The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-11-06
SISTERS OF GREAT MEN.
They Have RivaIed Mothers and
Wives in Fidelity and Devotion.

Wives in Fidelity and Devotion.
Every great man has owed much to the
pre-eminent love or influence of some one
woman in his life. Most often the woman
is his mother, sometimes it is a wife, but
there are instances sufficient to fill book
with stories, of the dominant feminine
sway being held by a sister.
There need not remain the least shadow
of a doubt but that the woman Moses
took most deeply into his confidence and
on whom he most firmly relied, was his
sister Miriam, a woman considerably his
senior and by whose cleverness and tact
ne was restored to his mother from his
Watery cradle. Miriam was certainly one
Of Moses favorite heutenants during thar
perIlous business of getting Israel out of
Egypt. She cheered the fainting hearts
of the Jews by her admira Bile songs. dane
Ing and music, and even the terse SEN
fences OF the Odd Testament cannot con-
ceal Moses genuine grief when Miriam
was stricken with leprosy, nor his enthu-
siastic pleading with the living God to re-
store her health.
Certainly for any woman less beloved
and less honored than his sister he would
scarcely have done so much, for il is
plainly said that jealousy of Moses affec-
this curse upon her. She lived and worked
apparently to a good old age, and was
buried with Donors before her people
reached the promised land
1t is curious coincidence that the sis
tiers who have welded most influence have
been always older than their great broth
ers, and the margarine of Bayreuth
Sophie Wilhelmjna, Crown Princess of
Prussia, was some years the senior of
frederick the Great. She was a strange.
passionate, clever and always a very I'M
happy creature, but she stands quite alone
as the one woman whom Frederick sin
cerely loved, for whose advice he had re-
spect, and whose memory he tenderly
cherished. During his tragic youth it was
in her he confided, with her he invariably
corresponded, and Frederick had no great
reverence for the feminine intellect. For
his mother he felt a respectful indiffer-
ence for his wife not even a sentiment
of friendship. while his other sisters mere
~ bored him, but poor Sophie, with all
her faults, evoked in him a devotion and
reverence that lasted to the end of her
days.
Charles V was another monarch who
said in all his life he had known but one
woman whom he could trust in and rely on
as he would a man, and that woman was
his sister. Mary Of Hungary. She was a
woman after Charles own rugged and
warlike heart, and he showed how highly
he estimated her talents and her virtues
when he made her regent of Holland and
Flanders.
A less masculine creature would perhaps
have failed to secure Charles esteem, and
in spite of the heavy beard that would
grow on her stern chin, of her brawny
arms that would pull the strongest horse
on his launches and her savage love of
boar hunting. Charles gave her proof of
the highest affection He hid very little
of his most momentous plans from her,
gave her an absolutely free hand in gov
erning the low country, permitted her to
use an iron hand in the attempt al quell-
ing the rising tide of heresy, and after
governing the Netherlanders twenty-five
years she retired from the regency when
her brother abdicated his throne Charles
shut himself up in his monastery, but the
brother and sister corresponded until this
greatest of the Hapsburgs died.
Colin Campbell is one of the warriors of
our century who never married, but who
found great solace in the devotion his sis
ter, Marjory Alicia, gave him. Early in
his career he was too poor 10 marry, and
every penny over and above the barest
necessities Of a soldiers life went to the
sister in Scotland. She was never a bril-
liant woman, but the hero of the Crimea
and the Indian mutny gave her all the
faithful affection that often goes to a
mother or wife. He wrote to her, among
the horrors of the Indian war he remem-
bered her needs. and she, a crippled old
woman, sat by his bedsied when he died
She lived unmarried as he had done, and
inherited a comfortable fortune at his
death.
Byron, like Lord Clyde. always wrote to
his sister, on the eve of any perilous I'M
dertaking, and among the ten different
versions of his deathbed remarks his sis
ter's name invariably appears. Byron in
his relations with every woman was sing
ularly cruel. exacting and uRfaithful. He
abhorred ugliness in woman; until he was
a well-grown boy he had never seen his
sister. and yet this representative, eccen-
trio, critical and high-tempered man ac-
corded his plain-faeed. conventional sis
ter the only truly noble sentiment of
which he was capable.
At their first meeting he had pictured
a Economically beautiful woman. He
found in the honorable Augusta Byron
a girl almost ugly but with the kindest
eyes, the most amiabe smile, and from
that moment he never faltered in his love.
In his most tempestuous moments when
he insulted his wife, beat his watch to
pieces in a rage on the hearth and fud-
died his brain with brandy. Augusta could
sooth and control him by a word She
kept the friendship of his foolish and
almost unmanagea wife, and brought