Omaha daily bee., 1898-11-06
SOME SISTERS OF GREAT MEN
Rival Mothers and Wives in self-sacrifoing
Fidelity and Devotion.
STORIES TO PROVE THE ASSERTION
Rulers, Warriors, Artists and Poets
Who Found Their wisest Coun-
sellors and Co-workers
in Their sisters.

In Their sisters.
Every great man has owed much to the
pre-eminent love or influence of some one
woman in his life. Most often this woman
is his mother, sometimes it is 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 he was
restored to his mother from his wateSy
cradle. Miriam was certainly one OF Moses
favorite lieutenants during that perilous
business of getting Israel out of Egypt. She
cheered the fainting hearts OF the Jews by
her admirable songs, dancing and music, and
even the terse sentences of the old testa-
ment cannot conceal Moses genuine grief
when Miriam was stricken with leprosy, nor
his enthusiastic pleading with the living God
to restore her health.
Certainly for any woman less beloved and
less honored than his sister he would
scarcely have done so much, for 1t is plainly
said that jealousy of Moses affection for his
Ethiopian wife brought down this curse
upon her. She lived and worked appar
emily to good old age, and was buried with
honors before her people reached the prom
ised land.
Hapsburg and HohenzOllern Sisters.
1t is a curious coincidence that the sisters
who have welded most influence have been
always Older than their great brothers, and
he margarine of Bayreuth Sophie Wilhel>
nina, crown princess of Prussia, was some
years the senior of Frederick the Great. She
was a strange, passionate. clever and al
ways very unhappy creature, but she
stands quite alone as the one woman whom
Frederick sincerely loved, for whose advice
he had respect and whose memory he ten
derly cherished During his tragic youth it
was in her he confided, with her he invaria
bly, corresponded, and Frederick had no grt at
reverence for the feminine intellect. For
his mother he felt respectful indifference,
for his wife not even a sentiment of friend
ship, while his other sisters merely 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 sis
ter, 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.
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 hunt
ing, Charles gave her proof of the highest
affection. He hid very little of his most
momentous plans from her, gave her an alb
solutely free hand in governing the -ow
country, permitted her to use an iron hand
in the attempt at quelling the rising tide
of heresy. and after governing the Neither
linds twenty five years she retired from the
regency when her brother abdicated his
throne. Charles shut himself up in his mon
astery, but the brother and sister corre-
sponded until this greatest of the Hapsburgs
died.
As COmfOrters of Warriors.
Colin Campben 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
penny over and above the barest necessities
of a soldiers life went to the sister in Scot
land. She was never a brilliant or a beauti
full woman, but the hero of the Crmea and
the Indian mutiny 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 remembered her
needs, and she, a crippled old woman, sat
by his bedside when he died. She lived un-
married, as he had done, and inherited
comfortable fortune at his DEATH
Byron, like Lord Clyde, Always wrote to
his sister on the eve of any perlous under
taking, and among the ten different versions
Of his deathbed remarks his sisters name
invariably appears. Byron in his relations
with every woman was singularly cruel, ex-
acting and unfaithfu He abhorred ugl-
ness in women until he was a well-grown
boy he had never seen his sister, and yet
this representative, eccentric critical and
high-tempered man accorded his plain faced,
conventional sister the only truly uoble SEN
timent OF which he was capable.
AT their first meeting he had pictured
romantically beautiful woman. He found in
the honorable Augusta Byron a girl almost
ugly, but with the kndest eyes, the most
amlable smile and from that moment he
pestuous moments when he insulted his wife,
beat his watch to pieces in a rage on the
hearth and fuddled his brain with brandy,
Augusta could sooth and control him by
word. She kept the friendship OF his fool
ish and almost unmanageable wife, and
brought about the only intervals of peace
that reigned between the pair, and what is
chiefly to her credit she never allowed her
unhappy brother to criticise or defame his
wife before her.
So far as lay within his power Byron re-
paid his patient and generous sister. His
only child was named for her, dying he left
her everything save enough for the support
of his wife and daughter, and his "Stanzas
TO Augusta" are eloquent of deeper, truer
emotions than any other human being ever
aroused in him.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman thou didst not forsake.
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though sandered. thou coudst never
shake.
When near his death in Greece his letters
to Augusta are full OF pathetic, almost