Harper's Round Table, November 24, 1896

Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

The Editor of the Round Table has asked me to relate some incident of my life which may be of interest to its readers. Will they permit me to tell them that episode in my life which gives me, when I recall it, the greatest pleasure?
It is the old story of the pebble and the ever-widening circle in the water.
Do you remember how all through the autumn of 1893 there appeared in corners of newspapers, in telegraphic columns, then in editorial briefs, sinister allusions to the total failure of the Russian crops and the menace of a famine? Do you remember how the dreary paragraphs expanded; how the menace became ghastly reality; how we grew to find, every morning, as we sat down to our bountiful American breakfasts, woful tales how men and women were dying of starvation fever, and little children turned wailing away from the horrible bread of weeds and refuse? I read as others read. And I read also of the titanic efforts of the Russian government and the wonderful generosity of the Russian people in that year of disaster. I experienced the momentary shudder of pity and horror that such tales excite, and, like other people, I thought Somebody ought to do something ; and then pushed the hideous picture into the background of my mind.
One night Mr. Arthur M. Judy, the pastor of the Unitarian Church in Davenport, dined with us. The talk drifted to the famine in Russia. I told how a friend who had passed through Russia in August described the look of the ruined wheat-fields and the sadness already settling over the villages.
We ought to do something for those people, said he. They came to our rescue during the civil war; they have always been friendly with us; we ought not to stand by idle now. We ought to do something, right here in Iowa.
We all agreed that it would be a good thing, but there was no definite plan proposed. Only later in the evening, as my mother, my sister, and I sat together before the fire, we talked of those starving people until it was uncomfortable. I found it hard to push the pictures of agony and death and piteous self-sacrifice into the background of my mind.