The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1903-09-06
SUNDAY, SEPT. 6, 1903.
THE UNWRITTEN PAGE.

One OF the best reviews Of the life Of
the late Lord Salisbury closes with
these words: His natural pessimism
was Iatterly increased by solicitude for
Lady Salisbury's health. He owed to
her much of his success. They were
married while he was still struggling
man, and the felicity of their domestic
life, though less in the public eye than
that of Mr.. and Mrs. Gladstone, was no
less conspicuous as one of the elements
combining to form Lord Salisburys at
tractive personality"
"He owed to her much of his sue
cess" That is the -unwritten page in
the lives of nearly all of earth's great
ones. Not only the poetic tempera-
ment, but the severely practical one
owns it. If it was pre- eminently true
of a Browning, whose bravest words,
whose lines most instinct with eternal
truth and beauty owe to it their in
spiratiOn and their power, it is true of
a Salisbury and a Gladstone, the one
severely practical and the other as
coldly and brilliantly intellectual as a
diamond. 1t is true of man like the
late President Mckinley, whose love-
ableness, whose gentleness, whose mel
lowed strength, could be traced unmis-
takably to the solicitude Of a lifetime
for the delicate woman to whom his
last living thought and word were
given.
1t is true as well of millions Of the
unheroic. who live unheralded lives and
sleep in graves marked by no monu-
ment. 1t is the patent, imperishable
fact that subdues human life and glorf-
ffes it. 1t is the unwritten epic sung in
uncounted households, lived to the let
ter through humble, happy days with
only the human heart for their chron-
icler. 1t is the hidden half of life which
forfeits puolic honor that it may pre-
serve its peculiar sacredness secure.
Only when some great man dies and
reverence for truth demands that we
trace the threads of his complex ca
reer and account for him in the pres
ence of the age he leaves and the eter-
nifty he enters, do we render unto wom-
an the things that are hers.
How pale and petty in the great light
seem the struggles for precedence and
the nice balancings of CAPABILITIES and
inequalities between the sexes. Wher-
ever great things have been done IN
this world of ours for God or man. there
is the double influence and the COM
mon effort. 1t is not only the death
less Songs of all literatures that find
here their inspiration, but the deeds
that leap like mountains above the
level landscape and those as well that
make its small places instinct with life
and bloom. The arm is nerved by the
same impulse that fires the brain; and
policies are framed and executed, and
armies and navies move, and nations
rise and fall, and civilizations and in
stitutions are evolved under it's mys-
tical rule. Wherever man has tri-
umphed splendidIy, there must be writ
ten into his stately epitaph those sim
pie words: HE owed to her much of
his success"
The honor paid to womanhood in
America the freedom and gracious
ness with which the sexes associate,
the plane of equality on which hus-
band and wife stand, have marked us
out among the nations as a peculiar
people Not elsewhere has woman
come so completely into her kingdom.
NOR can we deem it accident that in
America there has been developed also
type Of manhood well-rounded, COM