The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-13

| PoTtraysQ Let her stand 1orta U'ou- | estly, but seen of all eyes, as the rose
 tree in the garden of that civilization
 which changed conditions have swept
 into the past
 There is her beautiful and pathetic | picture drawn by the sympathetic hand of Thomas Nelson Page. she
 was mistress, manager, nurse, coun- selor. seamstress. teacher, ho1sekeeper, | slave--all at once. What she really | was. was known only to her God. Her life was one act of devotion--devGtion to God, devotion to her children, de-
 votton to Ter servants. to her friends to the poor. to all humanity A per | feet example of this home lifs Is shown in Mary Washington, the moth
 CT of George Washington. tho grand life of whom truly interpreted the !es- | sons of virtue ant of duty gravcn
 upon his heart by lis mother.
 | Let him who would sheer with the poet Conley at woman "as one of na- lures agreeable bluuders," CT with Thucidydcs. that the best woman is she of whom the feast can be said | either in the way of good or bad or yet with Mohammed, that the worst | thing al out " oman Is that ws oan- 1 not do without her." let him but glance at the following portrait of a woman | of the old South, and see in her that
 there are women fit to inlay heaven 1 with stars" She came cf good old | English stock with every faculty on l the alert for what was and pre-
 gressive, for all that led onward CT | upward. Married at 14. her education | was meager; however. 1t included music | ana painting, and she had ambition and
 energy and took up her burden of life
 with heroic determination. Forty years after she could iook back upon
 g. record of doing, such as few can re-
 call. Shs was the mother of eleven
 children. had sewed for her family | white and black. educated herself with
 her sons and daughters, read everything
 that was published In that day of com
 paratively restricted literature, was
 conversant with politics and every
 public movement, entertained guests,
 literally, from one years end to an-
 ether. had helped scores of people, old
 and young, to better their condition,
 had accompanied her husband to the
 State Legislature and to Congress, was
 staupch church woman, faithful at
 sunday school for many years.
 She was always well dressed and
 ready to converse fuently and intelli-
 gently on any topic she was one of
 the most graceful, popular leaders in
 the State; she found time in her busy life to travel much and learn from ob
 servation as from the books she so , loved, and when at the early age of 53,
 she closed her eyes upon the arena of
 so much industry and philanthropy,
 she had fulfilled nearly to the letter
 the portrait painted by Ruskin of wo- . mans sphere of action for home and
 State. "Of all the pages of history
 written of our great fratricidal strife. there are none so fraught with glory ! and true bravery and high patriotic
 endeavor. as those which tell us of wo- , mans love and woman's self-sacrifce , of woman's devotion and woman's s
 tears. The mothers and wives and sis , ters and daughters. whose best days of
 womanhood were consecrated to a lost
 cause!' It was not until war had writ
 ten It's dread hieroglyph in blood across
 the Southern sky, that the womanll- 2 ness of the women of the South shone
 out in all its fullness, and that our
 men who had ever been foremost in r. 1 chivalric devotion to woman learned
 more fully the truth that woman may a | be "mans disinterested friend, his , equal in resources of character and un- | derstanding. and his superior in the F virtues of heart and soul" The men , who stained the earth with life's crim- son tide. by the Potomac and the Cum
 berland and in the Valley of the Shen- r andoah, had no cowardly mothers, or , weak and recreant wives. Their wo-
 men were of the same heroic mould as L themselves. These women of the South had held dear the Union and :, had cherished the old flag, but when V the strain snapped in twain the cord a that bound the South to the Union then f these women cast in their lot with that I | of the Confederacy and prepared to n pass through the fiery ordeal one t terrible in its character. inasmuch as . no triumph awaited their sacrifices, no
 glad conclusions wiped out the bitter f memory of their griefs."
 . This fair South with its balmy airs A and blue and sunny skies, and joyous l nfoin j., fume of jessamne and of oleander and = of magnolia blossoms, suddenly fell un- V der the awful turmoil of war, swift and . | appalling the thunderbolt from the : clear sky, but the women of the South : faltered not. Forty-three years ago d men left the blow in the furrow the l plane on the carpenters bench closed f law offices or merchants stocks, or left V the pulpit, Bible In hand; the youth of n the land threw their books on their s school desks; all turned from the ordi- . nary pursuits of peace. and went to n war under the sacred auspices of the n | dread God of Battles, to fight for the cause which they honestly and wholly t believed to be right. The mothers, = wives, daughters. sweethearts of these 1 men, resolved that so long as they had !. hearts to feel. heads to plan, and hands to labor, that the sum of their lives q should be to aid in obtainin 2 5 that final and complete victory to . which each fought with firm, undoubt- e ing faith. And the war grew; and
 grew, and more and more were these women called upon to labor and to
 suffer. l need not repeat here the
 tale of the self sacrifice; the labor
 by day in house and field: the toil-
 ing at night by torch of pine knot, or
 by the flckering blue flame of corn
 cob piles. in patching and darning: in
 carding and weaving; in dying cotton
 and woolen clothes and fashioning g
 them with home spun garments that
 their dear soldiers in the field might
 be fed-every woman In the broad
 lands of the South devoted herself, her
 strength. her time, her talents to the
 cause that needed all this and more.
 Never a morning rose to evening
 But some heart did break"
 General Grant said to a rebel wo-
 man in Mississippi: The work of you
 women surpasses anything in history.
 With our overwhelming numbers of
 trained soldiers, I ought to be able
 to whip this hand full of raw re-
 cruits in a little time. if 1t were not
 for you Southern womenw And so
 overwhelming odds told in the end.
 and upon the field at Appomatox na- tion's hope was crushed, and the ban
 ner of the lost cause was furled for ever! The outside world has had no conception of the complete wreck Nt , private fortunes during the great