mage only to the greatness that is also goodness. To ten-talent
power the hero must also add tenderness to his own, kindness to the
weak, unfailing sympathy to all. No giant is a full giant until he is
also gentle, stooping to give his two mites to the weak, bearing to the
weary his cup of cold water, ever emulating that hero, Sir Philip
Sydney, wounded sorely indeed, but pushing away the canteen because the
soldier, suffering great pain, had greater need.

In one of his essays Lowell notes that the great reform monuments are
the humble deeds of humble persons, taken up and repeated by an entire
people. The final victories for liberty and religion are emblazoned
upon monuments and celebrated in song and story, but the beginnings of
these achievements for mankind are often given over to obscurity and
forgetfulness. Our age makes much of the "Red Cross" movement. Hardly
fifty years have passed since two English girls boarded the steamer
that was to carry them to the Crimea. Upon the distant battlefields,
with their deserted cannon, wounded horses and dying men, at first
these gentle girls seemed strangely out of place. The hospitals were
full; neglected soldiers were lying in the thickets, whither they had
crawled to die. Counseling with none, these brave girls moved across
the battlefields like angels of mercy. Many years have passed. Now
these nurses bring hope to every battlefield, and minister to every
stricken Armenia, for the story of that sweet girl has filled the earth
with "King's Daughters." One hundred years ago also England left her
orphan babes to grow up in the country poorhouse, midst surroundings
often vulgar, profane and brutal. One day two sweet babes, unnamed and
unwelcomed, lay in the garret of a county-house in the outskirts of
London. Then a poor, half-witted spinster, hearing of the young
mother's death, found her way to the garret, brooded o'er the babes
with all the dignity of our Mother of Sorrows, took the babes to her
heart and planned how, with six shillings a week, she might keep bread
in three hungry mouths. Four years passed by, and one day the lord of
the manor stayed a moment before this woman's hovel and heard her
prayer for the two boys clinging to her skirts. Soon the story of the
woman's mercy was heard in every English pulpit, and in every town men
and women made their way to the county-houses to take away the orphan
babes and found instead some asylum for God's little