The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-02-06

Burmah or OF Mrs. HemanS, who poured
out her holy soul in words which will for
ever be associated with hunters horn, and
captive's chain, and bridal hour and lutes
throb, and curfew'S lknell at the dying dayl
and scores and hundreds of women, un-
known on earth, who have given water to
the thirsty, and bread to the
hungry, and medicine to the sick, and
smiles to the discouraged-their foot
steps heard along dark lane, and in govern
ment hospital, and in alms-hous corridor,
and by prison-gatel There may be no royal
robe-there may be no palatial surround
ings. She does not need them, for all char
liable men will unite with the cracking
lips of fever-struck hospital and plague
blotched lazaretto in greeting her as she
passes: Hail! hail! Queen Vsshti"
Among the queens whom l honor are the
female day-school teachers of this land.
put upon their brow the coronet. They are
the sisters and the daughters of our towns
and cities, selected out of a vast number of
applicants because of their especial intel
lectral and moral endowments. There are
in none of your homes women more worthy.
These persons, some of them, come out from
atfiuent homes, choosing teaching as a use
ful profession others, finding that father is
older than he used to be, and that his eye
sight and strength are not as good as once,
go to teaching TO tighten his load. But |
tell you the history of the majority OF the
female teachers i'll the public schools when
l say, Father is dead" After the estate
was settled the family, that were comfort
able before, are thrown on their own re-
sources
1t is hard for men to earn a living in
this day, but it is harder for women-their
health not so rugged, their arms not so
strong, their opportunities fewer These
persons, after tremblingly going through
the ordeal of an examination as to their
qualifications to teach, half-bewidered step
over the sill of the public schools to do two
things-to instruct the young and earn
their own bread. Her work is wearing to
the last degree. The management of forty
or fifty tidgety and intractable children the
suppression of their vices and the develop
ment of their excellencies, the management
of rewards and punishments, the sending of
so many bars of soap and fine tooth combs
on benignant ministry, the breaking Of so
many wild colts for the harness of life,
sends her home at night weak, neuralgia,
unstrung, so that of all the weary people in
your cities for five nights of the week, there
are none more weary than the public school
teachers. Now, for G, IS sake, give them
fair chance Throw no obstacle in the way.
Ii they come out ahead in the race cheer
them. If you want to smite any smite the
male teachers; they can take up the cudgels
defenseless women. Father may be dead,
but there are enough brothers left to demand
and see that they get justice.
Within a stones throw of this building
there died years ago one of the principals
of our public schools. She had been twenty
five years at that post. She had left the
touch of refinement on a multitude of the
young. She had, out of her slender purse,
given literally thousand; of dollars for the
6pStItnfn who io1
as a school-teacher. A deceased sisters
children were thrown upon her hands, and
she took care of them. She was kind
mother to them, while she mothered
whole school. Worn out with nursing in
the sick and dying room of one of the
household, she herself came to die. She
closed the school book and at the same time
the volume of her Christian fidelity; aud
when she went through the gates they cried:
These are they who came out of great
tribulatiop, and had their robes washed
and made white in the blood of the Lamb"
Queens are all such, and whether the
world acknowledges them or not, heaven
acknowledges them. When Scarron the
wit and ecclesiastlc, as poor as he was bril-
liant, was about to marry Madame de
Maintenon, he was asked by the notary
what he proposed to settle upon Mademoi-
selle. The reply was: "Immortality! the
names Of the wives of kings die with them;
the name of the wife of Scarron will live
always" In a higher and better sense,
upon all woven who do their duty God
will settle Immortality Not the Immortality
OF earthly fame, which is mortal, but the
immortality celestial. And they shall reign
forever and everl Oh the opportunity
which every woman has Of being queen!
The longer | live the more / admire good
womanhood. And l have come to form
my opinion of the character of man by
his appreciation or non-appreciation of
woman. If man have a depressed
idea of womanly character he is bad man.
and there is no exception to the rule The
writings of Goethe can never have any such
attractions for me as Shakespeare, because
nearly all the womanly characters of the
great German have some kind of turpitude.
There is his Marinan, with her clandestine
scheming, and his Mlgnon, of evil parent
age, yet worse than her ancestors, and his
Theresa, the brazen, and his Aurelia of
many intIgues, and his Philina, the terma-
CANT, and his Melina, the tarnished, and his
Baroness, and his Countess, and there is
seldom womanly character in all his
voluminous writings that would be worthy
of residence in a respectable coal cellar, vet
pictured, and dramatized, and embazoned
till all the literary world is compelled to see
No. No. Give me William Shakespeare's
idea of woman; and | see it in DeSdemona
and Cordelia, and Rosalind, and Imopen.
and Helena, and Hermione, and Viola, and
Isabella, and Sylvia, and Perdita, all of
them with enough faults to prove them
human, but enough kindly characteristics
to give us the authors idea of womanhood,
his Lady Macbeth only dark background
to bring out the supreme loveliness of his
other female characters
Oh, women of Americal rise to your op-
portunity. Be no slave to pride, or worldli-
ness, or sin. Why ever crawl in the dust
when you can mount throneg Be queens
unto God forever. Hail Vashtil
Again; [ want you to consider Vashti
the yelled Had she appeared before
Abasuerus and his court on that day, with
her face uncovered, she would have shocked
all the delicacies of Oriental society, and
the very men who in their intoxication de-
lnanded that She come, in their sober mo
ments would have despised her. As some
flowers seem to thrive best in the dark lane
and in the shadow, and where the sun does
not seem to reach them, so God appoints to
most womanly natures a retiring and un-
obtrusive spirit. God once in awhile does
call an Isabella to a throne, or Miriam to
strike the timbrel at the front of host, or
a Marie Antoineute 20 quell French mob, or
a Deborah to stand at the front Of an armed
battalion, crying out: "Upl Upl This is the
day in which the Lord will deliver Sisera
into thy hands" And when women are
called to such outdoor work, and TO such
heroic positions, God prepares them for it,;
. tawr