Noble Deeds of American Women. Various
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WONDERFUL ENDURANCE AND PERSEVERANCE OF MRS. SCOTT.
COURAGE AND PRESENCE OF MIND OF MARGARET SCHUYLER.
A PIONEER SETTLER'S ADVENTURE.
HOSPITALITY OF CALIFORNIA WOMEN.
A BROTHER SAVED BY HIS SISTER.
PATRIOTIC SACRIFICE OF MRS. BORDEN.
FATHER TAYLOR'S WIDOWED FRIEND.
PICTURE OF A REVOLUTIONARY MOTHER.
CROOKSHANKS SAVED BY A FEMALE.
TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT AMONG MOHAWK WOMEN.
A FEMALE IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY.
HOSPITALITY OF ELIZABETH BRANT.
PHILANTHROPY OF AMERICAN WOMEN: MISS DIX.
INTRODUCTION.
The advantages of Biography are obvious and great. To the weight of precept, it adds the force and efficacy of example. It presents correct and beautiful models, and awakens the impulse to imitate what we admire. Other sciences strengthen the intellect, this influences and amends the heart. Other subjects interest the imagination, this modifies conduct and character. By the recorded actions of the great and good, we regulate our own course, and steer, star-guided, over life's trackless ocean.
In remote ages, the department of Female Biography was almost a void. Here and there on the pages of the Sacred Volume, a lineament, or a form, is sketched with graphic power, either as a warning, or bright with the hues of heaven. Yet uninspired history, though she continued to utter "her dark sayings upon the harp," was wont to relapse into silence at the name of woman. Classic antiquity scarcely presents aught that might be cited as a sustained example. In the annals of ancient Greece, the wife of one of its philosophers has obtained a place, but only through the varied trials, by which she contributed to perfect his patience. Rome but slightly lifts the household veil from the mother of the Gracchi, as she exultingly exhibits her heart's jewels. Cleopatra, with her royal barge, casts a dazzling gleam over the Cydnus, but her fame is like the poison of the reptile that destroyed her. Boadicea rushes for a moment in her rude chariot over the battle field, but the fasces and the chains of Rome close the scene.
Modern Paganism disclosed a still deeper abyss of degradation for woman. The aboriginal lord of the American forests lays the burden on the shoulder of his weaker companion, and stalks on in unbowed majesty, with his quiver and his tomahawk. Beneath the sultry skies of Africa, she crouches to drink the poison water before her judges, having no better test of her innocence than the deliverer, Death. In India, we see her plunging into the Ganges her female infants, that they may escape her lot of misery, or wrapped in the flames of the burning pile, turn into ashes with the corpse of her husband. Under the sway of the Moslem, her highest condition is a life-long incarceration, her best treatment, that of a gilded toy—a soulless slave. Throughout the whole heathen world, woman may be characterized, as Humanity, in Central Asia has been, by an elegant French writer, as "always remaining anonymous—indifferent to herself—not believing in her liberty, having none—and leaving no trace of her passage upon earth."
Christianity has changed the scene. Wherever her pure and pitying spirit prevails, the sway of brute force is softened, and the "weaker vessel" upheld. Bearing in her hand