nts undying love
and unflinching loyalty, by calling her a "washerwoman." Carlyle, with a
savage strain of Scotch Calvinism in his cold blood, never knew the
sacredness of the love of man and woman--to him sex was a mistake on the
part of God. Even for the sainted Mary of Galilee he has only a grim and
patronizing smile, removing his clay pipe long enough to say to Milburn,
the blind Preacher, "Oh, yes; a country lass elevated by Catholics into
a wooden image and worshiped as a deity!"

Carlyle never held in his arms a child of his own and saw the light of
love reflected in a baby's eyes; and nowhere in his forty-odd volumes
does he recognize the truth that love, art and religion are one. And
this limitation gives Taine excuse for saying, "He writes splendidly,
but it is neither truth nor poetry."

When Charlotte Corday, that poor, deluded rustic, reached the rooms of
Marat, under a friendly pretense, and thrust her murderous dagger to the
sick man's heart, his last breath was a cry freighted with love, "A moi,
chere amie!"

And death-choked, that proud head drooped, and Simonne, seeing the
terrible deed was done, blocked the way and held the murderess at bay
until help arrived.

Hardly had Marat's tired body been laid to rest in the Pantheon, before
Charlotte Corday's spirit had gone across the Border to meet his--gone
to her death by the guillotine that was so soon to embrace both Danton
and Robespierre, the men who had inaugurated and popularized it.

All Paris went into mourning for Marat--the public buildings were draped
with black, and his portrait was displayed in the Pantheon with the
great ones gone. A pension for life was bestowed upon his widow, and
lavish resolutions of gratitude were laid at her feet in loving token of
what she had done in upholding the hands of this strong man.

But Paris, the fickle, in two short years repudiated the pension, the
portrait of Marat was removed from the Pantheon, and his body taken by
night to another resting-place.

Simonne the widow, and Albertine the sister, sisters now in sorrow,
uniting in a mutual love for the dead, lived but in memory of him.

But Carlyle was right--this was a "washerwoman." She spent all of her
patrimony in aiding her husband to publish and distribute his writings,
and after his death, when friends proved false and even the obdurate
kinsmen still considered her name pollution, she took in washing to earn
money that she might defend the memo