Page:Tributes to Helen Bell, Woman's Progress, April 1895.djvu/11

204 Blessing she is: God made her so,

And deeds of week-day holiness

Fall from her noiseless as the snow,

Nor has she ever chanced to know

That aught were easier than to bless.

She is most fair, and thereunto

Her life doth rightly harmonize;

Feeling or thought that was not true

Ne'er made less beautiful the blue

Unclouded heaven of her eyes."

If it were necessary for me to decide for myself what was the one great thing Helen Bell did in her short and vivid life I should say "She made herself necessary." And this was not because of what she did, although she did so much; nor because of what she knew, although she knew much more than her modest manner revealed; nor because she was fair and gracious and charitable and untiring, but simply because she was—herself. We cannot take such a character as hers into parts and say this was the best and this was of less value, because it all goes together. Her sweetness, her strength, her little fancies, her weakness, her radiance all made up her personality—her sympathetic individual character. And here it seems to me we touch the lesson, the power of her life—the value of character! This is an old and trite thing to say, but the preponderance of character in our every-day estimate of the importance of a life is not so very common. We are much more apt to count up the social or business value of the individual than to realize what the simple presence of a pure and lovely life means to all who live within its influence. But this is really what Nature works out for us—the great Fate that no one can escape—"As a man lives so shall he be." The days going by leave their record in character—and this is our Book of Doom! It is not aspiration nor repentance we need, but the right endeavor, because it is the every-day service, the unconscious life that sweetens or spoils the soul. And it was thus, day by day, Helen Bell lived with pure, high thoughts, with patient striving, with active, unwearying application, always bent upon what was right, and so deepened and developed, until unknown to herself, half-guessed by others, she became that important factor, the one who is necessary! Her natural sincerity and nobility gave her stability and a personal power that centered her and her deep seriousness made her take even the little events of every day at an unusual valuation. She never despised another's opinion, or failed to consider the rights of those whose judgments she could not accept. She had her little diplomacies and liked to have difficult affairs given to her to manage, and one can almost see her saying: "I am sure if it is left to me I can make it right," but it was the diplomacy of the charity that believes that antagonism means nothing more than miscomprehension and that it is only necessary to explain if you would convince.