The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1878-09-18
True and Brave Women.
Memphis Avalanche

Memphis Avalanche.
There are women of pluck and unsur-
passable devotion in Memphis who are
daring everything for those they love-
The faithless are of the other sex, of
those whom the world in one of its great
est misnomers has dubbed ''the stronger
sex" While John Donovan forsakes his
wife and leaves his children to die in
strangers hands; while son HES to
Arkansas springs and leaves his mother
and two brothers to be borne by other
hands to the grave; in contrast, shines
out the faithfulness Of woman, as a de
voted mother, as patient, attentive wife,
as life-risking daughter, sister, friend.
By the bedside of the burning body, in
haling the poison of the sick-room, foul
with that odor which tells the nature of
the dreadful disease, performing service
which none other will do, wearing a
smile while the heart is breaking, and
lifting up the head when in the last ago
ny, her person befouled by that must re-
pulsive and most horrible of all substance
black vomit-she sits and watches,
and nurses and cares for her loved one
till he lives again or passes beyond her
aid. The penalty of her service of love
is generally death.
Instances come to the writer's mind
faster than he can record them, instances
which are but few of the many which
have become like part of heaven in so
much of earth's hell.
A citizens relief committee man walk
ed into an humble cottage in the southern
portion of the city. There he found two
children i'll, one weak and listless but
evidently convalescing, the other tossing
in burning fever. A little woman in
black satbetween the two and was in
the act ofkissing the brow of the fevered
one.
Cant send you a nurse, MADAME"
asked the visitor
"No sir" (the pale little woman
smiled.) l have brought one child
through and 1 shall bring the other"
"But you are worn out"
ooh, no, sir. A kind italian woman
near by comes in and helps me some
times"
She would not yield; no other hand
but hers could minister to her little ones.
An old grandmother told Rev. Mr..
Parsons not only of having nursed her
grandson to his death, but in want of
some one else to do it, had with her old
hands prepared him for the grave.
A child was stricken with fever on
Alabama street. &C.," said the mother
to the father, 81 shall never leave the
boy, but you must not be endangered"
The coward complied, and saw from over
the way short coffin borne out of his
home. The mother is paying the price of
her devotion, and by tomorrow will her
self pass to her last home in this city.
A sick mans lady friend wrote:
''Please let me come" And when his
friends thought the die was cast, they
consented to his summoning her. Boldly
she laid aside her hat, pushed back her
hair and forcing a smile to her lips, en-
tered the room. Some of his male
friends stood outside on the door steps
"to inquire how the dear old boy is get
ting along"
The keeper of house of i'll fame on
| Gayoso street dared the loss of Fbusi-
ness dared the desertion of her place by
all but one of its inmates. to nurse faith
fully to the end one who was to her a
comparative stranger, but whom chance
had brought plague stricken to her door,
These are few of hundreds Mothers
have made their sons leave town, and
then relieved apparently of all alarm,
have sunk down to die. Wives absent
have returned against the positive or
ders and wishes of their husbands, pre-
ferring to die with those they love rather
than suffer the suspense away.
God in His mercy has sent these min
istering angels to make US forget for a
time the horrors of wholesale death, and
contemplate in them the glory and beauty
of a better world.