V


When we think of the qualities that are distinctive of the woman, we
have in mind a finer gentleness, sensibility, sympathy and tenderness;
and when we have these qualities intensified in any woman, and with
them combined the endurance, courage and daring that are taken as the
manly virtues, we have a woman of the heroic type. Of such a type was
the wife of Tone. We can speak her praise without fear, for she was put
to the test in every way, and in every way found marvellously true. For
her devotion to, and encouragement of, her great husband in his great
work, she would have won our high praise, even if, when he was stricken
down and she was bereft of his wonderful love and buoyant spirits, she
had proved forgetful of his work and the glory of his name. But she was
bereft, and she was then found most marvellously true. Her devotion to
Tone, while he was living and fighting, might be explained by the
woman's passionate attachment to the man she loved. It is the woman's
tenderness that is most evident in these early years, but there is
shining evidence of the fortitude that showed her true nobility in the
darker after-years. It was no ordinary love that bound them, and reading
the record of their lives this stands out clear and beautiful. Tone,
whom we know as patient organiser, tenacious fighter, far-seeing
thinker, indomitable spirit--a born leader of men--writes to his wife
with the passionate simplicity of an enraptured child: "I doat upon you
and the babes." And his letters end thus: "Kiss the babies for me ten
thousand times. God Almighty for ever bless you, my dearest life and
soul." (This from the "French Atheist." I hope his traducers are
heartily ashamed of themselves.) Nor is it strange. When, in the
beginning of his enterprise, he is in America, preparing to go to France