Part 10

"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 assisting. 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 institutions. 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 assist in bearing its burdens,--by no means excluding women," she has advocated the enfranchisement of her sex, 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 constitutes 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, Mass.

* * * * *

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.

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, Mass., 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 passionate 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.

Two years after, at seventeen, she writes: "I am studying Madame de Staël, Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and the Castilian ballads, with great delight.... I am engrossed in reading the elder Italian poets, beginning with Berni, from whom I shall proceed to Pulci and Politian." How almost infinitely above "beaus and dresses" was such intellectual work as this!

It was impossible for such a girl not to influence the mind of every person she met. At nineteen she became the warm friend of Rev. James Freeman Clarke, "whose friendship," he says, "was to me a gift of the gods.... With what eagerness did she seek for knowledge! What fire, what exuberance, what reach, grasp, overflow of thought, shone in her conversation!... And what she thus was to me, she was to many others. Inexhaustible in power of insight, and with a good will 'broad as ether,' she could enter into the needs, and sympathize with the various excellences, of the greatest variety of characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends, that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of life,--that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier, than had now attained."

Witty, learned, imaginative, she was conceded to be the best conversationist in any circle. She possessed the charm that every woman may possess,--appreciation of others, and interest in their welfare. This sympathy unlocked every heart to her. She was made the confidante of thousands. All classes loved her. Now it was a serving girl who told Margaret her troubles and her cares; now it was a distinguished man of letters. She was always an inspiration. Men never talked idle, commonplace talk with her; she could appreciate the best of their minds and hearts, and they gave it. She was fond of social life, and no party seemed complete without her.

At twenty-two she began to study German, and in three months was reading with ease Goethe's Faust, Tasso and Iphigenia, Körner, Richter, and Schiller. She greatly admired Goethe, desiring, like him, "always to have some engrossing object of pursuit." Besides all this study she was teaching six little children, to help bear the expenses of the household.