Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/70

 58 Sotilliti'n H;*t<,rn-<i1 ,s'o,-/, ///

of Jamestown of the coming of her people. But for her love and mercy the last white man in Virginia would have perished. Let it also be remembered, when on another occasion the colonists at Jamestown were about to return to England in despair, they heard that ninety virtuous, young, handsome girls were coming to Vir- ginia, the first that had dared the dangers of the great deep to reach Virginia.

The colonists at Jamestown determined to await their arrival. In a short time they all got husbands. Domestic ties were formed, virtuous sentiments and habits of thrift ensued, and the tide of im- migration swelled, i he men had something to live for and die for, and the foundations of the great coming Commonwealth were laid deep and everlasting.

De Tocqueville, that wise and acute Frenchman who wrote the best commentary on our institutions, people and country which has ever been penned, after travelling and residing for several years in America, remarked, with all the emphasis of an enthusiast, that if he were asked to what he attributed the growth, greatness, prosperity and strength of the American people, his reply would be, " I ascribe it all to the superiority of their women."

That strength and courage which she displays in aiding us in founding States and Empires will melt at times into tenderness and love, which seem borrowed from Heaven and the angels.

Who has not had his heart touched and his eyes moistened by the lines of Scott's famous poem ? When Marmion lay gasping for his last breath on Flodden Field, deserted by the pages and squires his nails had nursed and fed, without a friend to close his fading eyes, to bathe his gory face, or slake his dying thirst, the injured Clave, struck with a spark of divine pity which extinguished every feeling of resentment, discharged offices which the ingratitude of man de- nied to a benefactor. How true are the lines!

" O, woman ! in hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the quivering aspen made, When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou."

Once during the war when the lines of the enemy separated me from my home, I was an inmate of my brother's Richmond home while suffering from a wound. As soon as I could walk about a lit-