Women of America: Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 10 (of 10)Larus, John Ruse
History
Women of America: Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 10 (of 10)
Larus, John Ruse
Women -- America -- History; Women -- United States -- History
In the younger sister colony to Quebec, that of Montreal, Jeanne Mance
founded a hospital with the money supplied her by Madame Bullion, a rich
and pious widow living in Old France but interested in all projects for
the amelioration of existent conditions in the new land. The hospital
was of excellent service in caring for the wounded who had done battle
with the fierce Iroquois, and many a stricken soldier blessed the name
of its founder. Marguerite de Bourgeoys, of whom Parkman writes as the
"fair ideal of Christian womanhood, a flower of earth expanding in the
rays of heaven," on her part founded in Montreal a girls' school, and
her work so prospered that she actually built by her own efforts a
church, now known, though in its second building, as "Notre Dame de
Bonsecours." She and Jeanne Mance were known as "the two mothers of
Montreal," and well did they deserve the honorable title.
The work and character of Marguerite de Bourgeoys are thus admirably
summed up by a recent biographer:
"The visible result of Marguerite de Bourgeoys' long life in Canada was
the institution of a band of young women who were bound by vows to teach
the young, the building of a church, and the establishment of schools
for the instruction of Indian and French children. She died January 12,
1700. Her heart, which had beaten with pain at the cry of suffering
childhood, with agony at the shriek of the tortured victim of Iroquois
cruelty, with shame at the contentions of Christian brotherhoods, and
with rapture when even one little child received the anointing drops of
baptism, that heart, encased in its silver covering, now rests in the
chapel of a convent where she so long labored and loved."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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