Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/75

Rh realization of the solemn words: "If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"

Hence it is a salutary exercise to look back on former times, and refresh our minds and stimulate our faculties with the records and experience of those who have had to cope with hardships no longer existing, and whose mental and moral triumphs over difficulties remain as an example to all thoughtful readers.

Few young women in any age or country were more successful in acquiring knowledge, or more modest, conscientious, and judicious in its use, than Miss Elizabeth Smith, the Oriental scholar, and the translator of the Book of Job; and readers are more drawn to the consideration of her acquirements from the fact that her Christian character was even more lofty than her remarkable mind.

There is not much to record in her uneventful, brief, yet beautiful life. Some sorrows came to test her principles and show her sweet sympathy and calm fortitude. In the year 1793, times were very hard in England. The French Revolution had startled the whole civilized world. War was rampant, opinions were conflicting, property was insecure, taxation high, trade and commerce much depressed. It was not wonderful that the moneyed interest should suffer, and many banks broke. One in the West of England, of which a Mr. Smith was the leading partner, failed; and the blow that shattered the