Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a great Cause more than life itself, and to have the privilege throughout life of working for that Cause.
Anna Howard Shaw.
A CHAMPION OF "THE CAUSE"
A YOUNG girl was standing on a stump in the woods, waving her arms and talking very earnestly. There was no one there to listen except a robin a-tilt on a branch where the afternoon sun could turn his rusty brown breast to red, and a chattering, inquisitive bluejay. All the other little wood folk were in hiding. That strange creature was in the woods but not of them. She belonged to the world of people.
The girl knew that she belonged to a different world. She was not trying to play that she was a little American Saint Francis preaching to the birds in the forests of northern Michigan. She was looking past the great trees and all the busy life that lurked there to the far-away haunts of men. Somehow she felt that she would have something to say to them some day.
She raised her clasped hands high above her head and lifted her face to the patch of sky that gleamed deep blue between the golden-green branches of the trees. "There is much that I can say," she declared fervently. "I am only a girl, but I feel in my heart that some day people will listen to me."
A gray squirrel scampered noisily across the dry brown leaves and frisked up a tree trunk, where he clung for a moment regarding the girl on the stump with shining, curious eyes.
"Saucy nutcracker!" cried the child, tossing an acorn at the alert little creature. "Do you too think it strange for a girl to want to do things? What would you say if I should tell you that a young girl once led a great army to victory?—a poor girl who had to work hard all day just as I do? She did not know how to read or write, but she knew how to answer all the puzzling questions that the learned and powerful men of the day (who tried with all their might to trip her up) could think to ask. They called her a witch then. 'Of a truth this girl Joan must be possessed of an evil spirit,' they said. 'Who ever heard of a maid speaking as she speaks?' Years afterward they called her a saint. She was the leader of her people even though she was a girl—Now I don't mean, fellow birds and squirrels, that I expect to be another Joan of Arc, but I know that I shall be something!"