USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 29
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Miss Kate Marsden was born in The Parade Edmonton, London, England. Her parents were J. T. Marsden, Esq., sulic- itor, and I. M. Marsden. She was educated near London and has traveled over most quarters of the globe, but especially throngh Russia and Siberia. Her special work has been in the interest of the poor, ontcast lepers, for whom she has endured great hardships in the dreary wastes of Siberia. She will soon return to that cold, cheerless country, where she expects to remain three or four years, working to alleviate the suffering of this wretched and forgotten class of afflicted humanity. Miss Marsden is a noble, self-sacrificing Christian woman. Her principal literary work is "On Sledge and Horseback to Out- cast Siberian Lepers." Her profession is that of a Sister of Charity. In religious faith she is a Protestant. She is a mem- ber of the Church of England. Her postoffice address is Redcliffe Gardens, South Kensington, London, England.
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post station. These are very tiny, very dirty houses, the rooms heated beyond endur- ance, and often crowded beyond endurance also. Every possible chance of air enter- ing is prevented by stuffing windows with paper. For a bed you take a fur coat, throw it on the floor and yourself upon it. Sleep comes if you can only manage to forget that the walls of the room are almost covered with very suspicious-looking dark objects. In the morning you wake with a dreadful headache, half suffocated by the heat. After trying this sort of resting for some nights, you find it is preferable to sleep in your sledge, traveling all the time. On my way through Siberia I stopped at intervals to visit some of the prisons, and used often to meet gangs of prisoners walking through the snow, their leg chains clanking dismally as they moved slowly along. Friends had provided me with testaments to give these poor people when I should meet them, but I remembered that our Lord fed the hungry and then taught them, and so with the testament I always gave a little brisk tea and a few pieces of sugar, and if I could possibly get any, some soup.
My friend, Miss Field, who had accompanied me from Moscow, was obliged to turn back on account of ill health, and I went on alone to Irkutsk. Here I again heard of the herb, and also learned for the first time that there were lepers in Siberia. At Irkutsk I formed a committee from which I obtained assistance and information. This committee consisted of His Excellency, the Governor General, His Grace, the Archbishop of Irkutsk, His Eminence, the Bishop, the Cathedral Priest Vuangradoff, His Excellency, the State Councillor Sievers, the Inspector of Medicine, the Aide-de Camp of the Commander of Troops, Captain Luoff, the Mayor and myself. I found that the lepers were living in the forests in the northeastern part of the province of Yakutsk; that for sixty-four years they had been pleading for help, but owing to want of funds no sustained help had been given. I heard that I should have still a very long journey before I could reach and visit these poor lepers, but I also heard that the lepers were living in the utmost misery and I determined to reach them and help them. The journey from Irkutsk to Yakutsk was made principally by water. I traveled by cargo boat on the river Lena, one of the largest rivers of Northern Siberia. On this boat quarters were rather cramped, and I slept in a space that was cleared for me of about five feet three inches, and as I happened to be longer than that, I was not very com- fortable. At length the friends of the cargo came out - black beetles and other crawling things. I am afraid I used to feel rather a cruel satisfaction when I lay down at night and realized that I was probably crushing with the weight of my body a good many of the black beetles that would otherwise have crawled over me while I slept. I found that dinner was more enjoyable if you didn't attempt to see how it was cooked; the tea was not strong, generally about three tea spoons full for a dozen people, but still we had enough to eat, and after all this only lasted three weeks and then we arrived at Yakutsk.
There was some little difficulty at Yakutsk in convincing the officials that I had really traveled so far, overcome so many difficulties, and was prepared to overcome many more, simply to find an herb and to help those who were in misery. They thought I must have some political object in view, and Yakutsk is the country of political exile. At length, however, I was able to form a committee in Yakutsk as I had donc in Irkutsk and Moscow, and to obtain assistance and advice as to the best way of reaching the lepers. These poor outcasts were living in the depths of the clensest forests, sometimes alone, sometimes in large numbers herded together in one small hut. Each community looked after its own lepers and met once a year to examine any member who was suspected of being afflicted with leprosy. This disease is so dreaded by the Yakout (a devil and a leper are synonymous terms in their lan- guage ), that it sometimes happens that a man who is not a leper, but is afflicted with some skin disease, is turned out to live in the forests. The lepers live on food of the coarsest description, rotten fish and the bark of trees. This is taken once or twice a week to within a certain distance of the hut, and the leper has to walk or crawl, accord- ing to his condition, to get it. When he becomes too weak to get the food, he dies of
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starvation. If there are many lepers in a community, men, women and children are herded together in one hut. This happens in a country where there is a short summer of three months of tropical heat and nine months of winter, when the thermometer goes down to sixty and seventy degrees below zero, and the lepers, therefore, do not stir out for days together.
As I learned more and more of their misery, I felt that God had given these poor outcast lepers into my hand; that I must go to them. God had guided me thus far, and would guide me rightly to the end. In order to find them in the forest I learned that I must ride long distances on horseback through a very difficult country. Thirty brave Yakout men volunteered to accompany me, and at last I was able to leave Yakutsk for my long ride. I had with me some Roman Catholics, some belonging to the Greek Church, and I am a Protestant, but we had not a single discussion, and although I was entirely in the hands of these thirty men for two months, I was always treated with the greatest respect and consideration. I had never been on horseback before except for a few minutes, and as there was nothing obtainable but the native wooden saddle, there was nothing for it but riding like a man. I had great difficulty in keeping on, but managed it with a great deal of bumping up and down. We trav- eled first in the day time, but owing to the heat of the summer in this part of Siberia, and the worrying of mosquitoes and other insects, we were obliged to travel at night at last. We soon left post houses behind, but I carried a tent with me, and when we stopped it was put up and I rested as well as I could, but it was not very comfortable, for inside the tent we were obliged to have a fire to keep off the mosquitoes, and I dared not undress for fear of being dangerously stung. Although I slept in gloves and boots the mosquitoes somehow stung me so that sleep was almost impossible. After a few days' riding in the native wooden saddle I became so sore all over that I could not get on or off my pony without assistance, and I was in such pain from stings and bruises that it was not easy to rest. Part of the way lay through dreary marshes and part through dense forests. We were sometimes caught in heavy thun- der storms, and when we came to a place where it was possible to stop a fire was made, I was lifted off my horse, laid before the fire, and turned first on one side and then on the other and gradually dried.
Our food was cooked in an iron pot, and when it was ready we all sat on the ground round it, each man dipping in his spoon in turn, but I made it a rule never to look at the man who was dipping in his spoon before me, and then I managed very well. We had taken provisions with us from Yakutsk, brown and black bread in fish- skin bags, tinned and preserved meats, etc., but everything that was capable of break- ing was broken with the constant bumping. Our food consisted for the most part of bread reduced to a powder, of which we made a sort of paste, well flavored from the fish-skin bag, tea, and sometimes a wild duck. We had great difficulty in obtaining water, and had often to squeeze it out of the marshes, and were once even obliged to take water from a lake in which lepers had bathed. There were many bears in some of the forests through which we passed, but we were never attacked. One night we had to pass through some miles of burning earth. The earth is mostly peat, and dur- ing the heat of summer, from some unexplained cause, combustion takes place and spreads for miles. Only one little baggage horse, frightened by the flames, broke loose from the rest and galloped away, disappearing in the smoke. We did not see him any more, only heard for a time the thumping of the packages he was carrying, which had fallen both on one side and, knocking together, frightened the poor little horse still more. Through the providence of God we passed through all these dangers unharmed.
It is in this inhospitable country that I have been describing that the poor lepers lived, and it was in some of these dense forests that I found at last the lepers I had come so far to help. I forgot the difficulties of the journey and the comparatively little injury I had undergone when I saw their misery. I found one woman living alone, and I shall never forget seeing the look of hopelessness in the woman's eyes change
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to one of gratitude when I touched her and told her I had come to befriend her in Christ's name. I found another woman, who had been living with a mad leper, com- pelled to do so because they both belonged to the same community. I found mothers separated from their children, husbands from their wives. In some cases the leper huts were crowded, and in this crowded condition they had had small-pox among them, and only filthy sheepskins, the cast-off sheepskins of the Yakout, for clothing. The ground in this northeastern part of Yakutsk is perpetually frozen, and only thaws during the summer to a depth of three feet. During this time, by the help of fires, the lepers have to make a number of graves sufficient for those whom they think will die during the winter, and outside the leper hut you see the big crosses that mark the graves, or holes prepared for graves. Where a Yakout dies the body has, by law, to remain unburied for three days, so when a leper dies in these crowded huts the body has to remain for three days among the living. I saw altogether seventy-three lepers, but the official report records about two hundred. I returned to the town of Yakutsk after a trip of two thousand miles, not having undressed or washed for two months. I had found the herb, but it is not a cure for leprosy, it only alleviates the suffering. On my return to St. Petersburg I was graciously permitted to have another interview with Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress. I appealed in Christ's name for help, and five devoted Russian Sisters from the hospital of the Princess Shahovsky, in Moscow, have already gone to Yakutsk. I asked that a collection might be made once a year in the churches for the help of lepers on the Sunday when the Gospel of the healing of the leper is read, and this has been granted, and by that means the village to be erected will be maintained. I believe that improper food and bad sanitary surround- ings greatly predispose the people to leprosy, and by improving these I believe it would be possible to stamp out the disease. I wish to establish a settlement of ten small houses, a couple of hospital wards, a school and church. The lepers cannot come here to plead for themselves, and I come as their substitute to plead for them; to ask you to help me to build this colony, and to help me to return to them, to dress their wounds and teach them proper sanitary conditions.
In my book "On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers " you will find official documents that vouch for the truth of all I have told you as to the mis- ery and helplessness of these poor outcast lepers. Before concluding I wish to give Mrs. Eagle my heartfelt thanks for her unfailing help to me during my stay at the Exposition in Chicago.
SYMMETRICAL WOMANHOOD.
By MRS. WESLEY SMITH.
Said the poet Goethe, to his friend Eckermann, in the seventy-seventh year of his age: "Had I earlier known how many excellent things have been in existence for hundreds of years, I would not have written a line, but would have done something else;" and Lord Byron, early in his literary career, wrote: "All that can be done has been done." And when these serene stars, in the blue heaven of thought, thus falter, how shall we, who as yet but look upward, dare give our message.
Writes Oliver Wendell Holmes, our genial auto- crat: "An author does not always know when he performs the service of the angel who stirred the waters at the pool of Bethesda. It gives many read- ers a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them something they have long known or felt, but which they have never found anyone to put in words for them." And so, be it mine today to plead for some old-fashioned virtues, and to repeat some old, old truths of life and love and womanhood.
Mother Nature loves a trinity; her handiwork, material and immaterial, is largely made up of three- fold creations. A geometrician would tell us that the triangle is often the keynote of her handicraft. MRS. WESLEY SMITH. Men and women are the highest type of this visible trinity. With a three-fold nature have they been endowed, mental, moral and physical; intellectual, spiritual and corporeal; a mind, a body, and a soul. The word sym- metrical, Webster tells us, means " each part in proportion to the other." How shall our trinity be beautiful, or our triangle perfect, unless each of these sides be sym- metrically developed?
It is the unfortunate fashion of the hour to adopt some theory, some hobby, some fashion or fancy, "and forsaking all others, keep only to it, so long as the hobby shall live." It may be physical culture is the modern woman's fetich, and she drapes her- self fearfully and wonderfully, passes much of her time in weird and mystifying motions, and assures you that she shall never grow old. Intellectuality is perhaps her shrine, and she soars in the empyrean of mind over matter, cares not for the adornment of her bonnet or the cut of her gown, pities you because you have not read Ibsen and Tolstoi, laments that you cannot rise to her higher plane and frowns upon all trivial conversation as to dress, disease, or domestics. Again, sweet charity may engross her time, and she founds a home for distressed cats and wandering dogs, or
Mrs. Wesley Smith is a native of the United States ; she was born in Chicago. Her parents were Edson I .. O'Hara and 'Tonsley O'Hara. She was educated at Park Institute, Chicago, Kenwood Seminary; Chicago, and the Convent of Loretto Abbey, Toronto, and has traveled in the United States, Germany, France, England, Holland and the Bahama Islands. She married Hon. S. Wesley Smith, M. D., of New York City. Her special work has been in the interest of literature, charities of all creeds, clubs, congresses and organizations of women and literary societies. Her principal literary works are addresses, orations and papers for public reading. In religious faith she is Protestant, and is a member of the Episcopal Church. She is a most graceful and attractive woman, an elocutionist and writer, though not a professional. Her perma- nent postoffice address is No. 24 West Thirtieth Street, New York City.
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makes little pinafores for the chilly children of Greenland, and sometimes forgets that charity means loving kindness, the womanly courtesy to the maid-servant and the gentle word to the man-servant.
The perfect woman shall cherish all of these, hold fast that which is good in cach, and remember that she owes an equal allegiance to every part of her being. She who neglects health-some rational means of physical culture, or the like-shall reap a whirlwind of weariness and wretchedness; she who aids not beauty by all reasonable means has lost one of the strongest levers whereby to move the world. She who fails to expand her intellectual faculties unto the highest, cannot seek recognition or honor among men. The woman who slays love does ill, for, like the wounded lion, it shall turn and rend her, and leave her at last desolate, and stricken, and alone; while for her who knows the grace of a heavenly spirit, " her deeds shall drop as the rain, her speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." All these things are lovely when rightly proportioned and nicely adjusted to the eternal balance. The ancient Greeks, that most perfect race physically and mentally the world has ever known, had engraven upon the arch of their academics, that he who ran might read, this motto: "Do nothing too much," and to we moderns this message comes today with timely warning.
The history of the world is rich with the tales of famous women who would have been beyond cavil had they but remembered, a woman to realize the highest must cultivate harmoniously her threefold being. Elizabeth, Queen of England, of whom Laud writes: "I am proud that such a woman has lived and reigned and died in honor; " she who was rich in mind and estate, but who lacked the gentler side, whose heart was not attuned to love and whose life missed those sweet chords in its music which only a fond affection can bring. Cleopatra, who could charm the colossus Cæsar, whose intellect was broad and great, whose beautiful body was a fit temple for a noble soul-but, alas! the casket was empty of the jewel, else the world's story had been nobler. Madame Recamier, whose gracious heart and lovely spirit made all men her knights, but who failed in that mental force which should have thrown her power into the world's work and aided its upward and onward march. Madame de Main- tenon, whose piety was deep and sincere, but cultivated to such an excess that the god-like virtue of tolerance was forgotten, and the reign of Louis, the grand monarch. sullied with one of the darkest political crimes in history, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, whereby eight thousand faithful subjects were exiled or imprisoned. George Eliot, the brightness of whose descriptive pen we may never see surpassed, but whose intellectual faculties were allowed to exhaust and warp her nature so that her days were largely those of an unhappy invalid, and discord rang within them.
"'Tis strange that a harp of a thousand strings Should keep in tune so long,"
sings the poet, and we shall only hear life's harmony aright when the bass and the treble and the medium register shall sound aloud together in one triumphant sym- phony. Lord Lytton writes the praises of "a various, vigorous, versatile mind," and Goethe observes: "The object of life is culture, not what we can accomplish, but what can be accomplished in us."
Let us divide our threefold being into a sexagon-from our physical nature we shall have health and beauty, from our mental endowment knowledge and sentiment, from our spiritual side morality and picty, and cultivate each unto the utmost, but each in its due proportion. The peach that grows toward the sun's warm kisses becomes first ripe and mellow and fragrant, but unless Phœbus travels on to touch its other side, is soon o'er-ripe and blackened and decayed. And so with us, if we let not the genial sun of culture shine upon us equally from all directions, we shall grow blackened with the vice of narrowness and littleness and scrupulosity, and fail our perfect fruitage.
The world today is, oh, so largely, what we women make it. Let us strive car- nestly until all womanly vices shall cease to be.
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" Oh! lift your natures up; Embrace high aims, work out your freedom, Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed; Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, The sins of emptiness, gossip and envy And slander, die. Better not to be at all Than not to be noble."
Woman cannot reign until she is worthy to be a queen. It is not by crying like a fretful child for more, that we shall attain all things, but by bearing our duties and our work so bravely, so wisely, that men shall gladly call us unto the high places to aid, until we stand-
" Two in the council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life."
The meanest pool by the wayside can hold the stars in its bosom, and give back the gleam of the sunlight, and receive the showers from heaven even as the mighty ocean. To all of us it is not given to climb the mountain, and few may wear the laurel, but who shall say what constitutes success, who deny she has achieved her highest mission, who has been simply a good woman. Says Victor Hugo: "There is in this world no function more important than that of charming. To shed joy, to radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny, the spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to render a service?"
It is so pleasant to dwell upon the ideal side of life, to lay far-reaching plans and dream great deeds, but be you the most orthodox of Christians or the broadest of ethical culturists, we shall yet agree that the truest and most searching test of char- acter lies in " the trivial round, the common task," along life's wayside. The great Creative Power takes as infinite patience and care in fashioning the facets of an insect's eye, as in marking the course of a Niagara or building a Matterhorn. And George Eliot preached to us a great gospel when she wrote:
"The growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who have lived faithfully hidden lives and lie in unvisited tombs."
It is more satisfying to efficiently perform our duty of the hour than to hope that large opportunities may yet be ours. It is better to live today nobly than to muse on a radiant tomorrow. You cannot dream yourself into a character, you must hammer and forge one out.
It was of some fair woman who held herself worthy of being symmetrically devel- oped unto a perfect whole that Longfellow said: "When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music;" and of her, also, Mrs. Hemans wrote, it was a life-long happiness
" To have met the joy of thy speaking face, To have felt the spell of thy breezy grace, To have lingered before thee, and turned and borne One vision away of the cloudless morn."
In the twilight time we see her-that fair woman yet to be. She stands serene and beautiful, looking forward to meet the coming years, with calm eyes that tell of inward grace and the peace of God upon her forehead. She is robed in the white gar- ment of modesty. About her throat she wears a circle of rare gems, and these are the pearls of truth. Her feet are shod with the winged sandals of a willing heart. Her eyes beam love and courage into the soul of Him who is her other self. Her cool, white palms are made to lay soft touches on some sweet baby brow, and to clasp the hand of manhood when it falters, so that they two shall climb together up the white heights of God.
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She shall cherish both the meanest flower that blows and the highest stars in heaven. She shall do all things possible with honor to herself and to her Maker. She passes on life's highway, gathering here the rose of beauty, and there the stately lily of a faithful soul. She stoops for the green mosses of love that grow all about her feet, and will yield her ever fragrant favor. She lingers long in the grateful shade of the tree of knowledge; of its wide-spreading branches she gathers the leaves to weave a garland for her forehead. She plucks the olive branch to bear within her hand. She treads the beaten path of life, and in her wake the way appears a little greener where her feet have trod, until she stands at Heaven's gate and the angel saith: "Come in. All hail, fair woman yet to be; love bless thee, joy crown thec, God speed thy career."
THE LAND WE LOVE. By MRS. MARY L. GADDESS.
Is there a man or woman in America who has not at times, with deep feelings of emotion, exclaimed, " I love my native land?"
Its hills and dells, its mountains high, Whose summits almost touch the sky, Its broad, clear rivers on whose breast, The commerce of a world might rest.
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