The newspaper correspondents about the White House, echoing the remarks
made by the doctors, are continually talking of Mrs. Garfield's bravery,
and we frequently see the statement made that she is “the bravest woman
in the world,” and all that. While expressing great admiration for the
gifted lady, in the trying ordeal through which she has passed, and
admitting that she is brave as an American woman ought to be, and that
by her conduct she greatly braced up her beloved husband when his liver
was knocked around into the small of his back by the assassin's bullet,
and he didn't know whether he was going to live till morning, we must
say that Mrs. Garfield is no braver than thousands of other good women.
She simply took the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do
every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept
her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing,
as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient
believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were
breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God bless
her, who goes from the North to nurse total strangers in a stricken
southern city, when she knows that within a week the deadly fever will
kill her?
Compare the President's wife for a moment with the wife of a drunken
husband, who points a revolver at her heart, and his nervous finger on
the trigger, while he announces that he will kill her. The wife looks
him in the eye and says, “Kill me, John, but kiss me first,” and the
drunken brute breaks down and cries, and she takes the revolver from
him, puts him to bed, soaks his feet and brings him a good supper. That
is bravery.
Think of a frail little woman whose life has been one bed of thorns, and
whose happy hours have been so few that if an hour seems to open to her
with happiness she dare not enjoy it for fear there is a mistake, and it
is not hers to enjoy. In the wreck of her life's ambitions and hopes she
has saved only a dear little girl and her heart is so bound up in her
that it ceases to beat when she thinks that God may forget that the
little one is all she has, and call her home.
One day the little one comes home with fever, takes to her bed, and for
weeks is just on the line between earth and heaven. The little mother,
hardly able to be upon her feet, believes as firmly as she believes that
she lives, that her darling will die, and that two hearts will be buried
in the coffin, and yet she watches beside her night and day with
smiles on her face, sings to her as though her heart were filled with
happiness, and occasionally gives expression to a jolly laugh, just to
brace up her little darling, and make her believe there is no danger,
and when the doctor says “she will live,” the brave little mother goes
to her room and cries for the first time, and faints away.
Ah, gentlemen correspondents, you do well to speak of the bravery of the
President's wife, but you know that these incidents we have related, and
incidents you have seen in your own experiences, show as great, if not
greater bravery and heroism than that of the first woman of the land.
O, the country is full of women who are braver than the bravest man that
ever walked.