Blind, established by Dr. 
 Samuel Gridley Howe, 
 185. 
 
 Pillsbury, Parker, joint editor 
 with Elizabeth Cady 
 Stanton of The Revolu- 
 tion, 82. 
 
 Pittsburgh Female College, 
 Frances E. Willard 
 teaches in, 225. 
 
 Polyglot Petition, The, pre- 
 sented to President 
 Cleveland, 239, 240. 
 
 Prison Labor Committee, Na- 
 tional, formed, 276. 
 
 Prohibition Party, 257-264; 
 endorsed by National 
 Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, 257-258; 
 J. Ellen Foster's criticism 
 of, 261-262. 
 
 Red Cross Society, American 
 Association organized, 
 169; service in times of 
 peace, 171-173; service in 
 Armenia, 173; reorgan- 
 ization of, 176; conven- 
 tion at St. Petersburg, 
 272; First Local Society 
 in U. S., 171, 172; In- 
 ternational Committee, 
 165, 166; National Re- 
 lief Association, 272; 
 service during Franco- 
 Prussian War, 167-168. 
 
 Republican Party, J. Ellen 
 Foster's work for, 263- 
 271. 
 
 Revolution, The, woman suf- 
 frage organ, edited by 
 Mrs. Stanton and Parker 
 Pillsbury, 82; Susan B. 
 
 Anthony, business man- 
 ager of, 82. 
 
 Rockford College, Jane Ad- 
 dams student at, 284, 
 285. 
 
 Roosevelt, President Theodore, 
 commissions J. Ellen Fos- 
 ter to investigate condi- 
 tion of women and chil- 
 dren in Philippines, 272; 
 and in the United States, 
 274. 
 
 Sanderson Academy, founded, 
 3'4; Mary Lyon, assistant 
 in, 36-37. 
 
 Sanitary and Christian Com- 
 mission, forerunner of 
 Red Cross Society, 160. 
 
 San Juan, Battle of, Clara 
 Barton and the Red Cross 
 at, 174-175. 
 
 Saturday Morning Club, or- 
 ganized by Julia Ward 
 Howe, 210. 
 
 Savery, William, influence of, 
 on Elizabeth Fry, 5. 
 
 Scutari, horrors in hospital 
 at, 132, 133; Florence 
 Nightingale at, 135-140. 
 
 Seneca Falls, N. Y., home of 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
 71; first woman suffrage 
 convention at, 72; Dec- 
 laration of Sentiments, 
 72-73. 
 
 Severance, Caroline M., 
 founds New England 
 Woman's Club, 206. 
 
 Siboney, Cuba, Clara Barton 
 and the Red Cross at, 
 174, 175. 
 
 Smith, Gerrit, influence on 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 
 anti-slavery views, 65, 
 66. 
 
 Smith, Hannah Whitall, Four 
 Voices of, 261. 
 
INDEX 323 
 
 Somerset, Lady Henry, friend 92 ; religious development 
 
 of Frances E. Willard, of, 93-96; schooling, 97; 
 
 242. teaching, 98; visit to 
 
 Sorosis, organized, 208. Kentucky, 99; marriage, 
 
 South Hadley, Mass., site 100; domestic life, 101; 
 
 of Mt. Holyoke College, interest in anti-slavery, 
 
 42. 103; early writing, 104, 
 
 Spanish American War, Clara 105 ; Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
 
 Barton and the Red Cross 108-111; fame, 112-114; 
 
 in, 174, 175; J. Ellen Fos- of Beecher family, 113; 
 
 ter's work in sanitation reply to Christian Ad- 
 
 in, 273. dress of English women, 
 
 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 58- 116. 
 
 88; birth, 59; girlhood, St. Thomas's Hospital, opened 
 
 60, 61; education, 62-64; in London by Florence 
 
 marriage, 67; interested Nightingale, 142. 
 
 in woman's rights, 68; Sumner, Charles, friendship 
 
 Seneca Falls convention, for Julia Ward Howe, 
 
 72-73; Declaration of 185, 194, 200. 
 
 Sentiments, 74 ; becomes 
 
 speaker for Woman's _.., m , , 
 
 Suffrage, 75; connection Tllto j?> ^ do ^ tri ^ f ute , to 
 
 with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 
 
 76-77; interference of ^ , . . 
 
 Civil War with woman Town a ? d ,otiy .P lu ^ or : 
 
 suffrage work, 78; nom- & amzed 01 b / Julia Ward 
 
 inates herself for Con- _ )we W /. 
 
 gress, 80; edits The Rev- Toynbee Hall, mfluence on 
 
 olution, 82; president of Hul1 House > 290 > 29L 
 National Woman's Suf- 
 frage Association, 82; Uncle Tom's Cabin, writing 
 death of, 85; domestic of, 109; sale of, 110; in- 
 traits, 86; position of, fluence of, 111; abroad, 
 87. 112. 
 
 Starr, Ellen Gates, associated Underground Eailroad, Ger- 
 
 with Jane Addams, 291, r it Smith's home station 
 
 292. on, 66. Henry Ward 
 
 Stone, Lucy, friend of Julia Beecher and Calvin E. 
 
 Ward Howe, 200, 204- Stowe aid negress to es- 
 
 205. cape over, 103. 
 
 Stowe, Calvin Ellis, marriage 
 
 to Harriet Beecher, 100; TT . , ~ ,. -, , 
 
 professor at Lane Theo- Victoria, Queen of England 
 
 logical Seminary, 100, received copy of polyglot 
 
 101 ; professor at Bow- petition, 239. 
 doin College, 107. 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 89- White, Amanda, girlhood 
 
 119; birth of, 90; par- friend of Mary Lyon, 35, 
 
 entage, 90; childhood of, 36. 
 
324 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 
 comment on Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin, 111; on Mrs. 
 Howe's poems, 193. 
 
 Willard, Frances E., 215-244; 
 birth, 215; early life, 216- 
 219; education, 220-224; 
 death of her sister Mary, 
 225; travels abroad, 226- 
 228; dean of Evanston 
 "College for Ladies," 228; 
 interested in temperance 
 work, 229 ; president 
 Chicago Woman's Chris- 
 tian Temperance Union, 
 231 ; secretary of Illinois 
 Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, 233; cor- 
 responding secretary Na- 
 tional Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union, 233 ; 
 president National Wom- 
 an's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, 234; lecture 
 work, 234, 235; espouses 
 woman's suffrage, 236 ; 
 organizes World s Wom- 
 an's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, 240; Poly- 
 glot petition, 239; inter- 
 ference in ATI . "va, 240; 
 relations with J. Ellen 
 Foster, 253; with Mrs. 
 Foster and the Iowa 
 Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union, 255-260; 
 later life, 242; devotion 
 to her mother, 233, 242. 
 
 Woman's Christian Temper- 
 ance Union, of Chicago, 
 Frances E. Willard presi- 
 dent of, 231; 
 
 of Illinois, Frances E. Wil- 
 lard, corresponding secre- 
 tary of, 233; 
 
 of Iowa, organized, 253; se- 
 cures prohibition consti- 
 tutional amendment, 254; 
 elects J. Ellen Foster 
 
 president, 259 ; withdraws 
 from National Woman's 
 Christian Temperance 
 Union, 261. 
 
 National, Frances E. Wil- 
 lard corresponding secre- 
 tary of, 233; Frances E. 
 Willard, president of, 
 234 ; endorses woman's 
 suffrage, 237 ; organiza- 
 tion of, 252; endorses 
 Prohibition Party, 257- 
 259; withdrawal of Iowa 
 Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union from, 261. 
 World's, organization of, 
 238; polyglot petition of, 
 239; interference in Ar- 
 menian atrocities, 240. 
 
 Woman's Council, tribute of, 
 to Elizabeth Cady Stan- 
 ton, 87. 
 
 Woman's Crusade, Frances E. 
 Willard and, 229-232; 
 J. Ellen Foster and, 250. 
 
 Woman's Declaration of Senti- 
 ments at Seneca Falls, 
 73-76. 
 
 Woman's Republican Associa- 
 tion of '\^ United States, 
 organized by J. Ellen 
 Foster, 265, activity of, 
 267-269; J. Ellen Foster 
 president of, 272. 
 
 Woman's Rights Committee 
 at Seneca Falls, 72-75. 
 
 Woman's Suffrage Associa- 
 tion, National, Mrs. 
 Stanton and, 82, 84, 85. 
 
 World's Anti-Slavery Conven- 
 tion at London, Mrs. 
 Stanton attends, influ- 
 ence on, 67-68. 
 
 World's Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union, or- 
 ganization of, 238; poly- 
 glot petition of, 239; in- 
 terference in Armenian 
 atrocities, 240. 
 
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