Far different is the typical woman with a mission, whose type, dashed off with a few strokes by the pen of Dickens, flits across our memory from Bleak House, and provokes a sigh and a smile. Again, Mrs Jellyby, with her dress laced anyhow like the lattice of a summer-house, is writing in a room full of disorder, with her philanthropic eye fixed upon the savages of Borrioboola, South Africa, while her own little boy is outside, kicking and howling, with his head stuck between the area railings. Again, Mr Jellyby employs his evenings in leaning his head feebly against the wall; and when poor Caddy is married, we hear him giving her all he has to give—the beseeching advice: ‘My dear, never have a mission!’
Even Mrs Jellyby may help us in our search, by sending us flying in the opposite direction. We have had light on our path—hiddenness is the seal, and unselfishness is the essence, and we are searching for the heroines of home. Their distinction does not depend, as in fiction, upon adventures, lovers, or beauty. If it did, they could be heroines only till the end of youth and volume three; but in the real world they shall be heroines not only till the time of gray hairs and careworn brow, but for ever and a day.
There is nothing in creation more beautiful than a true heroine, and nothing so hard to find. Not that they are scarce. They crowd the world as daisies dot the summer fields. But they are hidden, and hidden precisely where a thing wanted is most unlikely to be found—too close to us, just straight before our eyes. Not in the world of romance, or in the crush of public life, or in the clear cold air of science; but in the narrow lane where we started, in the monotonous routine of common daily life, that seems to be hedged in from all interest—there are the heroines to be found. Their heroism is made up of trivial details, the shabby atoms of uneventful life. If it be objected that the heroic means something greatly above the ordinary level, we would answer, that their whole life is above the level; that the essence of heroism—sacrifice—has become to them an unconsciously acting second nature, and that all that is life-long is surely great. But sometimes trivial incidents can become in themselves heroic. Whoever heard in a novel of heroism with a crushed thumb? All the finest things are true. It is told of the late Viscountess Beaconsfield, that on the night of an important speech by her husband, then Mr Disraeli, when they were seated in the carriage together to drive to the House of Commons, the servant closing the door, crushed her thumb. She uttered no cry, left the bruise untouched, and acted and spoke as if she was at ease. Hours after, when she descended from the Ladies’ Gallery, he discovered the agony she had been enduring, in order not to spoil his speech; and in after-years, when the Viscountess was dead, he still told the touching little story in her praise.
But to return to our heroines of commonplace life. Their greatness does not even need striking incidents. Their worth makes precious those trivial atoms of which life is composed, and what began as an unpretending patchwork, ends as a complete and precious picture, like the splendid mosaics of Venice or Rome. This is why one might defy the first of novelists to describe the loveliness of such a life; its daily parts are positively too small to pick up.
For each one of us there is some face enshrined in memory, whose influence is lofty as an inspiration, whose power is a living power, whose love has been stronger than death, and will light an upward path for us even to life’s end. Why is all this but because she whom we loved was a heroine? And what were her characteristics? One answer will serve for all—Tenderness, gentleness, self-forgetfulness, suffering. The last characteristic may not be universal, like the rest. But the highest love can only exist where suffering has touched the object loved. It is one of the compensations for the manifold sorrow of this world of ours. The fire of trial seems to light up every beauty and attraction. The life that not only loved much but suffered much has a royal right of influence as long as memory lasts—an influence which cannot belong to any life which suffering has not crowned.
Now we have sketched our heroine, easily recognisable, but herself never dreaming or caring to think that she is one, or her glory would be frail as a bubble. The poorest woman knitting on her cottage threshold can have this glory for her own; for there is no true-hearted woman, rich or poor, who cannot walk her simple life lovingly enough to leave enshrined for others, as a living influence, such a memory as we have described. And what sceptre has so sweet a power as that—an immortal influence through the hearts we have loved most? Compared with this, what is fame but an echo, and what is the heroism of romance but an unreal shadow!
ARMY SCHOOLS.
The valuable advantages these institutions offer to soldiers and their children will, we trust, be evident from the perusal of the following short account of their organisation. With regard to children, these schools will soon have little to do; for the new system of short service promises to do away almost entirely with the married soldier. A soldier is not allowed to marry till he has served seven years, subject to certain qualifications of good conduct; but as the great majority of men are passed into the Reserve before they reach that length of service, the proportion of married soldiers is very small, and rapidly becoming more and more reduced in number. It is rather with the men themselves, therefore, that the military schoolmaster and his assistants have now principally to deal.
Every regiment or depôt has its school. The schoolmasters are trained at Chelsea; and though non-combatants, they are subject to the usual army regulations. They now rank as warrant-officers, and, on the whole, are an able and estimable body of men. Occasionally, educated and promising young soldiers are selected from the ranks and sent to the training college to qualify as schoolmasters. Their number is, however, very limited; the great majority of the schoolmasters enter the army through the college, joining it as civilians; consequently, a schoolmaster cannot be reduced to the ranks. If he misconduct himself seriously, he is liable to be tried by court-martial and dismissed. Such cases are very rare. The army schoolmaster retires with a pension on attaining twenty-one years’ service, though, under certain conditions, it is possible for him to prolong his engagement. If of more than ordinary ability, he is often promoted to the higher rank and more important position of Sub-inspector of Army Schools.
Assistants are allowed in these schools according to the numbers in attendance at them. There is usually one school-assistant to about every twenty men or children attending. In depôts, where the soldiers are mostly recruits, the attendance is often very large, with a correspondingly increased number of assistants. The latter are picked out from among the better-educated men in a regiment; they receive extra pay, and are exempt from the ordinary drill and duty of the rank and file, giving their time and attention to the working of the school and the details connected with it. Many well-educated men, who are not otherwise well suited for non-commissioned officers, are employed in this way in imparting instruction to their more illiterate comrades.