During repeated visits to the Yellow Sulphur Springs in Virginia, Mr. Merrick and I were seated at table with the famous Confederate Commanders, General Jubal Early and General G. T. Beauregard, who had become additionally conspicuous by their connection with the Louisiana lottery. General Beauregard called frequently upon us, and I met him also at Waukesha, in Wisconsin. He was very kind to me, and greatly enjoyed hearing some of my nonsensical dialect readings. At the latter place the women were much impressed by his handsome and distinguished appearance and manners. When he called at my hotel many of them were eager in their entreaties to be introduced; our gallant general would bow graciously, but they were not to be satisfied unless he would also take them by the hand.
On February 24, 1893, General Beauregard was lying in state on his bier in the City Hall of New Orleans, and I was holding a convention of the Louisiana W. C. T. U. I could not help alluding to the death of this beloved old soldier, and I asked the women to go and look upon his handsome face for the last time. He was a perfect type of his class—courtly, generous, chivalrous. He had been in the Mexican war, and was the only general of the old Confederacy who belonged in New Orleans. The hearts of the people were touched, and when the meeting adjourned many groups of W. C. T. U. women were added to the crowds who went to look their last upon the face of the dead. Miss Points was pleased to say in the New Orleans Picayune: “It was a beautiful act on the part of our women; and it acquired a new significance and beauty in that it was the outgrowth of the strong friendship and appreciation of the wife of the distinguished man who was our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the days of the Confederacy.” This was a tribute which she reminded them to offer to one of the dead heroes of our late war between the states!
“The great effort of courage I have made in my life was going in a skiff in an overflow, with Stephen and Allen, two inexperienced negro rowers, to Red River Landing in order to reach a steamboat for New Orleans, where, at the close of the war, I wanted to get supplies for my family and for my neighbors, who were in extremities by reason of the crevasse. That was an act of bravery—hunger forced it—which astonished into exclamation the captain of a Federal gunboat, Capt. Edward P. Lull, who made me take the oath of allegiance before I could leave. You know how afraid I am of water and of any little boat; but give men or women a sufficiently powerful motive and they can do anything.”
CHAPTER XII.
A FIRST SPEECH AND SOME NOTED WOMEN.
In those broken-hearted days Clara said with a pathetic earnestness: “Now I must try to be two daughters to you. You have not lost all your children—only your best child.” We drew nearer and more mutually dependent as time passed, each trying to fill the awful void for the other. How could I dream that the insatiable archer was only waiting, with fatal dart in rest, to claim another victim? We made common joy as well as sorrow, and tried to lead each other out into the sunlit places, the simple pleasures of home and social life.
Early in the year 1897 a State Constitutional Convention was assembled in New Orleans. The legal inequality of woman in Louisiana had already challenged the notice of some women, and a recent incident was outraging the hearts of a few who had the vision of seers. The Board of Control of St. Ann’s Asylum—an institution in New Orleans for the relief of destitute women and children—was composed entirely of women. A German inmate on her deathbed revealed that she had $1,000 in bank, and by a will, witnessed by members of the Board, she bequeathed it to the institution which had sheltered her. On submission of the will to probate, the ladies were informed that it was invalid, because a woman was not a legal witness to a will. The bequest went to the State—and the women went to thinking and agitating.
Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon urged that we should appear before the Convention with our grievances. I did not feel equal to such an effort, but Mrs. Saxon said: “Instead of grieving yourself to death for your daughter who is gone, rise up out of the ashes and do something for the other women who are left!” My husband insisted that, having always wanted to do something for women, now was my opportunity. Mrs. Saxon and I drew up the following petition: