Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1907-05-22


creature full of interest in every mans
and every woman's-work whether
1t was imaginative or technical She
regarded no thing lightly Her con-
science, her wonderful mentality, her
faithful kindness, gave time and
thought TO all
What one is chiefly struck by as
one looks back over long years is the
naturalness, the normal processes
with which her power grew. Her in
fuence was cumulative AS child of
1S-a pretty creature with roses in
the brim of her quaint bonnet-she
and her touching youth were chival-
rously adored There is a charming
letter of Charles Dickens, written in
his early manhood, in which he play
fully describes his hopeless passion
for beautiful young lady he has seen
walking in garden. In his own in
imitable way he paints her loneliness
and its effect upon his susceptible
temperament. his delight in her and
his frantic despair at the hopelessness
of his fame. He ends by the confess
sion that the incompatible she is the
young queen of England, whom he
has beheld as she walked in the gar
den of her palace. 1t can easily be
imagined that many of her young male
subjects in secret swore fealty to her,
and it may be that some of them
proved their faith on Crimean and
Indian battlefelds when they were OF
ripper years
She began by pleasing EnglisEmen
from the first, by an Unconscious APP
peal TO their chivalry and the best
qualities of the sturdy insular nature.
She took an. honest young consort and
| gave her people strong boys and rosy
girls to be their princes and princess
eS. Her subjects knew that her home
was happy and her children loved.
| She hedged her throne with no divini-
| ty, but lived before her peoples eyes
healthful and normal, kindly and in
frank confidence in her country's af-
lection. AS the years passed the evil
dences of her care for those she ruled
over We're countless. When she lay
dying at Osborne one wondered that
in one womans life there could have
been time for the innumerable acts of
feeling kindness alone which can be
recorded of her. No calamity by land
or sea, by fame or disease, befell her
people when her grief Was not as their
own.
1t has been said that q collection of
the letters Of sympathy written by a
| man or woman would be the best
possible exponent of character and in
some cases might form a monument
to which no other could compare. A
collection of the messages sent by
Victoria of England to high and low,
gentle and simple, in time Of sorrow,
would form not alone a record of deep
feeling but of an executive ability
which seemed to find time to think of
ali things. A woman of passionate
tenderness, widowed in her early ma
turity. her heart turned to all women
bereayed. A mother as full of noble
ambition for her children as of in
tense love, her sympathy for young
death, her praise for young deeds of
courage or honor sped fast TO many a
woman's broken or proud heart. The
queen has written" one read again
and again in the morning papers after
any catastrophe, victory or joy. and
her words were always tender and up
| lifting things.
Her power and steadfastness in the
are marked by. Many knew of the
hours spent at night in the labor of
correspondence and the examination
of papers,. 1t is an old story, that of
the prime minister who said that he
would rather have. ten kings 70 man
age than one queen, SO determined
was this one to sign no document she
had not thoroughly understood, re-
fiected upon and approved
But, with the brain and determina-
ton of man. she was beyond all
things woman, and her passion for
her people was that passion of wo-
man which is mentally in degree
maternal. How she loved them-her
stubborn, stolid seeming. madly fight
ing, unconquerable English, Their
courage stirred her very soul. During
the last years of her life. we are told.
their slaughter broke her heart She
lived so close to them that she bled
with their wounds. II she had been
a man born in the days when kings
led their armies to battle what sol
der she would have made, The blood
of warriors was in her veins. This
soldierly quality in her. without doubt,
had something to do with the fact
that she-the most impersonal and
untheatrical of women-inspired, as
has no other woman who has lived, a
curiously personal and dramatic deyo-
ton.
One was continually struck by the
personal nature of the feeling shown