href="#ulink_8f094ffa-ea5b-5e21-beb3-6cee1db41688">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 the blessed Gospel, "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of the people Israel," she adds to the literature of the world a new volume, the History of Woman. She spreads a page, for which the long, slow ages had neither looked, nor inquired—neither waited for, nor imagined, the page of female biography.
So liberal have been our own immediate times in supplying fitting materials, that an extensive and valuable library might readily be selected in this department alone. Since knowledge has shed her baptism upon the head of woman, her legitimate sphere of duty has become extended, and enriched by incident. We see her not only brought forward as a teacher, but entering unrebuked the fields of science and literature; we see her amid the hardships of colonial life, displaying a martyr's courage, or ascending the deck of the mission ship to take her part in "perils among the heathen."
The venerable moralist of Barley Wood, who so perseveringly encouraged her sex to reflect, to discriminate, to choose the good and refuse the evil, who, after attaining the age of sixty years, presented them with eleven new and instructive volumes, has not long laid down her pen, for the rest and reward of the righteous. That high souled apostle of erring, suffering humanity, to whose dauntless benevolence crowned heads did honor, whose melodious voice I almost fancy that I again hear, as in the plain garb of her order, she stood as a tutelary being among the convicts at Newgate—she has but recently arisen to that congenial society of the just made perfect, who rejoice over "one sinner that repenteth."
And the harp of that tuneful one, so recently exchanged for a purer harmony, still breathes upon our hearts the echoes of her varied lay, as when touched by her hand it warbled—
"Fame hath a voice, whose thrilling tone
Can bid the life pulse beat, As when a trumpet's note hath blown,
Warning the hosts to meet; But ah! let mine, a woman's breast,
With words of home-born love be bless'd."
She, too, who sleeps beneath the hopia-tree in Burmah, whose courage and constancy no hero has transcended, how rapidly has she been followed in the same self denying path, by others who "counted not their lives dear unto them," if they might bear to the perishing heathen the name and love of a Redeemer.
And one still lives, the wonderful Scandinavian maiden, whose melody now holds our own land in enchantment, and who exhibits, on a scale hitherto unknown in the world's history, rare endowments, boundless liberality, and deep humility; God's grace held in subservience to the good of her fellow creatures. Through the power of song, which, as the compeer of the nightingale, she possesses, and with a singular freedom from vanity and selfishness, she charms and elevates, while with the harvest of her toils she feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, comforts the desolate, aids the hallowed temple to uplift its spire, and the school to spread its brooding wing over the children of future generations.
One there lives, who doth inherit
Angel gifts with angel spirit,
Bidding streams of gladness flow
Through the realms of want and woe,
'Mid lone age and misery's lot,
Kindling pleasures long forgot,
Seeking minds oppress'd with night,
And on darkness shedding light;
She the seraph's speech doth know,
She hath learn'd their deeds below
So, when o'er this misty strand,
She shall clasp their waiting hand,
They will fold her to their breast,
More a sister than a guest.
If all true greatness should be estimated by its tendencies, and by the good it performs, it is peculiarly desirable that woman's claims to distinction should be thus judged and awarded. In this young western world, especially in New England, her agency has been admitted, and her capacity tested, of mingling a healthful leaven with the elements of a nation's character. Here, her presence has been acknowledged, and her aid faithfully rendered, from the beginning. There is a beautiful tradition, that the first foot which pressed the snow clad rock of Plymouth was that of Mary Chilton, a fair young maiden, and that the last survivor of those heroic pioneers was Mary Allerton, who lived to see the planting of twelve out of the thirteen colonies, which formed the nucleus of these United States.
In the May Flower, eighteen wives accompanied their husbands to a waste land and uninhabited, save by the wily and vengeful savage. On the unfloored hut,
