Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/565

424 from Mr. Cyrus Butler, in answer to a personal appeal from Miss Dix, the sum of fifty thousand dollars, was enlarged and had its name changed to Butler Hospital.

Taking up the cause of the insane in New Jersey, Miss Dix went " from county to county, making personal investigations, preparing a memorial to the Legislature, and moving them to appropriate means for building the Trenton Hospital with its lofty walls and extensive grounds. At the same time she was creating the State Lunatic Asylum at Harrisburg, Pa. Through her efforts the asylum at Utica, N.Y., was doubled in size, and the .4sylum for the Insane at Toronto, Canada, tniilt. From State to State, from county to county, Miss Dix journeyed, seeking out the suffering in jails, almshouses, and wherever they were to be found, who had no other earthly heljier. Hos])itals sprung up at her touch, until she saw structures of her own creation rise in Lidiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mis.'iouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, Washington, and Halifax, N.S.

" Far-away Japan owed its first asylum for the insane to Dorothea L. Dix. She so inter- ested Mr. Mori, the first Minister from Japan to the United States, that on his return to his home he was instrumental in building two hospitals.

"She was known and loved everywhere. In 1S5S and 1S59 she visited the hospitals throughout the South that she had been in- strumental in founding. She writes in Texas: ' Everybody was kind and obliging. I had a hundred instances that filled my eyes with tears. I was taking dinner at a small puljlic house on a wide, lonely prairie. The master stood with the stage way-bill in his hand, reading and eying me. I thought because I was the only lady ]3assenger; but when I drew out my purse to pay, as usual, his (|uick expression was: "No, no! by George, I don't take money from you! Why, I never thought I should .see you, and now you are in my house. You have done good to everybody for years and years. Make sure, now, there's a welcome for you in every hou.se in Texas! Here, wife, this is Miss Dix. Shake hands and call the children."'

"The same kindly spirit was manifested by the press of the South, which spoke of her as ' the chosen daughter of the Republic,' that 'angel of mercy.'

" It was during this period of her life that Miss Dix through legislative bodies secured large sums of money for humane ])urposes, more than was ever before raised by one in- dividual.

" At the breaking out of the Civil War Mi.ss Dix was nearly sixty years of age, but she entered Washington with the first wounded soldiers from Baltimore, and reported at once to Secretary Camei-on as a volunteer nurse without j)ay, and was by him apjxiinted ' Super- intentlent of Women Nurses, to select and assign women nurses to general or jsermanent military hospitals.'

"While in personal devotion," writes Mr. Tiffany of Miss Dix (then under the burden of "responsibilitiesJoo great for any single mind to cope with"), "no portion of her career surpassed this, still in wisdom and ])ractical efficiency it was distinctively inferior to her work in her own s])here. Of its consecration of purpo.se there can be no question." Mr. Tiffany testifies that through the four years of the war "she never took a day's furlough. Untiringly did she remain at her post, organizing bands of nurses, forwarding sup])lies, ins})ecting hos])itals, and in many a case of neglect and abuse making her name a salutary terror."

Secretary Stanton, having a high sense of the country's indebtedness to Miss Dix for her in-estimable services on the l)attle-fiel(l, in camps and hospitals, ordered the presentation to her of a stand of the United States colors. The beautiful flags, received by her in January, 1867, she bequeathed to Harvard College.' They now hang in the Memorial Hall, over the main portal.

After the war Miss Dix continued general philanthropic work for many years. Worn out with fatigue, in October, 1881, she went for rest to the Trenton Asylum, which was her home till the end came.

It has been .said of Miss Dix that personally she was most attractive. "Her voice was of a quality that controlled the rudest and most violent — sweet, lich, low, perfect in enunciation,