LIVES OF GREAT WOMEN.
"Lives of great men all remind us
We may snake our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time."
LONGFELLOW.
THE next day seemed determined to show how disagreeable clouds can make
the face of nature. The wind moaned in the plantation as if the trees
were complaining that the sun had broken his promise, and the brook
sobbed as though it had come down from the hills on purpose to tell
some sad, sad story. There was no going out after dinner. So, after
lingering near the window for some minutes, half in hopes that the
clouds would break, Lilla curled herself up in a big armchair with a
book, whilst Mrs. Eden took her work.
They were both very still, not a sound in the room, save the ticking of
the timepiece, and the regular click of the old lady's needle.
Mrs. Eden was very busy with her thoughts as well as her sewing, and
it was easy to guess what she was thinking about, for every time the
shaking of the casement and the tap-tap of the rose-tree against it,
made her look up, she glanced towards her granddaughter.
These fourteen years had passed very quickly, but Mrs. Eden felt that
they had wrought a great change in herself, and she often wondered what
Lilla would do when the last change came to still her voice and hands
in the sleep of death.
Of one thing she felt sure. The Heavenly Father, in whom she had
trusted all her life, and who had never failed her, would never forsake
the dear child for whom she had prayed so unceasingly. But she longed
for the assurance that Lilla had found for herself the One who would be
her guide when her earthly teacher was no longer by to counsel her.
"She is a good girl," she often said to herself. "But the time is
coming when she will have to think for herself, for I cannot be with
her much longer. Pray God that when I am gone she may have an arm to
lean upon which will never fail her!"
They had been sitting so for more than an hour, when Lilla with a deep
sigh suddenly closed her book, got up, and, going to the window, looked
out with a weary yawn.
Mrs. Eden glanced up from her work.
"Tired of your book, Lilla?" she asked.
"Not exactly, grandmother," Lilla replied, turning back towards the
fire. "Tired of myself, I suppose, or of the rain. But I think you must
be weary of sitting quiet."
"No," replied Mrs. Eden, "my thoughts have been as active as my needle,
but I shall not be able to see much longer."
"Then let us have tea early, grandmother, and we can shut out this
gloom and be cosy. Shall I stir the fire up?"
There was soon a cheerful blaze under the kettle, and Lilla sat down
with some wool-work to wait until the first notes of its song should
give the signal to fetch the tea-tray.
"I always wish something would happen on days like these," she said:
"some adventure like you read of in books. A prince in disguise might
come and beg our hospitality, or some travellers who had lost their
way. But that is the worst of living in a civilised country—nothing
romantic ever happens."
"Most things have a 'best' side as well as a 'worst,'" said her
grandmother. "I think the disadvantages of uncivilised life would
outweigh its advantages. But look! There is your traveller."
A wet umbrella was at the gate. Lilla jumped up.
"Oh! Grandmother," she exclaimed, "it is Mr. Munro! I wanted a prince,
not a clergyman. Mr. Munro always puts me in a tremble."
"We must not keep him waiting in the rain," said Mrs. Eden, putting
down her work and rising.
But Lilla sprang to the door.
"Let me go, grandmother!" she cried. "The wind blows in so cold.
Besides, I am not so terrified of Mr. Munro that I dare not let him in.
But I am disappointed, because now we shall not be able to have tea,
and he will stay a long while and spoil our cosy evening."
With these words she left the room, and soon returned ushering in Mr.
Munro.
"It is very good of you to come and see us on such a wet day." Mrs.
Eden said, when she had seen the clergyman safely seated in the large
easy-chair where Lilla had been reading.
"I usually find people at home on afternoons like this," replied Mr.
Munro, "and, as for myself, I enjoy such good health that I never stay
indoors for the weather. I often think that I have made my constitution
what it is by accustoming myself to spend a certain part of each day in
open air exercise. So you see duty brings its reward."
"Ay! That it does," said Mrs. Eden; "we never sow but God gives us our
harvest. Lilla and I rarely take any notice of the weather, but to-day
we thought it 'too' wet and windy, so we have worked and read until the
daylight is almost gone, and we were about to shut out the rain and
light up."
"And have an early cup of tea," added Mr. Munro, with a glance towards
the kettle, which was now steaming out in good earnest. "Will you allow
me to join you?"
Mrs. Eden expressed herself delighted, and Lilla went to fetch the
tea-tray.
"I don't know a more cheery companion than the kettle," continued Mr.
Munro. "I think the rich lose a great deal by banishing it from their
sitting-rooms. I remember in the good old days at home my mother always
had the water boiled, and the tea brewed under her own supervision. And
no modern tea comes up to it, unless it is yours and my wife's."
In the meantime Lilla had cut some bread, which she now proceeded to
toast, whilst her grandmother went to fetch some preserve from her
store-closet.
"And how have you been occupying yourself?" Mr. Munro asked as he
watched her kneeling before the fire, slowly turning the bread until it
assumed a delicate brown.
"I have been reading some 'Lives of Great Women,' the best part of the
time, Mr. Munro," replied Lilla. "But all of a sudden I got tired, so
took up some wool-work and talked to grandmother."
"Which is nearly as good as a book, she is so wise and good," said Mr.
Munro. "Do you soon get tired of reading?"
"Not usually, if the book is interesting," replied Lilla.
"And this wasn't?"
"Oh! Yes, but—I can't tell you exactly. It made me feel discontented."
"With yourself, or your surroundings?"
"I don't know. It made me want to be great too. And of course I never
can, so I put it down and tried to forget it."
"I am not quite sure that was the best thing to do."
Lilla's eyes had been so intent upon her toast that she had answered
all Mr. Munro's questions hitherto without looking up. But his last
words puzzled her a little. Reading the lives of these heroines of
womankind had made her feel discontented with the narrowness of her
own life, spent in eating and drinking, walking and sleeping, learning
tasks and doing fancy-work, and talking to her grandmother. And it was
wrong to wish to be anything but what God had made her, so she had
thrown the temptation aside with the book. Surely that was right! Lilla
looked up involuntarily, as if to read his meaning in his face.
"There are two ways of wanting to be great," Mr. Munro went on, seeing
her puzzled expression. "And it makes all the difference which one your
book put into your head. You know God's estimate of greatness is very
different from the world's. We very often think it consists in fine
circumstances and plenty of money and servants, because we look on the
outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. If your book made you
long to be great, no matter what circumstances you were placed in, the
more you read of it, the better."
"But what is the use of wishing?" said Lilla, looking up as she
reached for another slice of bread. "There are some things I can do
nicely enough. I can sew evenly, and grandmother says I make toast
very well, but that will never make a great woman of me. How could I
do as Florence Nightingale or Mrs. Fry did? I couldn't nurse soldiers
all night. I should fall asleep just when I ought to give them their
physic, and kill them by my neglect. Besides, I know nothing about
medicine. And as for going about distributing tracts, I couldn't do
that, much less write them. I'm neither brave nor clever enough, and I
don't even learn half I might."
"That may be," said Mr. Munro, with a smile at Lilla's graphic picture,
"and I know numbers of clever people who couldn't write tracts. But
sometimes it takes more perseverance than bravery to make people great.
Courage is for the battle-field, and industry and patience for the
workshop. Did it ever strike you that there are more workshops than
battle-fields in the world?"
Lilla did not answer. She had never thought about it. And now she
did not quite see what workshops and battle-fields had to with great
women. But her grandmother returned just then with some of her famous
preserved cherries, and as the toast was ready, she rose from her knees
and went to the table to butter it.
Tea-time passed very pleasantly, for in spite of what Lilla said about
Mr. Munro always putting her in a tremble, he was far from being a
terrible sort of old gentleman. He was as kind and full of interesting
talk as it was possible to be. And the conversation happening to turn
upon a tour which he had made some years before, in Egypt, Lilla forgot
rain and terror and everything, until Mr. Munro took out his watch and
said that it was time for him to be going.
"There was one thing struck me particularly," he said, as he rose.
"Almost all trace of the existence of these old-world people consists
in their provision for a future state. There are still remains of
the costly tombs they made—covered with sculptures and pictures of
the scenes amongst which they had lived—as though they wished to be
surrounded after death by the familiar objects they had known from
youth to old age. But of their lives and labours you see no trace. All
vestiges of their everyday work seem to have perished with them."
"So much everyday work is too trivial to live," remarked Mrs. Eden.
"Yet Christ glorified it," returned Mr. Munro. "It seems to me that the
strength of Christianity lies in the fact that it is by faithfulness in
little things that we rise to true greatness. 'Do the work that lies
the nearest' is the best motto for a Christian. And the nearer we get
to Christ-likeness, the better we understand the reason why."
After tea, Lilla had her lessons to prepare for next day, so she forgot
all about Mr. Munro. But the wind was very high when she went to bed,
and for a long while she lay awake thinking.
"'Do the work that lies the nearest,'" she said to herself. "I suppose
that is what I do every day, but I don't see that it makes me very
great. I fancy I should be a good deal greater if I could do something
else. I wonder how Mrs. Fry and Florence Nightingale managed to be so
clever and good. There is one thing, I am only a little girl. But after
all, they must have begun by being little girls—only I don't see how
music lessons and French vocabulary and English grammar can make me
great. I suppose they had to learn it though."
Just then a great gust of wind shook Lilla's casement so roughly
that she involuntarily raised her head from the pillow. But her
grandmother's regular breathing in the next room told her that she was
already asleep. So Lilla snugged down again with a thought of the poor
sailors and fishermen out at sea. She always prayed for them when the
wind was high. As the gust lulled, however, her thoughts went back to
Mr. Munro.
"I can't quite remember what he said about being faithful in little
things," she said. "Something about true greatness. I 'should' like
to be great. But after all, I suppose the best thing I can do is to
learn my lessons as well as possible—'faithfully,' as Mr. Munro would
say. I mean to begin to-morrow morning. I will get up half-an-hour
earlier—and—"
Lilla was becoming drowsy, and, in a few minutes more, neither good
resolutions nor the most boisterous gusts of wind could keep her awake
any longer.
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