Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-11-05
AS ONE WOMAN SEES IT
pebts That Women Owed Miss Mary
Coles May Be Paid to Others,
Which Is Something That
Would Have Pleased Her
BY SARAH ID. LOwRIE

squarely up against the fact that those we
owe the most to seldom do get paid in
person.
When we "come to ourselves" we make
up for lost opportunity as best we can by
paving some one else.
Which, after all, could they but know IL,
would please the big, generous souls better
than any Cancelled l. o. q. placed to their
private account could possibly please them.
Passing on favor Is probably the only
sure way of squaring our accounts with life.
A whole generation of women, perhaps two
generations Of women from fifty years old to
that can only be paid by some such vicarious
giving.
LNOR twenty-five years she had a very
l. great influence on n certain type Of
young girl and young married women Of this
city. 1t was not because she was particu-
larly modern or flexible or even tactful in
her stand with them. She was monumental
physically and spiritually. There was more
OF In Memoriam' in her outlook than of
than ideas and for way Of life that fitted
of life.
She was direct and rather answering in
her judgments of persons and of their acts,
which yet made her neither harsh nor un-
just. She was just simple-the way Of a
child is simple because his mind Is untram
mcled by doubts or by conflicting points of
view. thing was either right or wrong,
to be done or to be quietly set aside.
Youth can understand the logic back of
this directness and does not resent it. For
that reason Miss Coles could fill her big
drawing rooms with young girls and young
married women and young in mind older
women every week and sometimes an evening
week besides; she could get them there and
keep them there early in the morning after
a late dance; she could make them listen
to-what?
The Bible! She could make them work
and give-for what? Foreign missions
She could organize them 70 identify them
selves-with what? The Church!
And she did this for more than twenty
hve years. The gaycst, most sought after,
most carefree girls of the city went to her
for for instructions and for, counsel about the
things carefree, idle girls are supposed to
find least attractive and to neglect.
HAVE always thought the secret of her
L power was the sureness and calmness
of her own convictions and the vitality of
her interest in the persons she touched. She
considered them and thought all around
them-very much as an artist thinks around
his subject or a doctor thinks around his
patient. She diagnosed them and was con-
vinced they would respond to treatment
her large, calm treatment. And they gen.
orally did.
venture to say that there are some hun
dreds OF women in this town today who,
when they think of religious energy adjusted
to life, think of Miss Mary Coles And
her personality will define religious energy
to them for all their thinking years. Which
is no small part to play in the lives of even
score of women, let alone some hundred or
so.
Tn A VERY fine, high sense she practiced
L what she insisted upon as essential, never
more so than when she was blind and deaf
and nearly cripple from rheumatism. She
did not go back on her religion when
little by little the doors Of life shut in her
face; she did not cease to take personal
energetic interest in individuals, although
she could no longer see them and their voices
reached her family and with great effort on
her part; she never lost her sense of
responsibility as a factor in the life about
her: Old as she was, she did not scrap her
self or lay herself aside. But she waited
with a singular dignity and composure for
the lead for her exit" to be given her by
the One whose business only it is to give
that lead.
A LITTLE over year ago went to her
n by appointment to consult her about
something we were both interested ina pro-
posed club for undergraduate nurses-and
she said to me. apropos of her physical de-
pendence on others, that she wondered what
she was meant to learn by the discipline I
suggested that the rest of us were learning
great deal from her patience and serenity,
and perhaps that was it. l thought at the
time she had never taught lesson at so
great cost to herself as she was teaching
then or got 1t across so successfully.
We all admire galantry under fire. I
doubt II any OF her physical handcaps really
shook her as the coming on of the war and
all the chaos and revolution that has sue
ceeded the so called peace. So many of the
things that she had supposed were moving
steadily on toward the millennium have been
scrapped or are ignored by the generation
she had counted upon to put the finishing
touches to what her generation began, that
] doubt If the physical world seemed as
strange to her darkened eyes as the spiritual
world had begun to appear to her soul; vet
she was gallant through that pain as well as
through the other. She laughed heartily
when told her she reminded me of a woman
who described herself as "having faith, with
uneasiness.' She frankly confessed to having
the feeling that things were drifting onto
the rocks, although she knew in her soul
that could not be.
THAT temptation to fall out of step with
l. the march of Time which comes TO the
physically disabled or the mentally fatigued
or the spiritually disappointed was con
| quered by her at what cost it would be hard
to gauge.
l was listening today to DR.. Madison
| Taylor, who is completing his great book on
longevity, and he was charming enough TO be
| Of us. He confessed that his own fayorite
approach to the general subject was through
| the chapter entitled "Handsomeness as a
Worthy Enterprise for the Mature Adult, 1"
which we all agreed had much sound philos-
| ophy in it which would, no doubt turn into
| a natural law under his whimsical though
! keen observation.
OF course, Osler's accredited theory OF
| retirement at sixty came in for short com
| ment from one of the group, and DR.. Taylor
averred that DR.. Osler's being funny with :
out being understood then was still having
| disastrous consequences. Only lately a
| ruling from Washington in the Postofice
| Department threatened to shelve the mail
sorters over sixty. Now it take some six
| years to be good mail sorter-that is, an
| automatic one-and, until one Is blind or
manned, one can continue to be an expert,
| turing years between the sixties and tn,
seventies may take little courage for new
ventures out of one, may slightly decrease
the initiative, but if you have learned your
| art you do not need initiative: If Won are