Waterbury Democrat., 1901-03-27
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Copyright, 1s99 by J. B. Lippincott Com.
 my. All --'-7 reserved
-CHApTER H.,

Sorrow unmiXed with remorse is the souls education. The soul of the woman who grieves in silence broadens and deepens, sending down into her own life far-reaching roots and un- folding upward rare auxiliary blos- sons that fill the life about her with divine breathings. Such was the ex- perience of Frances Brookin. Thrown back upon herself. conscious of inno- cence, and feeling always the presence of sorrow, the sorrow of great dis appointment, she saw her girlhood slipping away faster than time itself; for it is true that age is the sum of experience rather than years, and all of life may be lived between the set ting and the rising of the sun. But with Frances this change was not the shrinking of the soul into forgetful- ness; it was an enlargement of view and perspective in which old headlands assumed smaller proportions. New imperative duties they seemed, arose and met her; new responsibilities pre- sented themselves; she faced them all bravely, hopefully, lovingly. The fine quality of her soul proved itself in the casting out of all the bitterness which had in the first hours of her misfor- tune stormed it's citadel and raised somber banners there. The victory over self won by this frail girl was so marvelously complete that no cynicism supplanted her innocent faith in the eternal existence of truth and good- ness and their ultimate triumph over evil. Her touching acceptance of life in its new aspect was not born in day. There were weeks of anguish; there were months of dull heartache and loneliness; there were tear-wet pillows and nights of crying out against fate; for the death of an ideal is the saddest death in all the universe, since for this there is no resurrection. The girlish 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 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 name.
 Political events hastened the girl into womanhood and towards that large tolerance with which the strong soul at last invariably encysts the in- explica ble 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 sil- yer of wars rich trappings. Plumes danced in the breezes and the confeG- crate gray met the eye, rest where 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- tagion 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 jus ting itself easily and gratefully to the new demands, was Frances Brookin, the NNAN> AANSS o1 AlCA hlle ldCC SOlleu6u and deepened into divine womanliness, the love-ray eloquent in her melting eyes.
 Swiftly the holiday side of the war had faded out of view. Agonized si- fence 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 availa ble space in church. and public building and the most spa- cious of private homes were to have their quota of the wounded the dyine. 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 in spir tion 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 soldier suffered. Day and night she labored, sustained by boundless patri- ctism and an elation for which sine 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 tramples not the sod above it. Fiery hatred of the invader possessed her, as it did her sisters: bred in the bone and nour- lshed with the mothers milk, 1t could not be quelled except by years of gentle association and 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 a southern woman's ven- geance. Upon the suffering prisoners Frances delighted to lavish the tender ness of her nature, now broadened and deepened by its own ministry; and something touchingly human carried her among them, although she was not conscious of it.
 For this had come to pass: within