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302 can bear, who cries for help and finds none; who stretches her empty arms upward in an agony of appeal and is answered by the hollow echo of her own cry; may God help her, for she is beyond the help of man. Other children came to fill the vacant places, other voices filled the air, but the hearts of father and mother were not filled until years later, when a sweet faith thrilled the hopeless blank.

The story of these two is the story of many beside. Husband and wife began the long journey side by side with equal talent, hope, energy; his work led him along the high-road, hers lay in a quiet nook; his name became world-known, hers was scarcely heard beyond the precinct of her own village; and yet who can say that his life was the more successful, who can say that the quiet falling rain, with its slow resultant of flower and fruit in each little garden nook, is less important than the mighty ship-laden river bearing its wealth of commerce in triumph to the sea?

George Eliot, in "Middlemarch," says of Dorothea:

Her finely-touched spirit had its fine issues, though they were not widely visible... .. The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

This is true of many Dorotheas; it is true of the Dorothea of whom I am writing. Geographically, Mary Owen's field of labor was narrow; but a small Western village of a thousand souls may hold within its ethical strata all the developments of a continent. Let her who feels that her small limits imprison her, remember that emotions are not registered by the census. Lovers and business men, struggling youths and perplexed mothers, children and veterans, poured their griefs and fears, their hopes and disappointments, into the listening ear of sympathy, knowing that the clear judgment of this little woman could unravel much that seemed to be in hopeless entanglement.

Well do I remember the cheer of this our home. Simple were its duties, simple indeed its pleasures. Well do I remember the busy troop of boys and girls, with the busy mother at their head, directing their exuberant energy with a rare administrative ability. Besides her own children, four of whom reached maturity, she took during her life seven other young people under her protection, so that the great old-fashioned house was always filled to overflowing with fresh young life. Pasture and stable, hennery and dairy, yard