A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.
—Longfellow, “Santa Filomena”
14. FRANCES E. WILLARD, REFORMER
Frances E. Willard was born in Churchville, near Rochester, N. Y. When she was two years old her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, and when she was five, to the beautiful farm in Wisconsin, “Forest Home.” Here she spent her girlhood, working and playing in the fields with her only brother and sister Mary. Her father promised each of the children a library if they would not use coffee or tea until they were twenty-one. They gladly complied with this condition, because each of them had a great thirst for knowledge. Frances wrote stories, plays, poems, and essays at an early age, and at sixteen she won a prize for an essay on “Country Houses.” At eighteen she entered Milwaukee College, but with the removal of the family to Evanston, Ill., she entered Northwestern University, graduating with honors. She first taught a country school, then became teacher in her alma mater, then a teacher in Pittsburg Female Seminary, and later preceptress in the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, N. Y. After a short time of travel in Europe studying widely and writing for American magazines, she made so deep an impression in an address delivered at a woman’s missionary meeting, that she was urged to become a lecturer, which she did with great success. In 1871 she was elected president of the woman’s college of her alma mater, and two years later she became dean of the college and professor of esthetics in the Northwestern University. In 1873 she gave up her college work to organize the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of America, and to begin her twelve years’ campaign with lectures before four thousand audiences. She was largely instrumental in securing the enactment of laws in many States of the Union to introduce physiological temperance and the scientific study of stimulants and narcotics into the curriculum of the public schools. For years she was misunderstood; often bitterly criticized, despised, and scorned. But at last she triumphed! Distinguished philanthropists, reformers, and citizens of England assembled in the City Temple of London to give her a reception, and heaped upon her the highest honors, which she modestly received in the name of the women of America. Beginning with nothing, in twenty years, single-handed, this noble woman organized the women of her country into a vast army that extends to village and city, and State and nation, and to foreign lands, with vast equipment of more than sixty departments and methods of activity for public agitation, a system of temperance journals for children and youth for securing instruction in the public schools upon the nature of stimulants. It is said Frances Willard was a woman without a fault. Not only in temperance, but in every good work, did she work for the redemption of humanity. In an article to girls, she wrote: “Keep to your specialty, whether it is raising turnips, or painting screens or battle scenes, studying political economy or domestic receipts. Have a resolute aim. If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would reply, ‘It is to make the whole world homelike!’”
15. LIVINGSTONE, MISSIONARY-EXPLORER
David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland, March 19, 1813. His father was a traveling tea-merchant who often acted as a colporter, distributing tracts, and showing a true missionary spirit. His mother was an active, sunny, loving woman. His home, enriched by little beyond the bare necessities of life, was happy and brightened by industry, cheerfulness, love for one another, and faith in God. He was a good boy to his mother, often helping her sweep and even scrub, “if she would bolt the door so none of the boys would see him,” because in Scotland it was thought beneath a man’s dignity to “help the women-folk.” It was the proud boast of his mother that in his sweeping, “he even swept under the door-mat.” He loved to climb the hills of beautiful Scotland, gathering wildflowers, curious stones, and mineral specimens. One day he climbed the highest tower in the ruins of Bothwell Castle and carved his name above those of the other boys. When he was ten he was sent to work as a piecer in a cotton-factory. With a part of his first week’s wages he purchased a Latin grammar. Although working from six in the morning until eight at night, he attended night-school from eight to ten, learning Latin and the sciences. At the age of sixteen he was familiar with Virgil and Horace and other classical authors. In his thirst for knowledge he placed his book on the spinning-jenny where he could read it as he walked back and forth at his work. When he was nineteen he gave up his work in the winter months to attend Glasgow University, where he studied Greek, medicine, and theology. He became deeply interested in missionary work and desired to go to China, but Dr. Robert Moffat persuaded him to go to Africa by telling him that “on a clear morning could be seen the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been.” So, in December, 1840, he began the long, five-months’ trip to the far-off African coast, studying the stars and taking observations by them, which experience was of great value to him later when in Africa he was deserted by his guides and had to blaze his own trail. He traveled inland, first learning the language and then preaching, healing, and teaching. In the forest one day he shot at a lion which sprang upon him, caught him by the shoulder, shook him as a terrier dog does a rat, crushed his arm, and would have ended his life at once if one of the natives had not appeared and quickly shot the lion dead. In 1844 David Livingstone married the daughter of Doctor Moffat. He went back to Scotland several times, where he wrote many books, one of which made him rich; but he used his wealth in further work of discovery and the suppression of the slave-trade. In 1863 he set out on his long search for the source of the Nile, and for seven long years amid sufferings, massacres, atrocities, disappointments, he traveled through the jungles of the black continent, until one day, in 1871, Henry M. Stanley, sent out by the New York Herald, appeared, “almost as an angel from heaven.” Stanley, who lived with him in the same house, boat, and tent for four months, said, “I never found a fault in him.” Stanley urged him to return, but Livingstone felt his task was unfinished, and so plunged again into the work, writing to the New York Herald: “All I can add in my loneliness is, may heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal the open sore of the world”—meaning the awful slave-traffic. Not long after, an attack of pneumonia made him so weak that he had to be carried to a hut, where his servants left him for the night. About four o’clock in the morning the boy who lay at the door keeping watch called in alarm. By the light of the candle still burning they saw him upon his knees by his bedside, as if in prayer. Then they knew that he had gone on his last journey, and without a single attendant. Lovingly his devoted servants embalmed his body and sent it to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey with the great of the earth. But his heart they buried by Lake Banguilo, in the land for whose people he had toiled so long, and for whom he gave up his life. On April 18, 1874, the great missionary-explorer was laid in his grave in Westminster Abbey, with sorrow and yet with rejoicing, for they knew well that his life had not been lived in vain.
Open the abbey doors and bear him in