Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1899-09-21
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
THE QUEENS OF HOME, LAST
SUNDAYS SUBJECT.
From the Text, Sol Song, 9: 8, ms Fol-
lows; There Are Three Score Queens"
Many sympathies Stirred and Mem
xries Recalled.
Copyright 1899 by Louis Klopsch.,

hireling, not a subordinate, but a
queen. In former sermon l showed
you that crown and courtly attendants,
and imperial wardrobe were not nee
essary to make q queen; but that
graces of the heart and life will give
coronation to any woman. l showed
you at some length that woman's posi-
ton was higher in the world than
mans, and that although she had often
been denied the right Of suffrage, she
always did vote and always would vote
by her influence, and that her chief
desire ought to be that she should
have grace rightly to rule in the do
minion which she has already won.
/ began an enumeration of some OF
her rights, and now l resume the sub
ject.
In the first place, woman has the
special and the superlative right OF
blessing and comforting the sick.
What land, what street, what house,
has not felt the smitings OF disease?
Tens Of thousands of sick-beds! What
shall we do with them? Shall man,
with his rough hand and clumsy foot,
20 stumbling around the sick-room,
trying to soothe the distracted nerves
and alleviate the pains Of the dis
tressed patient? The young man at
college may scott at the idea of being
under maternal influences, but at the
first blast Of typhoid fever on his cheek
he says, Where is mother?" Walter
Scott wrote partly in satire and partly
in compliment:
o woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy and hard to please;
When pain and anguish wiring the
brow,
A ministering angel thou.
I think the most pathetic passage IN
all the Bible is the description Of the
lad who went out to the harvest field
of Shunem and got sunstruck-press-
ing his hands on his temples and cry
ing out: "Oh, my head! my head"
And they said: Garry him to his
mother" And then the record is:
HE sat on her knees till noon, and
then died."
1t is an awful thing to be Ill away
lTOIu uOulG Ill d oIidh6C hobSip ohSS 80
a while men coming in to look at you,
holding their hand over their mouth
for fear they will catch the contagion.
How roughly they turn you in bed.
How loudly they talk. How you long
for the ministries Of home. l know
one such who went away from one OF
the brightest of homes, for several
weeks business absence at the West.
A telegram came at midnight that he
was on his death-bed far away from
home BY express train the wife and
daughters went westward; but they
went too late. He feared not to die,
but he was in an agony to live until his
family got there. He tried to bride the
doctor to make him live little while
| longer. He said: II am willing to
die, but not alone" But the pulses
fiuttered, the eyes closed and the heart
stopped. The express trains met In
the midnight; wife and daughters go
ing westward-lifeless remains Of hus-
band and father coming eastward
! Oh, it was sad, pitiful, overwhelming
spectacle! When we are sick. we want
to be sick at home. When the time
comes for us to die, We want to die
at home.
In our Civil War, men cast the can
non, men fashioned the musketry, men
cried to the hosts, Forward, march,"
men hurled their battalions on the
sharp edges Of the enemy, crying.
charge! charged" but woman scraped
the lint, woman administered the cor
dials, woman watched by the dying
couch, woman wrote the last message
to the home circle, woman wept at the
solitary burial, attended by herself and
four men with a spade. We greeted
the generals home with brass bands
and triumphal arches and wild huZZas;
but the story is too good to be written
anywhere, save in the chronicles of
heaven, of Mrs. Brady, who came down
among the sick in the swamps of the
Chickahominy; of Annie Ross, in the
cooper-shop hospital; of Margaret
Breckenridge, who came to men who
had been for weeks with their wounds
undressed-some of them frozen to the
ground, and when she turned them
over, those that had an arm left. waved
it and filled the air with their "hur-
rah!"-of Mrs. Hodge, who came from
Chicago, with blankets and with pill
lows, until the men shouted, Three
cheers for the Christian Commission!
God bless the women at home;" then
| sitting down to take the last message:
"Tell my wife not to fret about me.
but to meet me in heaven; tell her to
| ~ hax u,In lnyaH
SO well: tell her we shall meet again
In the good land; tell her to bear my
loss like the Christian wife Of Chris
tan soldier"-and of Mrs. Shelton,
into whose face the convalescent SOL
der looked and said: Your grapes
and cologne cured me-" And so 1t was
also through all of our war with Spain
| women heroic on the field, Drawing
death and wounds to reach the fallen,
watching by their fever cots in the
West Indian hospitals, or on the troop
ships, or in our smitten home-camps.
Men did their work with shot and shell
and carbine and howitzer; women Cid
their work with socks and slippers and
| bandages and warm drinks and Scrip
ture texts and gentle stockings of the
hot temples and stories of that land
where they never have any pain. Men
knelt down over the wounded and said,
ION which side did you fight?" Wom-
en- knelt down over the wounded and
said, Where are you hurt? What nice
thing can make for you to eat? What
makes you cry?" Tonight while we
men are sound asleep in our beds,
there will be light in yonder loft;
there will be groaning down the dark