> endowed them most bountifully. The war, and the benevolence and patriotism which it evoked, changed all this. The gay and thoughtless belle, the accomplished and beautiful leader of society, awoke at once to a new life. The soul of whose existence she had been almost as unconscious as Fouqué's Undine, began to assert its powers, and the gay and fashionable woman, no longer ennuyéd by the emptiness and frivolity of life, found her thoughts and hands alike fully occupied, and rose into a sphere of life and action, of which, a month before, she would have considered herself incapable. Saratoga and Newport, and the other haunts of fashion were not indeed deserted, but the visitors there were mostly new faces, the wives and daughters of those who had grown rich through the contracts and vicissitudes of the war, while their old habitués were toiling amid the summer's heat to provide supplies for the hospitals, superintending sanitary fairs, or watching and aiding the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals, or at the front of the army. In these labors of love, many a fair face grew pale, many a light dancing step became slow and feeble, and ever and anon the light went out of eyes, that but a little while before had flashed and glowed in conscious beauty and pride. But though the cheeks might grow pale, the step feeble, and the eyes dim, there was a holier and more transcendent beauty about them than in their gayest hours. "We looked daily," says one who was herself a participant in this blessed work, in speaking of one who, after years of self-sacrificing devotion, at last laid down her young life in patriotic toil, "we looked daily to see the halo surround her head, for it seemed as if God would not suffer so pure and saintly a soul to walk the earth without a visible manifestation of his love for her." Work so ennobling, not only elevated and etherealized the mind and soul, but it glorified the body, and many times it shed a glory and beauty over the plainest faces, somewhat akin to that which transfigured the Jewish lawgiver, when he came down from the Mount. But it has done more than this. The soul once ennobled by participation in a great and glorious work, can never again be satisfied to come down to the heartlessness, the frivolities, the petty jealousies, and littlenesses of a life of fashion. Its aspirations and sympathies lie otherwheres, and it must seek in some sphere of humanitarian activity or Christian usefulness, for work that will gratify its longings. How pitiful and mean must the brightest of earth's gay assemblages appear, to her who, day after day, has held converse with the souls of the departing, as they plumed their wings for the flight heavenward, and accompanying them in their upward journey so far as mortals may, has been privileged with some glimpse through the opening gates of pearl, into the golden streets of the city of our God! With such experiences, and a discipline so purifying and ennobling, we can but anticipate a still higher and holier future, for the women of our time. To them, we must look for the advancement of all noble and philanthropic enterprises; the lifting vagrant and wayward childhood from the paths of ruin; the universal diffusion of education and culture; the succor and elevation of the poor, the weak, and the down-trodden; the rescue and reformation of the fallen sisterhood; the improvement of hospitals and the care of the sick; the reclamation of prisoners, especially in female prisons; and in general, the genial ministrations of refined and cultured womanhood, wherever these ministrations can bring calmness, peace and comfort. Wherever there is sorrow, suffering, or sin, in our own or in other lands, these heaven-appointed Sisters of Charity will find their mission and their work. Glorious indeed will be the results of such labors of love and Christian charity. Society will be purified and elevated; giant evils which have so long thwarted human progress, overthrown; the strongholds of sin, captured and destroyed by the might of truth, and the "new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," so long foretold by patriarch, prophet, and apostle, become a welcome and enduring reality. And they who have wrought this good work, as, one after another, they lay down the garments of their earthly toil to assume the glistening robes of the angels, shall find, as did Enoch of old, that those who walk with God, shall be spared the agonies of death and translated peacefully and joyfully to the mansions of their heavenly home, while waiting choirs of the blessed ones shall hail their advent to the transcendent glories of the world above. |