The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service by Newell Dwight Hillis
page 60 of 189 (31%)
page 60 of 189 (31%)
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immortals." But the secret of his genius and influence is this: He
fulfilled the debt of strength and the law of social sympathy and service. This spirit of sympathetic helpfulness has also given us what is called "the new womanhood." To-day our civilization is rising to higher levels. Woman has brought love into law, justice into institutions, ethics into politics, refinement into the common life. Reforms have become possible that were hitherto impracticable. King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table marching forth for freeing some fair lady were never more soldierly than these who have become the friends and protectors of the poor. The movement began with Mary Ware, who after long absence journeyed homeward. While the coach stopped at Durham she heard of the villages near by where fever was emptying all the homes; and leaving the coach turned aside to nurse these fever-stridden creatures and light them through the dark valley. Then came Florence Nightingale and Mary Stanley, braving rough seas, deadly fever and bitter cold to nurse sick soldiers in Crimea, and returned to find themselves broken in health and slaves to pain, like those whom they remembered. Then rose up a great group of noble women like Mary Lyon and Sarah Judson, who journeyed forth upon errands of mercy into the swamps of Africa and the mountains of Asia, making their ways into garrets and tenements, missionaries of mercy and healing, Knights of the Red Cross and veritable "King's Daughters." No cottage so remote as not to feel this new influence. Fascinating, also, the life-story of that fair, sweet girl who married Audubon. Yearning for her own home, yet finding that her husband would journey a thousand miles and give months to studying the home and haunts of a bird, she gave up her heart-dreams and went with him into |
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