"Than thine was never turned a fonder heart
To nature and to art;
Yet loving beauty, thou couldst pass it by,
And for the poor deny
Thyself...."
The volume contains a poetical tribute of an earlier date, by Eliza Scudder, of which Mrs. Child said, "I never was so touched and pleased by any tribute in my life. I cried over the verses and I smiled over them." I will close this paper with Miss Scudder's last stanza:
"So apt to know, so wise to guide,
So tender to redress,—
O, friend with whom such charms abide,
How can I love thee less?"
IV
DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX
DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX
The career of Dorothy Dix is a romance of philanthropy which the world can ill afford to forget. It has been said of her, and it is still said, that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America has yet produced." It is the opinion of Mr. Tiffany, her biographer, that as the founder of institutions of mercy, she "has simply no peer in the annals of Protestantism." To find her parallel one must go to the calendar of the Catholic saints,—St. Theresa, of Spain, or Santa Chiara, of Assisi. "Why then," he asks, do the "majority of the present generation know little or nothing of so remarkable a story!" Till his biography appeared, it might have been answered that the story had never been told; now, we should have to say that, with a thousand demands upon our time, it has not been read.
Dorothea Lynde Dix—born February 11, 1802—was the daughter of Joseph Dix and granddaughter of the more eminent Dr. Elijah Dix, of Worcester, later of Boston, Mass. Dr. Dix was born in Watertown, Mass., in 1747. At the age of seventeen, he became the office boy of Dr. John Green, an eminent physician in Worcester, Mass., and later, a student of medicine. After five years, in 1770, he began to practice as physician and surgeon in Worcester where he formed a partnership with Dr. Sylvester Gardner. It must have been a favorable time for young doctors since in 1771, a year after he began to practice, he married Dorothy Lynde, of Charlestown, Mass., for whom her little granddaughter was named. Mrs. Dix seems to have been a woman of great decision of character, and no less precision of thought and action, two traits which reappeared conspicuously in our great philanthropist.