ow, for her life was unhappy from that time until her death in
1833, at the age of seventy-nine.

But that does not interest us. Ours it is to admire the heroic deeds
of Molly Pitcher on the battle-field, to thrill that there was one
woman of our country whose achievements have inspired poets and
sculptors in the long years since she was seen

loading, firing that six-pounder,--

when, as a poet has said,

Tho' like tigers fierce they fought us, to such zeal had Molly brought
us
That tho' struck with heat and thirsting, yet of drink we felt no lack;
There she stood amid the clamor, swiftly handling sponge and rammer
While we swept with wrath condign, on their line.[1]

At Freehold, New Jersey, at the base of the great Monmouth battle
monument are five bronze tablets, each five feet high by six in width,
commemorating scenes of that memorable battle. One of these shafts is
called the "Molly Pitcher," and shows Mary Hays using that
six-pounder; her husband lies exhausted at her feet, and General Knox
is seen directing the artillery. Also forty-three years after her
death, on July 4, 1876, the citizens of Cumberland County,
Pennsylvania, placed a handsome slab of Italian marble over her grave,
inscribed with the date of her death and stating that she was the
heroine of Monmouth.

In this, our day, we stand at the place where the old and the new in
civilization and in humanity stand face to face. Shall the young woman
of to-day, with new inspiration, fresh courage, and desire to better
the world by her existence, face backward or forward in the spirit of
patriotism which animated Molly Pitcher on the battle-field of
Monmouth? Ours "not to reason why," ours "but to do and die," not as
women, simply, but as citizen-soldiers on a battle-field where
democracy is the golden reward, where in standing by our guns we stand
shoulder to shoulder with the inspired spirits of the world.

Molly Pitcher stood by her gun in 1778--our chance has come in 1917.
Let us not falter or fail in expressing the best in achievement and in
womanhood.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Thomas Dunn English.

ELIZABETH VAN LEW: THE GIRL WHO RISKED ALL THAT SLAVERY MIGHT BE
ABOLISHED AND THE UNION PRESERVED

I

It was the winter of 1835. Study hour was just over in one of
Philadelphia's most famous "finishing schools" of that day, and half a
dozen girls were still grouped around the big center-table piling
their books up