Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1901-06-20
gtrlish ideal of Frances Brookin was

gtrlish ideal of Frances Brookin was
dead at last, and slept under the petals
of faded white rose. Richard Somers
was out of her life, out of her heart.
The man she loved had never existed,
she told herself. He was a dream, a
romance, an immaculate conception of
a virgin mind. The real man was the
unworthy offspring of base, worldly
passions; he was nothing to her but
a name.
Political events hastened the girl
into womanhood and towards that
large tolerance with which the strong
soul at last invariably encysts the in
explicable and unwelcome facts it can
not avoid. With one leap the fierce
south entered the arena of war, and
Virginia hills echoed the mingled
cheers of contending armies and the
thunder of mighty guns. Richmond
seemed to have become, as in a day,
the center of intrigue and of action.
On every side flashed the gold and sill
yer of wars rich trappings. Plumes
danced in the breeZes and the confSd-
crate gray met the eye, rest wherS it
would. From the capitol the banner
of new nation foated proudly. and
beneath it echoed the tramp of march
ing legions. the galloping hoof-beats
of horses. through all hours of day and
night. Men. in this hitherto staid old
southern city. hurried. under the spur
of emotions that seemed born of a con-
taeion in the air, and anxious women
went about with willing hands to aid
in every department they might in
wade. Among these, her life ad justin
itself easily and gratefully to the new
demands, was Frances Brookin. the
tenderness of her fine face softened
and deepened into divine womanliness.
the loye-ray eloquent in her melting
eyes.
Swiftly the holiday side of the war
had faded out of view. Agonized 81
lence swallowed up laughter. For the
drift was coming in from where the
storm of battle ragged, wrecks of hu-
man forms once freighted with life's
rarest merchandise. Soon every hos
pital, every available space in church
and public building and the most spa
cious of private homes were to have
their quota of the wounded. the dying,
and the dead. The southern woman was
entering upon that field of labor in
which she achieved her noblest dignity.
her fame its Immortality. Foremost
among those who first gave their en-
ergies, their whole lives to the allevia-
tion of suffering, the inspiration of the
hopeless and the despairing, was Fran
ces Brookin. Free to dispose of her
time as she would and with an abun-
dant means at her disposal. she made
herself a ministering angel wherever
a soldier suffered. Day and night she
labored, sustained by boundless patri-
otism and an elation for which she
could not account, try as she would.
She failed in her self-analysis from
ignorance of the fact that a voice that
has once spoken to the heart is never
quite silent afterwards, and that
youth when it buries its dead tramp pies
not the sod above it. Fiery hatred of
the invader possessed her, as it did
her sisters; bred in the bone and nour-
ished with the mothers milk, it could
not be quelled except by years of gentle
association and a common cause, but
by strange paradox this bitterness
excluded every stained and bloody
blue uniform or haggard northern face.
Out of the fight, these were ever out of
the sweep of southern woman's ven
geance. Upon the suffering prisoners