Heroines of Service: Mary Lyon, Alice Freeman Palmer, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, Julia Ward Howe, Anna Shaw, Mary Antin, Alice C. Fletcher, Mary Slessor of Calabar, Madame Curie, Jane AddamsParkman, Mary Rosetta
History
Heroines of Service: Mary Lyon, Alice Freeman Palmer, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, Julia Ward Howe, Anna Shaw, Mary Antin, Alice C. Fletcher, Mary Slessor of Calabar, Madame Curie, Jane Addams
Parkman, Mary Rosetta
Women -- United States -- Biography
After that Jane spent much time at the mill industriously rubbing the
ground wheat between thumb and forefinger; and when the millstones
were being dressed, she eagerly held out her little hands in the hope
that the bits of flying flint would mark her as they had her father.
These marks, she dimly felt, were an outward sign of her father's true
greatness. He was a leading citizen of their Illinois community by
right of character and hard-won success. Everybody admired and honored
him. Did not President Lincoln even, who was, her father said, "the
greatest man in the world," write to him as a comrade and brother,
calling him "My dear Double D'ed Addams"?
Years afterward, when Jane Addams spoke of her childhood, she said that
all her early experiences were directly connected with her father, and
that two incidents stood out with the distinctness of vivid pictures.
She stood, one Sunday morning, in proud possession of a beautiful new
cloak, waiting for her father's approval. He looked at her a moment
quietly, and then patted her on the shoulder.
"Thy cloak is very pretty, Jane," said the Quaker father, gravely; "so
much prettier, indeed, than that of the other little girls that I think
thee had better wear thy old one." Then he added, as he looked into her
puzzled, disappointed eyes, "We can never, perhaps, make such things as
clothes quite fair and right in this hill-and-valley world, but it is
wrong and stupid to let the differences crop out in things that mean so
much more; in school and church, at least, people should be able to feel
that they belong to one family."
Another day she had gone with her father on an errand into the poorest
quarter of the town. It had always before seemed to her country eyes
that the city was a dazzling place of toy- and candy-shops, smooth
streets, and contented houses with sleek lawns. Now she caught a glimpse
of quite another city, with ugly, dingy houses huddled close together
and thin, dirty children standing miserably about without place or
spirit to play.
"It is dreadful the way all the comfortable, happy people stay off to
themselves," said Jane. "When I grow up, I shall, of course, have a big
house, but it is not going to be set apart with all the other big homes;
it is going to be right down among the poor horrid little houses like
these."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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