Soon after, a poor girl died in one of the wicked dens of the city.  She had been left an orphan in early life without a mother’s love to guard and guide her, she went astray.  Two carriages followed her to the stranger’s burying ground.  In one were two of her kind; in the other the pastor of the church of which I am a member.  He afterward said to me:  “We had to get two negro men at work near by to help lower her body into the grave.”

No wonder woman cries out against these standards, these peculiar constructions of human sentiment.  Public sentiment demands of a man that he shall be physically brave.  If a woman appeals to him for protection, his bosom must heave with courage like the billows of the ocean, though he quake in his boots.  Yet the woman he defends will endure pain without a murmur, which would make the man groan for an hour.  When my wife is ill it takes about two days to find it out; she does not seem so cheerful the first day, and the second, she will admit she is not so well.  Let me get sick, and the whole family will know it in half an hour.

I know a woman will scream if a mouse runs across the floor, but give her a loved one to defend, let supreme danger come and she’s no coward.  John Temple Graves tells of a Georgia girl so timid she was afraid to cross the hall at night to mother’s room.  She married a worthy young man and by industry and economy they paid for a cottage home.  He began to cough, and the hectic flush told his lungs were involved.  The doctor advised a change of climate.

“We’ll sell the home,” said the little wife, “and go where the doctor advises, for the home will be nothing to me if you are gone.”

They went to Florida and knowing they must husband their small means, she took in sewing.  A few months later the doctor advised a higher altitude.  They went to a little city in the Ozark mountains.  Here again she plied her needle, wearing upon her face by day a smile to cheer her husband, while at night her pillow was wet with tears as she heard him coughing his life away.  After several months she was informed by physicians that but one chance in a hundred remained, and that was still further west.

“I’ll take the hundredth chance,” she said, and on west they went.  Soon after, in the far-away city he died; she pawned her wedding ring to make up the price of tickets back to Georgia.  There the little widow buried her dead by the side of his mother, and after planting her favorite flowers about the grave, she turned away to face the duties of life, and though a dead wall seemed lifted before her, she met each day with a smile and hid her sorrow beneath the soul’s altar of hope.

Man has won his title to courage upon battlefield, and yet the battlefield is not the place to test true courage.

  “The wife who girds her husband’s sword,
    ’Mid little ones who weep or wonder,
  And bravely speaks the cheering word,
    E’en though her heart be rent asunder: