Can one come in contact with such a life without feeling its blessed radiancies of courage, energy, triumph over unpleasant circumstances, cheerful doing of disagreeable work, and the power of love to sweeten all things? To know this woman is to be helped, strengthened, and blessed. The bravery of such heroines far surpasses that of much lauded military and naval heroes, and a few such women are worth more to the race, in my judgment, than all the Napoleons, Pompeys, Cæsars, and Nelsons that ever lived. Certain men impress you with their calm self-reliance. They are not disturbed by precedents or adverse judgments. They do what they deem to be right and refuse to be swerved from the path they have laid out for themselves. Ruskin radiates this influence, so do Carlyle and Browning. Every man who has dared to make innovations, deviate from the "ways of the old," has had to be self-reliant. Every reformer of every age and in every field has had no other staff to lean upon than the assurance of his own soul. Galileo in his astronomical deductions; Savonarola in his criticisms of the existing political conditions; Luther in his fulminations against the evils of the church; Cromwell in his stand against the doctrine of the "divine right of kings"; Jefferson, Washington, and the whole of our fathers, who, according to English _law_, were rebels and revolutionists, in the Declaration of Independence; Lincoln in his war measures and Emancipation Proclamation--all these and a thousand others radiated such self-reliance upon the principles they enunciated and advocated as to convince their followers. Every political party based upon real principles (rather than upon a desire for spoils), is organized as the result of the radiation of those principles held in the self-reliant hearts of a few men. Every school of thought, in philosophy, theology, medicine, law, ethics, or political economy, is based upon the radiation of ideas from self-reliant men.