The Republican journal., 1882-03-23
A Woman's Message.


stopped, interrupting herself. She had
been writing as She talked, and she stuck
her pen in her back hair as she put her
pages in a big yellow envelope, weighed
and stamped it. 1t was an article on the
Position at Geek Tepe for daily paper.
She had come down for a couple of days
at the seashore and had brought her pen
and ink with her. Already she had sent
off a Letter from the Coast, descriptive of
the scenery and touching lightly on the
application of Tidal force as motor; she
had finished her daily four pages of the
comedy she was writing, and was just be-
ginning on Cremation, the encyclopedia
open at Gre. before her.
"1es," running her finger down the
page, II like to hear about those old
schoolmates of ours; how they have de
veloped and what work they have done
in the world. SO many wither away
truitless. die with all their music in them,
never, never bring their lives to bear
YOU see"
Miss James figures of speech were run
ming wild among cremating furnaces
She shut the book, wrote her title, Burn
ing or Burial ? and paused, pen in hand,
shaking her prettily coif1ured head "The
voiceless, All, Holmes struck the TRACE
dy in most women's lives there They
have a message for humanity, but never
speak it; they have power to help the
world, but stick close to one place or one
creed all their lives, dry up and wither as
useless as sponges cinging to a rock
Miss Jane was no sponge She had
darted through Europe, up the Nile, even
dis far as Japan, wl-strap and note
book in hand she made her headquarters
now in New York, but was of in an
hours notice to Washington, Chicago,
san Francisco, wherever inaugurations,
conventions or fashionable doings promis-
ed her material. As for the message
given to her to speak, she was we'll
meaning, unaffected person, with an in
tcllect feeble, but nimble and initiatives
she would talk er c0thedr0 unbushingly
Oh every subject from Primal Forces to
Cock Tepe. She had spoken the word
that was in her several thousand times
over every year, and she never once
doubted that humanity was lifted upward
by every wave OF the thin wash of words
which she sent out.
Nov, there was Lizzy Blake" she
said, meditatively. After she had writ
ten page. "tall, delicate, gray eyed girl
in my class; you remember? Eve known
all the women in America who have in-
tiuenced their times, and never knew one
with the original power Of that girl. Why,
used to feel cheap and seazy beside her
a chrome beside.a cartoon of Raphael
| did, positively. But see how things
have turned out. | saw her year or
two ago in farm wagon, peddlng but
ter to the villagers. She hadn't budged
ten miles from the old spot, She had
spent her life in sucking fools and chron-
icling her sales of butter"
Miss Jane went back to her funeral
fires. and after little hesitation, deter
mined to set down what | knew of LiZzy
Blake, thinking it might be of interest to
the thousands OF women who grow tired
OF making butter or sucking possible
fools, and who fancy there is a divine
word in them which can only be spoken
through printers ink
| think Miss Way was right about our
old schoolmate. There was both origi-
nality and force in Lizzy Blake, yet no.
body classed her among the hippant,
bright takers or writer's of clever compo-
sltlOns OF which the school bOasted. Liz
zy was simple minded, unpretentious
girl who annoyed her teachers bv going
nearer to the bottom of every subject
than they, or the teXt-b books, required.
Nothing but the naked truth would satisfy
her; she would go after fact, though it
would take days to find it out, and drag
1t out like a sleuth- hound with his prey.
Such pupil is troublesome in the smooth,
GLIB recltations of a young ladies' school.
She was so silent and undemonstrative,
too, that nobody understood the singular
influence which certain phrases of the
outer world had upon her. She did not
herself know why, when the other girls
were loud in outcries of admiration for a
beautiful landscape, she should shudder
and grow pale with heart sick longing;
nor why she should afterwards spend
months in trying to reproduce the thing
that had SO moved her. in sketches which
she tore angrily to pieces, and in music
which was to her ears only discord. Yet,
think, when she was laughed at then
for her silent habits, she fancied she
would some day put all the words which
she never had spoken into music Indeed,
have heard there was singular power
and pathos in the little airs which she
composed at that time; one or two of
which probably still exist somewhere in
manuscript.
If Lizzy Blake had belonged to
modern cultured family in New York or
Boston, where every feeble hint Of especial
talent in child is hailed as rapturously
as indications of gold in mine, and work
ed as hard, she would have been trained
as musician, and thus, according to Miss
James theory, have given her message to
mankind. But the farmer, her father,
and his wife were quite satisfied when
Lizzy came home able to rattle polkas or
to play accompanments for the hymns
at family worship on the creaking piano
which MIR. Blake had hired They would
have been insulted at the proposal that
she should learn to sing in public or write
music or earn money in any way. AS
long as her father could plow and dig
and take his crops and pigs to market,
''What call was there for his women folks
to turn out to earn their living? The
Blakes," the old man often said, "alwavs
was a genteel family. None of their
daughters ever had to go out to work for
their bite and sup, and they'll not begin
now. | don't hold to these new fashioned
doin's. You just stay under your fathers
roof, Lizzy, till you've one of your own"
So Lizzy cooked and MIXED and wash
ed dishes in the big Blake farm house,
until she married Stuben Garrett and
carried on the same work in the smaller
house and farm of the CARROTS Miss
Jane, condemned to such a life long fate,
would have rebelled in poems and essays
on woman's serfdom in every newspaper
IN the country THAT would pay for them);
but if Lizzy was not contented with her
work nobody knew it. She had that rarest