They are their own exceeding great reward, their self-sacrifice is
infinite joy, and the selfishness which discards them receives in return
loneliness and a desolate old age. Yet these, though the most tender and
intimate portion of human life, do not form its whole. It is given
to noble souls to crave other interests also, added spheres, not
necessarily alien from these,--larger knowledge, larger action
also,--duties, responsibilities, anxieties, dangers, all the aliment
that history has given to its heroes. Not home less, but humanity more.
When the high-born English lady in the Crimean hospital, ordered to a
post of almost certain death, only raised her hands to heaven and said,
"Thank God!" she did not renounce her true position as woman, she
claimed it. When the queen of James I. of Scotland, already immortalized
by him in stately verse, won a higher immortality by welcoming to her
fair bosom the daggers aimed at his,--when the Countess of Buchan hung
confined in her iron cage, outside Berwick Castle, in penalty for
crowning Robert the Bruce,--when the stainless soul of Joan of Arc met
God, like Moses, in a burning flame,--these things were as they should
be. Man must not monopolize these privileges of peril, birthright of
great souls. Serenades and compliments must not replace the nobler
hospitality which shares with woman the opportunity of martyrdom. Great
administrative duties also, cares of state, for which one should be born
gray-headed, how nobly do these sit upon a female brow! Each year adds
to the storied renown of Elizabeth of England, greatest sovereign of
the greatest of historic nations.
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