Lives of Girls Who Became Famous Part 5

Then Cincinnati followed with a fair, making two hundred and twenty-five thousand; Boston, three hundred and eighty thousand; New York, one million; and Philadelphia, two hundred thousand more than New York. The women had found that there was work enough for them to do.

Mrs. Livermore was finally ordered to make a tour of the hospitals and military posts on the Mississippi River, and here her aid was invaluable. It required a remarkable woman to undertake such a work.

At one point she found twenty-three men, sick and wounded, whose regiments had left them, and who could not be discharged because they had no descriptive lists. She went at once to General Grant, and said, "General, if you will give me authority to do so, I will agree to take these twenty-three wounded men home."

The officials respected the n.o.ble woman, and the red tape of army life was broken for her sake.

When the desolate company arrived in Chicago, on Sat.u.r.day, the last train had left which could have taken a Wisconsin soldier home. She took him to the hotel, had a fire made for him, and called a doctor.

"Pull him through till Monday, Doctor," she said, "and I'll get him home." Then, to the lad, "You shall have a nurse, and Monday morning I will go with you to your mother."

"Oh! don't go away," he pleaded; "I never shall see you again."

"Well, then, I'll go home and see my family, and come back in two hours. The door shall be left open, and I'll put this bell beside you, so that the chambermaid will come when you ring."

He consented, and Mrs. Livermore came back in two hours. The soldier's face was turned toward the door, as though waiting for her, but he was dead. He had gone home, but not to Wisconsin.

After the close of the war, so eager were the people to hear her, that she entered the lecture field and has for years held the foremost place among women as a public speaker. She lectures five nights a week, for five months, travelling twenty-five thousand miles annually.

Her fine voice, womanly, dignified manner, and able thought have brought crowded houses before her, year after year. She has earned money, and spent it generously for others. The energy and conscientiousness of little Mary Rice have borne their legitimate fruit.

Every year touching incidents came up concerning the war days. Once, after she had spoken at Fabyan's American Inst.i.tute of Instruction, a military man, six feet tall, came up to her and said, "Do you remember at Memphis coming over to the officers' hospital?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Livermore.

While the officers were paid salaries, very often the paymasters could not find them when ill, and for months they would not have a penny, not even receiving army rations. Mrs. Livermore found many in great need, and carried them from the Sanitary Commission blankets, medicine, and food. Milk was greatly desired, and almost impossible to be obtained. One day she came into the wards, and said that a certain portion of the sick "could have two goblets of milk for every meal."

"Do you remember," said the tall man, who was then a major, "that one man cried bitterly and said, 'I want two gla.s.ses of milk,' and that you patted him on the head, as he lay on his cot? And that the man said, as he thought of the dear ones at home, whom he might not see again, 'Could you kiss me?' and the n.o.ble woman bent down and kissed him? I am that man, and G.o.d bless you for your kindness."

Mrs. Livermore wears on her third finger a plain gold ring which has a touching history.

After lecturing recently at Albion, Mich., a woman came up, who had driven eight miles, to thank her for a letter written for John, her son, as he was dying in the hospital. The first four lines were dictated by the dying soldier; then death came, and Mrs. Livermore finished the message. The faded letter had been kept for twenty years, and copies made of it. "Annie, my son's wife," said the mother, "never got over John's death. She kept about and worked, but the life had gone out of her. Eight years ago she died. One day she said, 'Mother, if you ever find Mrs. Livermore, or hear of her, I wish you would give her my wedding ring, which has never been off my finger since John put it there. Ask her to wear it for John's sake and mine, and tell her this was my dying request.'"

With tears in the eyes of both giver and receiver, Mrs. Livermore held out her hand, and the mother placed on the finger this memento of two precious lives.

Mrs. Livermore has spent ten years in the temperance reform. While she has shown the dreadful results of the liquor traffic, she has been kind both in word and deed. Some time ago, pa.s.sing along a Boston street, she saw a man in the ditch, and a poor woman bending over him.

"Who is he?" she asked of the woman.

"He's my husband, ma'am. He's a good man when he is sober, and earns four dollars a day in the foundry. I keep a saloon."

Mrs. Livermore called a hack. "Will you carry this man to number ----?"

"No, madam, he's too dirty. I won't soil my carriage."

"Oh!" pleaded the wife, "I'll clean it all up for ye, if ye'll take him," and pulling off her dress-skirt, she tried to wrap it around her husband. Stepping to a saloon near by, Mrs. Livermore asked the men to come out and help lift him. At first they laughed, but were soon made ashamed, when they saw that a lady was a.s.sisting. The drunken man was gotten upon his feet, wrapped in his wife's clothing, put into the hack, and then Mrs. Livermore and the wife got in beside him, and he was taken home. The next day the good Samaritan called, and brought the priest, from whom the man took the pledge. A changed family was the result.

Her life is filled with thousands of acts of kindness, on the cars, in poor homes, and in various charitable inst.i.tutions. She is the author of two or more books, _What shall we do with Our Daughters?_ and _Reminiscences of the War;_ but her especial power has been her eloquent words, spoken all over the country, in pulpits, before colleges, in city and country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast.

Like Abraham Lincoln, who said, "I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who a.s.sist in bearing its burdens,--by no means excluding women," she has advocated the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of her s.e.x, along with her other work.

Now, past sixty, her active, earnest life, in contact with the people, has kept her young in heart and in looks.

"A great authority on what const.i.tutes beauty complains that the majority of women acquire a dull, vacant expression towards middle life, which makes them positively plain. He attributes it to their neglect of all mental culture, their lives having settled down to a monotonous routine of house-keeping, visiting, gossip, and shopping.

Their thoughts become monotonous, too, for, though these things are all good enough in their way, they are powerless to keep up any mental life or any activity of thought."

Mrs. Livermore has been an inspiration to girls to make the most of themselves and their opportunities. She has been an ideal of womanhood, not only to "the boys" on the battle-fields, but to tens of thousands who are fighting the scarcely less heroic battles of every-day life. May it be many years before she shall go out forever from her restful, happy home, at Melrose, Ma.s.s.

Mrs. Livermore died at her home, May 23, 1905, at 8 A.M., of bronchitis. She was in her eighty-fourth year, and had survived her husband six years. When her funeral services were held, the schools of Melrose closed, business was suspended, bells were tolled, and flags floated at half-mast. She was an active member of thirty-seven clubs.

The degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon her, in 1896, by Tufts College.

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARGARET FULLER

From engraving by Hall]

Margaret Fuller, in some respects the most remarkable of American women, lived a pathetic life and died a tragic death. Without money and without beauty, she became the idol of an immense circle of friends; men and women were alike her devotees. It is the old story: that the woman of brain makes lasting conquests of hearts, while the pretty face holds its sway only for a month or a year.

Margaret, born in Cambridgeport, Ma.s.s., May 23, 1810, was the oldest child of a scholarly lawyer, Mr. Timothy Fuller, and of a sweet-tempered, devoted mother. The father, with small means, had one absorbing purpose in life,--to see that each of his children was finely educated. To do this, and make ends meet, was a struggle. His daughter said, years after, in writing of him: "His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning existence. She was one of those fair and flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life. Of all persons whom I have known, she had in her most of the angelic,--of that spontaneous love for every living thing, for man and beast and tree, which restores the Golden Age."

Very fond of his oldest child, Margaret, the father determined that she should be as well educated as his boys. In those days there were no colleges for girls, and none where they might enter with their brothers, so that Mr. Fuller was obliged to teach his daughter after the wearing work of the day. The bright child began to read Latin at six, but was necessarily kept up late for the recitation. When a little later she was walking in her sleep, and dreaming strange dreams, he did not see that he was overtaxing both her body and brain.

When the lessons had been learned, she would go into the library, and read eagerly. One Sunday afternoon, when she was eight years old, she took down Shakespeare from the shelves, opened at Romeo and Juliet, and soon became fascinated with the story.

"What are you reading?" asked her father.

"Shakespeare," was the answer, not lifting her eyes from the page.

"That won't do--that's no book for Sunday; go put it away, and take another."

Margaret did as she was bidden; but the temptation was too strong, and the book was soon in her hands again.

"What is that child about, that she don't hear a word we say?" said an aunt.

Seeing what she was reading, the father said, angrily, "Give me the book, and go directly to bed."

There could have been a wiser and gentler way of control, but he had not learned that it is better to lead children than to drive them.

When not reading, Margaret enjoyed her mother's little garden of flowers. "I loved," she says, "to gaze on the roses, the violets, the lilies, the pinks; my mother's hand had planted them, and they bloomed for me. I kissed them, and pressed them to my bosom with pa.s.sionate emotions. An ambition swelled my heart to be as beautiful, as perfect as they."

Margaret grew to fifteen with an exuberance of life and affection, which the chilling atmosphere of that New England home somewhat suppressed, and with an increasing love for books and cultured people.

"I rise a little before five," she writes, "walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next, I read French--Sismondi's _Literature of the South of Europe_--till eight; then two or three lectures in Brown's _Philosophy._ About half past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school, and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise again till dinner, at two. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian."

And why all this hard work for a girl of fifteen? The "all-powerful motive of ambition," she says. "I am determined on distinction, which formerly I thought to win at an easy rate; but now I see that long years of labor must be given."

She had learned the secret of most prominent lives. The majority in this world will always be mediocre, because they lack high-minded ambition and the willingness to work.