Mr. Greeley was so excited and provoked that he said, “Then, Madam, I understand that a man has the right to say to his wife on Sunday morning when he finds that a button is missing on his shirt, ‘Wife, I demand that we get divorced!’”
All were rather confounded by his argument and looked dubiously at me. Fortunately, my wits were previously rather excited, and so I replied:
“Mr. Greeley, the sooner such a man seeks a divorce from his wife, the better for her, because if he considers such a trifle as he mentions a cause for divorce, he is not married in the sense he ought to be.”
This incident he related soon afterward in the Tribune, with the addition of pointing out the danger to which the “thinking” of women will lead. And he markedly ignored me whenever by chance we met afterward.
All these experiences were of great interest and advantage to me personally, and I developed all these opportunities for forwarding my plans and gaining friends, little by little, for the idea of employing women physicians. But the main object at that time was to gain friends for the proposed Fair in December.
As I now look back on that time when a little pin-cushion or mat was presented for this enterprise and think how joyful we were, as we saw in every little gift the desired dollar, or even fifty cents, and then compare that state of affairs with the present, when we calmly announce that ten thousand dollars must be raised by a Fair, I cannot hope to describe the happy emotion which I then felt over the gift of fifty cents.
It is not the size of the gift or the amount of money which it represents which swells our breast with thankfulness and happiness. It is, after all, the sympathy which the gift conveys which makes its value, and this value is greatest when such sympathy is most needed.
Oh! the golden time of Youth and Hope! How little we improve the chances in our later years to assist the young in their aspirations! And thus do we deprive both them and ourselves of that which means true happiness, namely, sympathetic relations between on the one hand, those who keep the world and its interests moving by their aspirations; and, on the other hand, those who have retired, often with disappointment, because of the little they could effect individually.
It is youth and the superior wisdom of the young, no matter whether they have it in reality or only in their imagination, which leads humanity onward toward the millennium. Humanity is, and must remain, young; and no olden times are worthy of being held up as an example.
Meanwhile, letters from Dr. Emily Blackwell, who was continuing her studies in England, came cheeringly with promises of help towards the Fair. But she also continued to urge the abandonment of the work in the United States and its transference to London, where a desire to promote the education of medical women had begun to manifest itself after Miss Florence Nightingale had so successfully shown the necessity of educating nurses in their profession.