The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1900-12-01

then, has extended into ten millions
today, and from the single prelacy of
those days, which was invested in
him, has grown into hierarchy Of
fourteen archbishops and seventy
three bishops, with it houses of educa-
ton and its institutions Of charity ex-
tending from the Atlantic to the Pa
cific. Such man is surely great
American and is worthy of having a
conspicuous place in any Temple of
Fame but not in one of the miscel-
laneous character now constructed.
Looking over the feminine list to be
inscribed on the national cenotaph we
find that representative women are
even less fortunate than American
men in the matter Of conspicuousness.
All that this long and anxious search
in the realm of womankind was able
to discover reduces itself to four for
tunate heroines: Charlotte Cushman,
Martha Washington, Mary Lyon and
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Charlotte
Cushman, an ancient and venerable
actress, who, apart from histrionic
ability, which can never give true
greatness, was famous in her old age
for her success in frequency Of last
appearances. Martha Washington was
an amiable widow who happened to
marry the great man of our country.
Mary Lyon founded woman's col
lege in an obscure village of New
England, and Harriet Beecher Stowe
wrote a book of very little literary
merit and precipitated fratricidal
struggle that it will be the reproach
of our statesmen not to have averted
by peaceful arbitration. Can our re-
public, that boasts so vociferously and
so persistently of what it does for wo-
mans equalization with man, show
the world no greater results than in it's
uplifting of womankind? 1t has not
even a Joan of Arc in revolutionary
times. Molly Pitcher is not mentioned,
though she has q slab at Columbia;
and Pocahontas, Of the colonial period,
is slurred over. 1t would look as if
our country, which boasts so much of
it's development of individualism, is
in reality a remorseless leveller of in
dividual eminence. Even the benight-
ed countries of South America glory in
Rose of Lima and Lily of Quito,
whose lives are known wherever
Catholicity is, and that is all the
world over. Shocking as it may be to
our conviction of possessing the mo-
nopoly of everything that is great, there
were illustrious women and plenty of
them, in the days when the world was
supposed to groan under the effete rule
of monarchies. Teresa of Spain was
almost doctor of the church, and did
mighty things for both church and
country. Catherine of Siena was a
world-power in the time Of the dread
full schism of Avignon. Isabella was
a wise and mighty queen, and Pull
cheria guided the destinies of the vast
Byzantine empire which her brother
could not rule. There were wonderful
and learned and heroic women, even
under the crushing tyranny of the old
Roman Caesars. And vet we. who
have had hundreds of years or more
of free institutions, have apparently
produced next to nothing in the matter
of exalted femininity. Is there any
| fatal power in republican aims or
methods or thought that necessarily
reduces most men and all women to Il
uniform level? Is mediocrity re-
quirement OF democratic equality?
We think not. But this is true.
namely, that at all times and all places
the purview of certain self-constituted
or arbitrarily appointed judges may be
limited in it's field of vision and
through an inherited and cultivated
defect will fail to discern some person
alities which are to others most prom
inent Thus we can easily UNI
derstand why a special class
of judges could discover great
ness in woman like Charlotte
Cushman and fail to perceive it, for
example, in a woman like Elizabeth
Seton. Perhaps they never heard her
name. And yet she belonged to ia
nous family of New York and found
ed an organization of women which,
in the incredibly short period since its
institution, counts already 3,746 mem
bers, each of whom, we may safely
say, towers above all the four fem
mime claimants for place in the Hall
of Fame. Take one of them for in
stance, Sister Irene, who, without a
penny in her pocket, started out to
establish the great New York Found
ling Asylum, which to-day shelters
over 1000 infant castaways and gives
refuge to 800 homeless mothers. There
are other Sister Irenes in that splendid
community. All of those noble women
willingly and cheerfully give up the
joys of home to work for God and hui
manity. They consecrated themselves
by vows of poverty and chastity and
obedience, and then devote their whole
lives without reservation and without
any worldly compensation to the care
| of the Sick the DOOR the fatherleSS and